I recently found out that when I was preschool age my mother and an aunt made a plan to remove the Barbies where they lived with all the family toys in the armoire in our living room.
My aunt came over for an afternoon with her daughter who is around my age. The adults had tea and cakes while me and cousin played gleefully for hours with the dolls. When it came time to leave the Barbies were packed away in their vinyl Barbie branded carrying case and aunty and cousin took it all home with them.
I had no memory of this day and learned about it from the very same cousin who mentioned it in a birthday text sent on my sixtieth along with a photo of the vintage vinyl Barbie carrying case still in their possession.
I realize now that I had no idea to which extent my parents were quietly trying to reprogram or deprogram me. Ironically, they thought it as tough love. In the 1960s and 1970s this was the standard for the times in a small southern Ontario town. Coming out there in 1978-79 wasn’t a walk in the park either. Plus parental guidance had greatly diminished after Mum died in 1977.
I did managed to remove myself from some of those toxic family values when I moved to Toronto just before my eighteenth birthday. Although, I was extremely naive and feral, with zero self awareness, and a level of confidence that was off the charts.
