The Things You Called Normal

You called the raised voice normal, called the tension married life. Called the careful conversations how a family survives. You called their guarded footsteps disrespect inside your home. They felt like guests instead of daughters, learned to carry that alone. You called the criticism guidance, called the pressure helping grow. Called the fear of your reaction something they should somehow know. You called forbidden subjects boundaries, called the silence keeping peace. But peace that needs a frightened room is only conflict on a leash. When the same storm fills the hallway, repetition leaves a track. What returns again is not made healthy by coming back. We did not live inside the normal. We adapted to the harm. Familiar is not faithful. Repeated is not calm. The things you called normal Were the things we survived. The silence, the pressure, The truth kept outside. The things you called normal Left their mark on us all. Familiar does not mean healthy. Repeated does not mean small. You called the public version honest because nobody saw within. Called yourself the wounded party every time the cycle spun again. Called each man the final problem, kept yourself outside the frame. Different marriage, same conclusion, different face receiving blame. Proverbs does not call it wisdom when all kindness disappears. A woman guards her household; she does not govern it through fear. Doing good and not harm is measured where the family lives. Not the image shown on Sunday, but the daily fruit it gives. I called endurance faithfulness. I called staying being strong. I kept working, kept providing, while I failed to name the wrong. That blindness is my burden. I will carry what it cost. But owning what I did not see will not make your record lost. Rage was normal. Silence was normal. Fear was normal. Walking small was normal. Children carrying adults— You called that normal too. But normal was the word That kept the truth from reaching you. The things you called normal Were the things we survived. The silence, the pressure, The truth kept outside. The things you called normal Left their mark on us all. Familiar does not mean healthy. Repeated does not mean small. Father, break the patterns We inherited and learned. Teach my daughters familiarity Does not mean they must return. Show us peace without the silence. Show us love that welcomes truth. Let the things we once called normal End before they carry through. Where I failed to guard their childhood, Make me honest, make me hear. What is holy does not need A family trained to live in fear. It happened often. That did not make it right. It lasted seventeen years. That did not make it life. You can keep calling it normal. We finally know the truth: We were not living in the pattern. We were surviving you.