Inside the Mind of the Black Sheep of the Family

By Lilian Wilson

About the Book
For Lilian Wilson, life hasn’t always been peachy keen. Growing up in a neglectful and abusive household, Lilian did the best she could with what she had. Struggling also with hardships such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, she takes us on her journey from misery and pain to acceptance and thriving in this chaotic world. Join her in her book, Inside the Mind of the Black Sheep of the Family, and learn how she has overcome so many hurdles to become the woman she is today.
About the Author
Lilian Wilson is a less-than-typical American who has been trying to figure out more and more about herself every day. She currently resides in Blaine, MN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889258612

Book preview

Chapter One

The Beginning

images_79_Copy79.png They say you learn to trust your parents from an early age. From the day you are born you need your parents for everything, from feeding to learning how to move. They are the heart and soul of your survival; without them you would die pretty quick out of the womb. In addition to keeping your children alive, you need to support them too and love them. The sad truth is that some babies don’t get the support and love they need from an early age, and it affects them later in life. You see, when your baby is born their brain isn’t fully developed in more ways than one. In addition to being not being able to speak or do basically anything for themselves, they also can’t regulate emotions. So you need to be their sense of reasoning and emotions. Without the help from adults and/or parents to help regulate their emotions, they may never learn how to regulate them. Factors outside of the parents can also contribute to emotional regulation of a child; however, a parent is the main source for the first few years. Having a child is definitely something you shouldn’t do unless you are ready to handle ALL the responsibilities that children come with, physical and emotional. 

I had the unfortunate pleasure of not having people that helped me regulate my emotions much in my early years, maybe even before I was born. You see, when I was in my mom’s stomach she overdosed on cold medication and had to have her stomach pumped. She probably hindered my brain development forever. We will never know, will we? 

When I was born, I had a lazy eye. It would curve in and make it difficult it for me to look people directly in the face. They tried to correct it, once when I was three and once when I was five or six, because the first time I ended up ripping the stitches out of it. 

There was also an accident that occurred in my toddlerhood years that affected things for me too. When I was about one or two, I was walking and hit my head on a glass table, which gave me a pretty bad concussion. It affected me for a while. I regressed; I stopped talking, walking, etc. It was like I was a little ditty baby all over again. I am not sure how long it lasted. 

The lack of emotional support didn’t stop there either. In fact, it became a lot worse as I became older. The older I became, the worse my emotions were not supported. Unfortunately, both of my parents lacked empathy to help me when I was a child to help me regulate and figure out the world around me emotionally. 

My parents did the bare minimum, just to keep us alive type of thing. My mom was a heavy alcoholic, and my dad was in the military so he was always strict and the type not to show emotions very well. My parents divorced when I was pretty young, five or six. So that was hard on an already emotionally naive mind. My youngest sister, my mom, and I lived in Minnesota while my dad lived in Missouri due to the Army. It was a very rough divorce on everyone, including me. In fact, one of those court days stands out in my mind. It was in the early part of their divorce when they were fighting to see how would have custody of us. I had hurt myself at my mom’s on a private area, and then I got hurt at my dad’s around the same private spot. My dad really wanted custody of us. So he took it upon himself to take me to a doctor to have pictures of my injuries to use against of my mom. Of course, I had no idea what was happening, I just went along with it. My dad hated my mom, and my mom didn’t want to admit to the fact that it was over with him. She still loved him. Whenever they went to court it was ugly. It usually ended with my mom in tears and getting drunk. I had to have a school counselor early on because of the divorce. She helped both my mom and me through it. However, she didn’t know how my mom was at home. No one at school knew how my mom was because I was a happy and good child in school. I didn’t act out or anything. In fact, all my teachers really liked me. In the fifth grade I was assigned the task of bus patrol. I was scared to tell people what to do sometimes because I was afraid to make them mad or be mean to me. When I did tell people what to do, they ignored it usually. 

My mom got drunk a lot in those early years of my life, so I usually had to fend for myself for most things, love being one of those things. Sometimes we also had to fend for ourselves for dinner as well. She would tell us to just eat whatever we could find. Homecooked meals were not an everyday thing. We never usually sat down as a family either. We just ate alone. She usually tried to buy my love by buying me things if I wanted them. I think she wanted to make it up to me for not being there for me emotionally. 

 My dad was the sober one; however, we saw him once year, and when we saw him he was very strict and stern with us. He ran a tight ship; everything had to be nice and tidy. He never really did sit down with us and just have a conversation with us. He didn’t have empathy for any feelings we had, especially if they didn’t line up with his. He even went as far as telling me one time I wasn’t allowed to be upset that he had a new family and told me to get over it. 

The other thing my mother did regularly was gamble. She would go the casino at least a few times a year. She would lose hundreds if not thousands at a time. My sister and I would go with her and she would leave us in their daycare facility. We were there for hours, with her only sometimes checking on us from time to time. Usually until they closed, we were some of the last children there. If she won she would usually buy us something; how much she spent on us would depend on how much