My therapist named the physical illness I’d been experiencing for so many years—all the nausea from being humiliated by kids and teachers, all the breaking out in hives all over, all the severe upper back and shoulder pain from stress from Tommy, all the dizziness and revulsion from the terror of my brother, all the psychological distress I endured which wreaked havoc on my body had a name—somatization. Having a highly respected professional name, it validated that what I was physically experiencing was real. It was suddenly all so real.
My career was everything to me, and because of my mother, my brother, and Tommy, it was nearly taken away. Honestly, it felt like they almost killed me. They came close, but they didn’t kill me, or my spirit. They didn’t permanently damage my mind or my soul. But, Lawd, they do try.
There is nothing more powerful than surviving a trip to hell and coming home covered in the light of restoration. It wasn’t an easy journey back to myself and to God, but I was back on my feet and walking forward. No one, I decided, was going to stop me or take all my power again. Ever.
In therapy, my emotions were safe to come out of the frigid hold of survival mode, and I was fucking furious. I was supporting everybody around me, and they had the audacity to throw me into institutions, give me drugs, and try to take control of my life. When I told my therapist what had happened, he assured me I was absolutely not crazy. At most, he said, I’d had a “diva fit.” It was a wonder I wasn’t permanently emotionally damaged, given what I lived through; however I will probably always struggle with PTSD. He also affirmed that I was completely justified in being enraged. He very candidly suggested I examine the role money had played in the experience with my family. I was so wrapped up in the childhood history, the betrayal, the love I had once had for everyone involved that I was blind to motive. It was no coincidence that my mother and brother were working on the side of the record company instead of protecting me and advocating for my well-being, and that they just happened to claim I was unstable and try to institutionalize me immediately after I had signed the biggest cash record deal for a solo artist in history. I could accept that I was a cash cow for record companies; after all, I was “the Franchise.” It’s the name of the game—it may be dirty, but I had no illusions that the music business was, first and foremost, a cutthroat business. But though I hadn’t cut a business deal with my mother or my siblings, they were happy to take me to the slaughter just like the record companies and the media.
I knew for a long time that to my family, I’d been an “ATM machine with a wig on” (a moniker I gave myself). I gave them so much money, especially my mother, and still it wasn’t enough. They tried to destroy me in order to take complete control. The therapist made an obvious suggestion: if they could prove I was unstable, they certainly could have believed they would become the executors of my affairs. He asked me to look at them objectively—how they viewed the world, how they never really had consistent, legitimate work but still felt like the world owed them something. We all had varying degrees of tough shit to go through in my family, but in this way, we fundamentally differed. I didn’t think the world owed me anything. I simply believed I would conquer the world I was born into, in my own way. As I worked myself to extreme exhaustion, they watched and waited for me to fall, like scavengers, so that they might gain control over the fortune I had negotiated, built, and fought for.
Years later, the pattern still continued, as patterns do. My family didn’t change. One of the definitions of insanity, it’s often said, is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. My version of insanity was allowing the same thing to be done to me, over and over, by the same people.
“Please change your cast of characters.” That was the simple and profound request my therapist eventually made. While I couldn’t change the characters of my mother, brother, and sister, I did have the power to change how I characterized them in my life. So for my sanity and peace of mind, my therapist encouraged me to literally rename and reframe my family. My mother became “Pat” to me, Morgan, “my ex-brother,” and Alison, “my ex-sister.” I had to stop expecting them to one day miraculously become the mommy, big brother, and big sister I fantasized about. I had to stop making myself available to be hurt by them. It has been helpful. I have no doubt it is emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact with my ex-brother and ex-sister. The situation with Pat, on the other hand, is more complicated. I have reserved some room in my heart and life to hold her—but with boundaries. Creating boundaries with the woman who gave birth to me is not easy; it is a work in progress.
After I was broken, I received a blessing. The trouble and trauma I endured was not only emotional, it was spiritual as well. As such, I sought healing for my soul. I knew
