This One Is for the Black Sheep

I see you, I feel you, I am you — and I know there is a place in this world for all of us

I’m the “black sheep” of the family. If you know, you know. If you are one, you really know, and you may find as an adult that most of your closest inner circle of friends are also black sheep. We tend to find each other and flock together without even trying.

The idea of a black sheep is often mentioned casually as a joke by the person who identifies as such themselves. Or declared proudly, like a badge of honor.

But dive deeper under the wool of a fully-formed adult black sheep and it’s not always a laughing matter. Moreover, that pride is often worn to cover up years of low self-esteem and lack of self-acceptance or even self-destruction.

Fundamentally, the existence of a black sheep in a family structure suggests a lack of belonging, validation and acceptance. This is because they are often rejected, criticized or even ostracized by the first people to whom they look for unconditional love and empathy.

So yeah, most black sheep are fundamentally fucked up emotionally. At the same time, most of us also are pretty awesome. We tend to be wicked smart, free thinkers and inherently rebellious, but not in a messy way. We know how to take care of ourselves.

Being rejected often has helped us feel empathy and compassion for those other outcasts out there. A black sheep is often the kindest person in the room, and the first one to defend anyone who’s being ridiculed or bullied by others.

No Place Like Home?

My role as the black sheep in the generation of my Italian-American Catholic family has weighed heavily on my mind lately. That’s because for nearly a month I’ve been back in suburban Philadelphia where I was born—and where my only sibling, my older sister, and most of my extended family still live — helping to care for my aging father.

I left home as soon as I could for a very good reason — I never fit in, and my family, especially my mother and my sister, never let me forget it.

My mother was deeply Catholic, which is probably one of the biggest sources of the divide between us. Though I accepted my handed-down religion throughout elementary school — I wanted to be a nun when I was seven and by age 12 was playing the massive pipe organ for Mass at Holy Saviour, our local parish— by high school I began to question what it was exactly that I believed in.

I rejected Catholicism as soon as I was old enough to drive — I would say I was going to Sunday Mass but instead would drive around and listen to punk rock music and smoke cigarettes in my car for an hour before returning home.

When I finally had the nerve to tell my family that I hated the hypocrisy of Catholicism and wanted no part of it anymore, my mother told me I had the devil in me and threatened to kick me out of the house.

It wasn’t the first time she’d uttered that phrase at my willfulness and independence. My mother, though a good-hearted and generous woman, was at best anxious and depressed and at worst bi-polar — though she was never diagnosed as either one.

When I was growing up and lived at home, she was extremely sensitive and deeply unhappy. Because she’d come from a poor and dysfunctional family and was one of nine children, talking about feelings or mental health weren’t really priorities, and so her issues were never addressed.

As an adult, she had no way to express herself so would often project her negative emotions onto her family. Angry outbursts for apparently no reason were frequent. She would stomp around, mutter angrily to herself, and bang doors and cupboards. Often she would threaten to leave my father.

Looking back I have great compassion for my mother, but at the time it was of course upsetting and confusing. But even as she was emotionally unstable, Mom was my principal caretaker, and she did everything for me and would have given me the world if I asked.

She could be funny and whimsical, and would tell me she loved me on a regular basis. Yet she could turn from loving one day to angry the next on a dime, giving the household an air of constant tension.

Family Matters

I recognized our dysfunctional family dynamic quite early, though I didn’t have the language to describe it. I became defiant and rebellious, and I often acted out or spoke back sharply to my parents, which was not tolerated.

You have to understand that this was the 70s; corporal punishment was not frowned upon the way it is today. It was the way my parents’ parents had handled conflict with their children, and so it was the way they handled it with us.

I took the brunt of it. My black sheep-like behavior was met with beatings from both parents that included (I kid you not) my mother sometimes striking me with wire hangers when I misbehaved.

Let’s be clear: I never felt like an “abused” child. The rough spankings I received from both parents didn’t leave bruises or permanent marks on my skin. My parents were — and in the case of my dad, who just turned 88 — still are kind and decent people who I love very much.

I think they sincerely believed that disciplining me this way was the right thing to do. And maybe it was, because I turned out fine, in the end. But at the time, and for many years after, it felt to me like it wasn’t.

