About 8 years ago I was chatting with someone I knew from work and my wider church community. We had a bit in common – we were both social workers in the child and family services field in one way or another, in two different regions. We were talking generally about issues young people face in the world with the surge of social media. My friend, who had three children under the age of 7 at the time, stated in a very matter-of-fact tone:

“As long as parents create a safe space for their children to talk, your child will never keep anything from you. It is parents who don’t create safe spaces who have children who lie and keep secrets.”

I wanted to punch them in the face.

By the time I was speaking to this person, my daughter had been cutting herself for two years. Funny thing, though – I didn’t find out because she told me. I found out from a close friend who had heard it from her own daughter. A secret and a lie. Hmmm. I guess I was one of those parents who didn’t create a safe space for my children. Bullcrap.

The creation of a ‘safe space’ in our home and family was textbook. We did not overreact (well, we tried not to) when they made mistakes, we tried hard not to over-discipline or consequence. We prayed together. We did devotionals together. We preferred to use logical consequences over corporal punishment…… we had family meetings, we encouraged open communication. We embedded a family culture. We said sorry to our children when we made mistakes. Robyn and I even had a journal that would go back and forth between us. Lots of it was funny, cute things but it was also used for her to talk about things she didn’t feel able to speak to us about. We weren’t perfect, but we gave it a good try. The space was so safe, it was like falling 30 stories into a puff of fluffy clouds.

There was one problem. It wasn’t her space. It was a safe space, but it wasn’t her brave space.

I had been exposed to self-harm. I paid my way through university as an after-hours duty worker, driving teenage girls to the hospital after swallowing pins, crushed lightbulbs ….. a bottle of Tylenol. Their forearms looked like checkerboards – some scars had healed while others were clearly fresh. I thought I knew about self-harm. It took another ten years for me to realize that all I knew about self-harm was that I didn’t know a darn thing. My exposure to self-harm as a university student crystalized certain stereotypes and scenarios by which something like that would exist. To me, self-harm was straightforward – it was people, mainly teenagers….mainly teenage girls, who would hurt themselves but cutting themselves or eating things that would cut their insides. Taking too many pills was a failed overdose. Overeating, abusing alcohol or other substances were not self-harm in my book – they didn’t even equate. No. No. Self-harm was cutting. Furthermore, those people were ones who had horrific pasts – they had endured abuse or neglect. They were in fostercare for pete’s sake. That was self-harm and those were the types of people who used it as a cry for help.

Not my daughter. Not my child. Why would my child want or feel the need to do something like that? She didn’t have that upbringing. She didn’t have those experiences. Why? Why? Why are you destroying your beautiful skin? Why are you hurting yourself? Stop it. Just stop it. I’ll put up a sticker chart – you can get a reward at the end of the month. Here, have some ice, squeeze on that……… what are you doing? Why are you doing it? You can talk to me about it. We can use a code word. You can call me anytime – I’ll drop whatever I’m doing, no matter what. Stop. Just stop.

What do the books say about it? What does Google say? What do the prominent Christian leaders say? Don’t give it attention but take care of the wounds. Provide other, less invasive forms of self-harm (ice, a hair band), hide anything sharp in the house (until they start taking apart their own pencil sharpener). Get her into therapy, counselling. Get her a mentor. It is addictive. Tell her that.

It was exhausting. The sleepless nights were endless. I would sometimes do checks on her when she was asleep, comparing scars to see how old they were. Sometimes I would trick myself into thinking newer ones were just older ones. I did that a lot. I would kiss her scars – a mother’s love is pretty powerful (I still kiss them). I pray for them to disappear. I’m not sure why I do that – maybe it’s because 8 years ago I got a distorted message that I’m a crappy parent. Maybe I still want to punch that person in the face.

I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t a tap you could just turn off. I couldn’t comprehend why a person would not just pour out their guts and deal with whatever their issue was so the hurt would stop and they didn’t have to cry for help anymore. I had created a safe space – what was the problem?

Some things are still taboo. Mental health is one of them. Cutting is a big one. Feeling depressed, overwhelmed, abandoned and alone are all there as well. Pile on the optics – being raised in a Christian home, an active part of the youth group and have parents who are well known in the Church. Safe spaces do not exist for a person with this lived experience. The only spaces that exist are brave spaces.

The notion of brave spaces came to me only recently by a colleague of mine. She is a wonderful, courageous Indigenous woman who speaks out about the injustices of racism and discrimination. She explained to me that for her, there are no safe spaces, just brave spaces. This means that she decides when and where she puts herself out there; when she takes that step of bravery and becomes her most vulnerable – sharing her experiences growing up as an Indigenous girl. She has found that the times when she was encouraged to share in a ‘safe space’ but didn’t feel right about doing so ended up being a bad experience. It was those times when she chose to be brave, when everything felt right and she was ready, that the experience was healing and positive.

As hard as I worked to create a safe space for my daughter, it was always going to stay empty until she felt ready. Until she felt able to step out and speak out on issues that are still left in dark corners and hidden under carpets. As hard as I toiled to ‘make it better’, any safe space I created dried up. Her pain is her pain; her reality is her reality. And I’ve had to realize, although painfully, that I can’t take away her pain. I can’t take it away by hovering over her, hiding all the sharps in the house, controlling her environment to make it as less stressful as possible, taking away her phone, turning off the internet. That did nothing but drive her away and send her the message that all she needed to do was snap out of it. I can’t make her stop cutting by ostracizing people who I believed had children who may have hurt my daughter or caused her distress; or people who I had expected to be positive role models in her life but did not live up to my ridiculous ideas. All that created was her feeling she needed to lie to me and tell me she ‘wasn’t doing that anymore’. The one who needed care was now having to take care of me.

No. The only way that a brave space was going to be created was for me to start letting go. Letting go and putting my trust in the Almighty. The One who made her, planned her. The One who had her first – the One who gets to claim her before me. (I will talk about God ALOT in these posts. You have been warned)! That was a 10 year process, and I’m not totally there yet. But we’re getting there.