The Complications of Birthdays

Subscribe now

I did not write my Substack last weekend.

My youngest son turned 23, and the next day my husband turned 60. Their birthdays are always next to each other, so this is naturally a full weekend. This year, it felt especially complicated.

Our family is working through truths that were hidden or that I did not fully understand when they were happening. My husband is addressing addictions of his own. We are trying to understand what that means for our marriage and our family.

One of our children is angry that we sent him to treatment while he had no idea his father was struggling too. I understand why that feels unfair to him. I also know that I was making decisions with the information I had at the time.

Birthdays are supposed to be happy. You are supposed to gather, celebrate the person, and make the day special. I have usually been the person who tries to create that for everyone.

I plan the meals, buy the gifts, and think about how to make each person feel loved. There is another layer to that when I recognize that the same kind of care has not always come back to me on my own birthday.

This year I was trying to celebrate two people I love while carrying sadness, anger, and questions that do not disappear because someone is blowing out candles.

What Was Happening Underneath?

When people begin telling you the truth about the past, your memories can change.

My oldest son has told me that he was high at family events and holidays when I had no idea. Another child was cutting during some of those events as a way to manage what felt unbearable and, in their mind, stay safe. At the same Christmas when our oldest son was sent to treatment, another child was experiencing suicidal thoughts.

My husband was living with struggles I did not understand either.

Meanwhile, I was planning meals, buying presents, taking photographs, and trying to hold the family together.

I can look at a picture from one of those days and remember what I believed was happening. Now I understand that each person in that photograph may have been living through something entirely different.

That changes the memory.

It also leaves me wondering what I missed, who was trying to survive without telling me, and whether there are still parts of the story I do not know.

I am grateful that more truth is coming forward. Secrets keep people isolated from one another and make real repair impossible.

Knowing more does not automatically make me feel safer. Sometimes it leaves me wondering whether I can trust what I see now when I misunderstood so much then.

The Child Growing Up Beside the Crisis

I also think about our youngest son and what these years were like for him.

Our family has been navigating serious mental health and substance-use struggles since around 2017. He was still young when so much began to fall apart.

His siblings needed attention. His father had struggles I could not see. Other family members had their own needs. I was doing everything I could to keep moving and manage the next crisis.

Through all of it, our youngest was growing up.

I tried to give him the same kinds of birthdays and holidays I had created for his older siblings. Sometimes I managed it. Other times I did not have the same energy, emotional space, or resources.

That is painful to admit.

It brings me back to a question many parents ask themselves after years of family crisis:

Was I a good enough parent?

I learned to dissociate during my own childhood. Looking back, I can see how that helped me function as an adult too. I kept planning, fixing, and taking care of everyone without always being connected to what was happening inside me—or what was happening underneath the surface of our family.

Making Room for What Is Real

I still want to celebrate the people I love.

Mental health challenges, substance use, addiction, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and anger are not the whole of who they are. I know their humor, tenderness, courage, and capacity to grow. I know the good in them.

I also cannot pretend that our history disappears during a birthday.

I can enjoy the day for a while, and then a comment, text, photograph, or memory can flood me. Suddenly, I am no longer as present as I wanted to be. My body remembers the things my mind did not know at the time.

I am beginning to accept that a celebration does not have to prove that everything is okay.

I do not have to perform the picture of a happy family. I can honor someone’s life while acknowledging that our story is complicated. I can love them and still grieve. I can appreciate the truth coming forward and still feel shaken by what that truth changes.

Perhaps birthdays and holidays will never feel the way they once did—or the way I imagined they did.

What I can do is celebrate the person in front of me, make room for whatever feelings arrive, and stop asking one day to repair an entire family history.

Do birthdays or holidays bring up complicated feelings in your family? What has helped you hold the celebration alongside everything else that is true?

Subscribe now