My father’s trigger for beating me was quicker but the beatings didn’t last as long. My mother took longer to resort to physical violence, but her beatings were more vicious and prolonged.

Of course this meant that I would taunt her with verbal retorts until she would break and come after me, sometimes with hangers, sometimes to put soap in my mouth. I was never one to back down from a challenge.

By writing about this, I don’t mean in any way to depict my childhood as any more traumatic than anyone else’s, or my parents as bad parents. It wasn’t, and they weren’t. From an outsider’s perspective, I was actually a pretty pampered kid.

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, but my dad worked his way into the upper end of that middle as the years went on. I was never without food, a comfortable home, fashionable clothing and a few luxury items, but not too many. We would go out to dinner every Friday night, with the restaurants getting progressively more expensive.

In my teen-aged years my dad belonged to a country club, where I took tennis lessons from a hot Italian tennis pro named George and spent languid summer days at the pool. We took vacations every summer to the Jersey Shore and sometimes longer ones — like road trips to Florida and Virginia.

Odd Daughter Out

Yet still I always knew there was something emotionally missing from our family dynamic. And I always felt this otherness, this feeling that I was different from everyone else in the house.

My sister later said it was because I was the smartest one in the family, and my parents didn’t know how to handle having such an intelligent kid who questioned their authority. All they knew was how they thought I was supposed to behave, and so they tried to get me to do that with sometimes too heavy a hand.

I’m not sure if that’s true, but I do know that I was quite sensitive and lost in my own imagination most of the time. I also definitely had a dark side, was as ill equipped at dealing with my own sadness and anger as my mother was with hers.

I recognized as early as aged 12 that how my mother acted sometimes was not normal, but neither my sister nor my father would listen to me when I suggested that something was amiss. Their response always was: “She’s your mother, she’s always right, and you do what she says.”

I felt closer to my father than my mother growing up, and he did try to take an interest in me. Dad wasn’t very emotionally expressive and, like many men at the time supporting young families on just his own salary, worked way too much. He could be a tough cookie sometimes but with him I felt like I mattered and that he had good intentions.

When he took a side with my mother and sister against me, I now know that he was just trying to make my mother happy. It was something that he didn’t know at the time wasn’t actually his job, nor was even achievable.

Sibling Rivalry at Its Finest

My sister was a different story. She was a textbook case of sibling rivalry and, though she would never admit it, probably wished I’d never been born. She was jealous of me and my role as the younger child who could get away with a lot more crap than she ever could, free from any weight of expectation that older siblings often feel.

Though I got the worst of my parents’ beatings, I also got a lot of positive attention from them for being naturally smart — I got top grades without trying — and charismatic, and playing sports in school, even though I was always the worst player on any team.

My sister had a lot of friends and was popular with just about everyone, and she had a great singing voice that won her local notoriety. But she had to study hard to get above-average grades. She also never made any of the sports teams at school, something to this day she still hasn’t quite gotten over.

My sister also was dutiful and did everything, by my parents’ standards, that she was supposed to — and I was not and most certainly did not. Yet I still received an equal amount of love — albeit imperfect love — from my parents. This drove her mad.

Her response to her own complicated role in the family was to put me in my place whenever she had a chance. I was bullied at school, so learned early in life not to say hurtful things to people because I knew how much emotional pain it could cause.

My sister had no such filter. She fought dirty, knowing my weak spots and exploiting them to her advantage. She would kick me when I was down, yet be kind to me as long as she was in a superior position in some way.

She once told me no one would ever love me because I was too moody and difficult. However, she would be surprisingly sympathetic later in life when I did get my heart broken, sometimes being the only one who would listen to me cry and bemoan a failed relationship for many phone calls and hours on end.

She always excelled at being my port in a storm, and yet to this day I’m sure she’s also been the person most responsible for a crushing lack of self esteem from which I suffered for many years.

Finding a Home for Myself

I responded to my toxic family dynamic in a way that many black sheep do. I rebelled tremendously, started drinking and smoking weed, became as self-sufficient as possible, and ran as far away as I could as soon as I could.

