When I was 10, my mom would braid my hair every morning\u2014but only on days when Dad was home. I used to ask her why she skipped the other days. She would smile and say, \u201cIt\u2019s better this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
18 years later, my mom di.ed. My dad came and revealed that he had struggled for years with severe OCD. He used to insist everything be done a specific way\u2014right down to how his wife and children looked.<\/p>\n
He often traveled for work, and I remembered how much more relaxed and comfortable my mom seemed whenever he was gone. He told me he\u2019d started treatment while I was still young, and that it had helped him gain some control over his compulsions.<\/p>\n
I still can\u2019t believe. I realized that my mother had been shielding me from a reality she never wanted me to carry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was 10, my mom would braid my hair every morning\u2014but only on days when Dad was home. I used to ask her why she skipped the other days. She would smile and say, \u201cIt\u2019s better this way.\u201d 18 years later, my mom di.ed. My dad came and revealed that he had struggled for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4100,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions\/4100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}