“Ender Wiggin must believe that no matter what happens, no adult will ever, ever step in to help him in any way. He must believe, to the core of his soul, that he can only do what he and the other children work out for themselves. If he does not believe that, then he will never reach the peak of his abilities.”
– Colonel Graff, Ender’s Game

This will probably be a difficult post for my parents to read, since I know they read this. But I’m going to write it anyway, because it has a happy ending, and because writing is how I process things.

Today I was reading this article on student resiliency in college and how a society of helicopter parenting has hindered the ability of young adults to figure out their own problems. I agree with it. Entirely.

I may not have agreed when I was in high school or early college. My parents sort of checked out of their parenting around the time I was thirteen. I’ve read Ender’s Game obsessively since then because it’s not only the best book ever but also because I felt like I connected with Ender. There was more than one instance where I came home crying because something had gone terribly wrong with my friends, my boyfriend, school, whatever. I wanted my parents to fix it. I wanted someone to tell me it was okay. I wanted to be coddled and have someone else make the problem go away.

But the response, in my case, was generally that it was my fault. I was to blame. There was no support system. There was no reassurance that I was a great person who didn’t deserve something like that. There was usually only reinforcement of the shame that I already felt. If I was going to get out of the mess, I was going to have to do it myself.

I was Ender. No adult was going to help me. If my own issues were going to be solved, they weren’t going to be solved by a parent, or a teacher, or a counselor. They were going to have to be solved by me.

And I’m so much better for it now.

Sure, if you go back two posts you’ll realize that it also screwed me up for a while. But I was forced to take my own life – issues and happiness, failures and accomplishments – into my own hands.

My life is mine and I don’t need someone to force feed me life lessons to understand what I want or what I should be doing. I don’t need someone watching over me to cushion a fall. I don’t need to succeed every time. I don’t need to grasp the meaning of something the first time around.

If you don’t fail on your own, with no one around to help pick you up, how will you ever learn that you can pick yourself up? It’s not an easy lesson, but it’s one that every person needs to learn. Has to learn.

You will be criticized. You will fail. You will try your best at something and have it come out looking like a 6 year old did it. You will make mistakes. You will choose incorrectly. You will hurt someone, and you will hurt yourself.

But if you always let someone else solve those problems, if you always put the blame on someone other than yourself, if you always reach for an external solution instead of an internal one, you’ll never get past it.

So yes, I’m happy I was alone. I was so mad at my parents for so long for not seeing me for me that I didn’t realize that part of what they had done was made me into me. Sure, it wasn’t intentional on their part, but regardless of how I turned into the strong, independent, creative, and unique woman I am today, I owe a lot of it to them.

Don’t hold someone so close that you don’t let them find trouble. And once they find it, you need to let them find their own way out of it sometimes. Every time they struggle for something and win it reinforces that they’ll be able to do it next time. And within every struggle, they’ll uncover a little piece of themselves, which is something that they’ll never forget.