Though I only went to undergraduate university an hour away from home, I spent only freshman summer at my parents before staying in an off-campus apartment in a nearby town every year after that until I graduated.

I lived for a year in a town near campus after that until I was accepted to graduate school in Tempe, Arizona, moving there when I was 22 years old. I never again returned home except to visit.

From Arizona I moved to San Francisco and then did a three-year stint in New York City in an attempt to spend more time with my family after my mother died. When I realized they weren’t actually that interested in having me around, I left NYC for Portugal 11 years ago.

Still, while the lack of my family’s constant presence or interest in the life I’ve built for myself has been hurtful, in the end it also allowed me a freedom and ability to become the person I wanted to be — instead of the one who lived up to someone else’s expectations — for which I am grateful.

The truth is, I get along with my family much better at a distance. I am proud that I have followed my heart and my intuition and remained true to myself, even if my family members — my mother and sister in particular — never really changed nor ever saw me for the person that I truly am.

Making Peace and Moving On

I have reached a resolution for myself for both of these complicated relationships.

My mother, unfortunately, died before we could really resolve our differences in this world, but I made my peace — after much emotional anguish — postmortem. I think she somehow did as well. She often visits me in dreams, and they are always beautiful.

My sister still rarely misses an opportunity to remind me of my role in the family and how I’ve not been around for years to help care for our parents. Our relationship really suffered when my mother had a stroke at age 69 and then died two and a half years later, a day before my 33rd birthday in 2004.

She has, however, softened over the years, and we’ve begrudging reached a truce. She still shows little interest in my life and rarely asks me questions about it. I know it’s probably because she may feel threatened or scared that it may make her think about what she may have sacrificed or missed out on in her own life.

I don’t take it personally anymore, though I used to, and I have always and continue to take an interest in the significant news and life events in her and her four children’s lives.

I think it helps that I have done a lot of inner work and therapy to not let my sister’s verbal daggers or general disapproving attitude get a rise out of me anymore. And she is far too busy with her family and her active social life to have much time to make me feel bad about myself anymore — not that she could.

The Cost

Still, being the black sheep has definitely taken its toll on me. As any one of us knows, not feeling validation from the people on this earth put in charge of loving you unconditionally is not an easy thing to shake.

For years I didn’t really like myself that much, nor did I ever think that anyone else should or would really love me. I never understand why people would want to hang out and be friends with me, and always approached relationships from a co-dependent perspective.

It’s embarrassing to write this, but I felt like I had to do or buy things for people to get them to like me. This is a feeling I have only recently shaken — and I’ll be 50 years old in two months.

I knew I was smart, which gave me confidence, but have always felt fat and ugly— a feeling that mainly has its roots in the bullying I experienced in school, but which lack of family validation didn’t help.

I also suffered from anxiety and depression for many years — which led to a nervous breakdown when I was 34 — and often chose troubled men to be in relationship with, or created a toxic dynamic in my relationships.

The Ultimate Reward

With hindsight, though, I realize that being the black sheep was also an incredible cosmic gift. It had to be, as it created the person I am today — who I’m happy to say I actually like quite a lot, and sometimes on my best days even love deeply.

Without my black sheepness I would have never been strong and independent enough to find my own way in the world, to travel alone and learn how to surf. I would have never landed in Portugal and found a tribe of loving friends and a wonderful human to be my partner who have become the family I chose.

Without feeling like I didn’t fit in, I would have never chosen my own career path, nor built my own successful freelance writing business that afforded me a digital-nomad life beginning 11 years ago before it was even a thing.

I would have never had the compassion nor courage to finally launch a long-time passion project of mine, a therapeutic writing business called Mermaid Mentoring, answering my soul’s call to find a more meaningful profession that can have an immediate and positive impact on someone’s life.

So this is my message to all the black sheep of the world: Know that you are seen, valued and loved, even if your path wasn’t always the easiest. Know that what didn’t kill you has made you stronger. Know that if you find the love and validation you lacked early in life within yourself, you will be more powerful than you ever imagined.

In my most optimistic imagination, I like to think of all of you out there, like me, having found your own corner of the world where you fit in. I like to think that you, like me, feel secure and happy and are surrounded by love and acceptance, knowing deep in your heart it was all worth it.