The Magnolia Journal – July 2019

83 MAGNOLIA JOURNAL fall 2019

— LATASHA PATRICK —

“You never know what fears have crept into

our hearts or what doubts have taken root. So we

refuse to ignore the past or avoid potential

pain. We step bravely into it.”

I come from women who leave their children. My mom left me.
Her mom left her. And her mom left her. It’s complicated, it’s
harsh, but it’s the truth of how my family has ended up with a lot
of daughters living without their mamas in their houses. Single
parents and broken-up marriages and short relationships were
the norm. I didn’t know any different, so I was never mad or
bitter about it. I still had a relationship with my mom. I was still
loved, and I still got to love her. Even though she wasn’t in my
house, we were close. We still are.
I reversed the “moms who leave” trend: I took my daughter
with me, and we left her daddy. Her dad and I actually ended
our relationship before I found out I was pregnant. I knew I
didn’t want to marry him, even though he offered. So with my
background and the life experiences I’d had up to that point, I
did what I thought was best for my baby girl. Even when that
meant physically separating our family. All because I truly
believed that Maya and her daddy could still be close, just like
I was with my own mom. They’d have summer visits, daily
phone calls, and reunite for big life moments. I believed it was
the best way to move forward. So we took off.
About 10 years later, a series of things happened that threw
me. I was in a class on healing and forgiveness. Not your
average weeknight activity, but I agreed to go because I was
feeling stuck that year and couldn’t put a finger on why. I’m a
decently self-aware person, but you never know what you don’t
know, so I went. The teacher talked a lot about the importance
of actively engaging the basic forgiveness cycle: forgive
yourself, forgive God, and forgive your parents. The first two?
Fine, I was willing. But forgive your parents—no, ma’am.
What was there to forgive? I firmly believed that I had a great
childhood, that I had lived with no needs unmet, and with two
parents who loved me very much. I wasn’t interested in looking
in the rearview mirror. But, weeks later, I still couldn’t shake
what she had said. And I’ve found that when you get offended
by something, it’s because you probably need to dig into it. I
decided to get a second opinion from a friend—you know,

the kind who will agree with you. That didn’t happen. Instead,

she said that she thought I had been abandoned. My offense

antenna was on high alert at this point. So I got a third opinion.

“LaTasha, you were abandoned.” A fourth opinion: the same

response, verbatim. It was as if my friends had all consulted

with each other and left me in the dust of those ugly words I

didn’t want to believe.

A few weeks later, I was sitting on my neighbor’s porch.

Maya was across the country spending time with her dad, so I

was enjoying a sweet break from single mamahood and telling

my neighbor how some friends were saying these extreme

things about me being abandoned. Then my phone rang. It was

Maya’s dad, all riled up, telling me how dramatic she was being

after he’d scolded her for acting out of line. He told me she had

the nerve to say that he was the one who was out of line and

needed to apologize—that he was the one who had abandoned

her all those years ago. Excuse me? Could you repeat that?

This is when you face it. This is when you know God is set

on getting your attention and no matter how much you want

to put a few blinders up and move forward, there’s work to do.

“We need to apologize to her right now.” In that moment,

it became crystal clear that the women I came from had all

broken a sacred covenant—and that I had too. All three of

us huddled around our phones, and right then and there we

asked Maya to forgive us. We said we didn’t want this pattern of

broken-up families to continue. We blessed her future, that she

go on to have a husband and children, if that’s what she wants.

Every year, we renew that promise as a family. We ask for

Maya’s forgiveness and we bless her. Some people ask why we

keep doing it year after year, but I’ll tell you what, it’s a level-

set for all of us. You never know what fears have crept into our

hearts or what doubts have taken root. So we refuse to ignore

the past or avoid potential pain. We step bravely into it. Because

we have set ourselves in a new trajectory: to look the hard stuff

in the face, to apologize with every bit of our hearts, and to let

a new covenant take its place.