Dear Dad,

Have you read Scattered Minds? Have you read The Primal Wound?

I can’t imagine you can say yes to these two questions and still have told your son who is failing math class that the answer is to work harder. It’s like telling a car that has run out of gas just to keep going. It’s like telling a person who is screaming in pain after being burned with hot water to just calm down.

Your son has a mind that spins because he was separated from his mother at an age that would be deemed too early for a puppy or a kitten to be taken from their mother. Your son is trying not to drown and he doesn’t even know it. He just knows he can’t focus.

And you want a passing grade in math from him.

You should have adopted a massage chair if you just wanted something that would make you feel good. Your son needs a father. He needs support, understanding, and unconditional love. He needs to learn how to negotiate being a body that was not kept by its universe. He needs survival skills that have nothing to do with grades.

He needs reasons to live.

When you are adopted, I believe, the point is not to get all A’s. The point is to learn to live in your skin and to feel home there.

You are there to help your son succeed in finding and accepting himself. Alternately, you could be there to help drive him to the cliff’s edge so he could jump.

Your son does not need to work harder. He needs to work less.

You are there to help him figure this out.

Love,

Anne