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Priest's daughter questions Orthodox family ideal after traumatic upbringing
I'm drawn to many things in Orthodoxy and would like to keep it in my life and raise a family within it, though differently. I believe in God, but the traditions, the lifestyle, and some priests' views are sometimes hard for me to handle.
The problem is I carry a lot of trauma from my upbringing, and it's difficult to reconcile certain things. My father has been a priest for over thirty years, respected, serving in several churches and having built several. My mother is held up as an example for Orthodox women: nine children, never worked outside the home, devoted her life to them, helped extensively at church, now sings in the choir.
I grew up inside this family and know it from within. Converts who come as adults probably have a different experience because they lack this background. I'm not just from an Orthodox family; I'm from a family presented as a model of Orthodoxy.
We grew up in a village. Seven of the nine children never attended kindergarten. We observed all the fasts, including Wednesdays and Fridays, and even the little ones didn't eat dairy. If we ate or drank anything before communion, we didn't receive.
We prayed for twenty-five minutes every morning and night, often not starting the evening prayers until ten or eleven. We attended church every Sunday, often Saturdays too, and on feast days. I sang in the choir, my brothers served at the altar.
I'm the third child and the first girl. Whenever my mother was in the maternity ward, I stayed home in charge: putting the kids to bed, checking homework, cooking. I cried and called her because it was so hard. My father lacked patience with the children and was often absent. He drove us to the metro for school, but I don't recall him spending time with us or talking to me. He never asked how I was, didn't even know what grade I was in.
We were punished frequently. We were struck on the buttocks with hands and a belt, hard enough to leave bruises. We could also be hit on the back, shoved, sometimes slapped in the face in anger, with clothing, with a stick. Once my little brother misbehaved and my mother sat on him and stuffed a rag in his mouth to quiet him.
My father would splash us with cold water in the bathroom when we cried. We were made to kneel on buckwheat and stand in corners. The last severe punishment I received was around age thirteen; I had stripes of bruises because I hadn't picked up the little ones' toys, though no one had told me to. There's much more.
My mother can be verbally harsh. She would say things like "dirty pig," "what a lazy breed," "didn't you already get the belt this morning? Do you want it?", "get out, I don't want to see you," "go ahead and cry, I'm hurt too," "I didn't think you were this brainless." She never apologized afterward. My parents never apologized for their behavior, ever.
They never said they loved us, weren't particularly warm, and my father often spoke to us in a distant, strict manner.
I understand my mother runs out of patience, but she doesn't hide that she considers this normal. She says: "If a child doesn't know how to behave, he needs to be whipped, and harder. The earlier you start the better, after six it's too late." I have no words. She also often said we'd drive her to an early grave, that she'd die young because of us, that she has no free time and can't do anything for herself.
At seventeen I moved abroad and lived alone for almost four years. Now circumstances have brought me back to live with them for a year. Because of the war they moved to Europe, and they treat the younger children better now, but I still hear name-calling and they still sometimes smack a child. Yesterday my mother hit my eight-year-old brother hard on the neck and called him a ram several times because he forgot his jacket.
I'm twenty-two, my older brothers are twenty-four and twenty-six.
Main points
- Whether rejecting the family model means she's stubborn or normal
- Whether the abusive upbringing represents the ideal Orthodox family
- Why having many children is seen as more pious than fewer raised with love
- How to reconcile Orthodox teachings on discipline, gender roles, family size with her trauma
- Difficulty relating to Orthodox men who expect traditional roles