After a Past Mired in Toxic Parenting, Emma Longs for Stability and Healthy Love

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez is a book that really touched me on so many levels. It deals with growing up with a broken parent, and the emotional carnage that leaves in its wake. It is about what love is, and what it isn’t. It is about accountability, building strong relationships, and the joy of raising healthy families. In the book Emma has memories about living with a foster family but her mother re-enters her life periodically, and the hurt lingers: “Unhealed trauma is a crack. And all the little hard things that trickle into it that would have rolled off someone else, settle. Then when life gets cold, that crack gets bigger, longer, deeper. It makes new breaks. You don’t know how broken she was or what she was trying to do to fill those cracks. Being broken is not an excuse for bad behavior, you still have to make good choices and do the right thing. But it can be the reason. And sometimes understanding the reason can be what helps you heal.”

We are not just a divided society, we are a disposable one, and have been that way since the ‘70s when divorce rates increased, families split, and judges picked one parent over the other. Generations of families went through the crucible of division, never knowing what responsible parenting felt like, where two people who loved each other enough to stay and do the hard work of marriage, instead of running off in search of something shinier around the next corner. Disneyland dads became a thing. The “me generation” wasn’t just a motto. Faith eroded, and  accountability vanished like early morning fog in the fields as the sun rises. Emma wasn’t even an afterthought to her mother: “I could see myself behind her in the mirror. My eyes were puffy. She didn’t even ask what was wrong. It didn’t even occur to her to see why I’d been crying. It didn’t occur to her that today was my birthday and she’d forgotten, again. But now that seemed perfectly natural. Of course she’d forgotten. Now I knew what I was worth to her. I truly, truly did. I’d been operating on the belief that I should be the most important thing in her life.”

This book speaks to the longing for stability and love, it’s benefits, and its rewards. It is about recognizing toxic parenting, it’s damaging effects, developing the maturity to spot destructive patterns in our own lives, and having the will, strength, and determination to heal before carrying personal demons from the previous generation into a new one. It is a love story worth reading and thinking about, while actually painting a picture of what healthy love looks like. Emma thinks, “I liked taking care of him and his family. I liked bringing Chelsea to school on my day off to give Justin time to go for a run and then going to Starbucks and surprising him with his favorite coffee. I liked rubbing his shoulders while he sat at his computer and hearing Sarah tell me about her day. But mostly I loved being there when he woke up. Not having to wait for a text. Seeing him the second I opened my eyes…Justin was right. Home wasn’t a place, it was a person. For me it was a whole family…If he really did want me, I would dock for a lifetime. I would do it all. I would move in here and raise these kids with him and be still and big and present. I knew how to now.”