02: Negotiating the Storm

Billy Mills, the American Indian activist and Olympic medalist, once said: “In America, you don’t get what is right or wrong, you get what you negotiate for.” It is a gritty, pragmatic truth. But for much of my life, I wasn’t at a negotiating table—I was in a hostage situation. When you grow up in the wreckage of Adverse Child Experiences (ACEs), you don’t learn to negotiate for the life you want; you learn to pay a ransom for your own survival.

In my family, I was branded the “peacekeeper.” It sounds noble, but in the architecture of a dysfunctional home, a peacekeeper is simply a child drafted into a war they didn’t start. I was groomed to believe I was the emotional guarantor for everyone else’s choices. The role demanded I be the “mature one,” the “example.” It was a job description that left no room for me to be unskillful, to make mistakes, or to explore my own identity. I was a finished product before I was ever allowed to be a person.

The transactions were absurdly lopsided. If my younger brother threw a kegger while our parents were away, I was held responsible for the fallout. If my mother drank herself into a blackout and called my girlfriend’s parents at 2:00 AM to scream that their daughter was a “slut,” the family didn’t address her alcoholism—the issue became my choice in partners and my “honesty” about where I was. In that world, I was paying for my mother’s sobriety and my brother’s ethics with the currency of my own life and identity.

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Carrying C-PTSD into adulthood meant entering every negotiation with a deficit. I didn’t know what I valued because I was consumed by a starving need for safety. To a traumatized brain, safety is found in belonging, and I was willing to trade everything for it. I traded marriages, relationships, and career opportunities in pursuit of a security that never arrived.

I even made trades that felt like pouring kerosene onto personal dumpster fires. For example, infidelity makes a desperate kind of emotional sense when you are starving for a sense of safety in someone’s arms—until the bill comes due and you realize you’ve traded your integrity for a temporary comfort.

It took a lifetime of loss to recognize that safety is a comfort, not a right. Life is a dizzying array of swirling storms; the best I can achieve is not a permanent harbor, but the ability to find a moment of contentment at the eye of the storm.

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Because my environment offered no guidance, I turned to books. If it weren’t for literature, I would know nothing of empathy, compassion, or the inner lives of others. But reading about a life is not the same as living it. Books gave me a map, but they couldn’t give me the “muscle memory” for vulnerability. I became an intellectual giant but an emotional novice, trying to “study” my way into a normalcy I was never allowed to practice. Because I was forced to be the “example,” I was never allowed the grace of being clumsy or unskillful.

Today, my practice has shifted. I no longer negotiate with what people say; I negotiate with what they do. I have realized, as Dr. Alexandra Solomon writes, that “impact trumps intention.” Intentions are internal, private, and unverifiable; impact is the objective reality I have to live with.

• When someone says they “value family” but embezzles from the business, the intention of “meaning well” is noise; the theft is the truth.
• When someone “values life” but votes for a sexual predator, I see the choice, not the slogan.
• When a partner says they “want a relationship” but refuses the courage of vulnerability, I recognize that there is no deal to be made.

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I am not the “peacekeeper” for people who refuse to be at peace with themselves. Am I to carry the burden of your actions because you imagine “good intentions” are enough to mitigate the impact on my life, the lives of people I care about, or my sense of self? No. Intentions are not currency; only impact is.

I know I am not entitled to the relationship I want from others, but they are not entitled to one with me. The terms of relationships are negotiated daily based on how they show up and what I am willing—or able—to offer.

Sometimes the relationship is full of unskillfulness, but if we both show up for the discomfort of the “storm” and negotiate with integrity, we can discover a moment of contentment at the eye of life’s storm. But for those who offer only shadows, pride, and the shield of good intentions under the guise of “hopes and prayers,” I have the ultimate power of any negotiator: I can walk away.

I no longer pay a ransom to belong. Today I negotiate in good faith with those who do the same.