Therapist Merle Yost "Mother's Story" from Canvas Rebel
/Below is the first couple paragraph’s of an article from Merle Yost posted originally on Canvas Rebel. You can read the entirety of the article at this link.
My name is Mary Jane Yost. My legal maiden name was Weaver. My father, Merle, was a cripple. As a child, he broke his back. However, he did not allow that to be an obstacle in his getting on with his life. He became a Marshall for the State of Illinois. That is how he supported our family in the difficult years following the depression. It also gave him the opportunity to travel around the country. That is how he met my real mother.
He was married to a woman named Flava. They did not have a happy marriage, but they did not divorce because it simply was not done on that day. While traveling, he met a woman named Betty Cook. She was a rich woman, heir to the Cook Paint fortune. She was the love of his life. They spent as much time together as possible. Betty became pregnant at about the same time as Flava. For whatever reason, I suspect that when Flava’s baby died shortly after childbirth, they substituted me for her dead child. I was raised as Flava’s and Merle’s second child. I had an older brother who was really the child of my father and Flava’s sister, Jane. Jane had a wild youth and gave up her child so that he would not have the stigma of being a bastard.
We were a very poor family that did not even have indoor plumbing. Hubert, my brother, and I worked in the fields to help support the family. Neither one of us got much of an education. I had to drop out in the eighth grade, and it was not until my late twenties that I was able to get my GED. I have worked very hard to educate myself, taken many college classes, and have several certificates to my credit.
Mother (Flava) did not work. She was always too frail. She did seem to be angry all the time. My childhood was like living two separate lives. At home with Flava, it was terrible. Mostly, I tried to stay out of her way. Either she suspected I was not her daughter, or she did not like girls. For whatever reason, I felt she hated me. She loved my brother. He could do no wrong. He was lazy, arrogant, and stupid. Whenever he did something wrong, I got punished for it. Nothing I ever did was good enough or right.
You can read the entirety of the article on Canvas Rebel at this link.
