Deal With Your Baggage, Before it Deals With You!

Hockey was something I just did because I had to as a kid. My dad got me on blades before I could walk, I heard about it all the time too. I remember skating on ponds, traveling over 40 minutes to and from practice several times a week and spending most of my evenings in the car with my dad. It was also one of the only things we did together (besides me working for him from the age of 8 and on). This was the one thing we did together that would bring us closer, so I was happy to do it.

I have to admit, it was the only time we didn't argue, the one place that our conversations had a common theme and the only time I didn't feel like a bother. It was the one common place we could head to and get on the ice together and escape any reality of the life we were both trapped in.

My dad valued hockey so much, he sent me to hockey camp after hockey camp from seventh grade on. I went to New York State Amateur Hockey Association and CAN/AM Hockey camps among other local camps. I also went to open skate every Friday night and continued to develop my skills. As my skills improved, I joined the school team and my father became the head coach. He was well respected in the community and in the hockey family.

I can, however, recall the day I quit. It wasn't too long after my return from Canada and the best summer; filled with one hockey camp after another and being showcased at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. Like I said, it was the best summer EVER, but I knew something wasn't right at home. I was in contact with family while I was in Canada and I had heard my mom was staying at my grandparents house to take care of their animals while they were in Italy and my dad was staying in the basement. Who does that? My instinct was that something was going on. No one was willing to share any information.

So I got on the plane to return home from hockey camp and met my dad at the airport. I got in the car and he started to share with me that he was living in the basement. It took me weeks if not months to get the whole story from my mom and dad. I remember my mom getting so frustrated with me about letting my dad into the house when she wasn't there to do his laundry. All I could do was get angry with her. In her eye's she was trying to protect and shelter me from the true because she knew it would BREAK ME.

Weeks went by and my mom told me I had to have a talk with my dad. He pulled me in my bedroom and the story goes something like this, "I met a woman and I am in love with her." We went back and forth in conversation. I asked, "How long ago" He responded, "about two years ago" and at that moment... my heart stopped, the tears flew down my face and my thoughts raced through my head. He proceeded to say that we are "still going to be buddies". I just sat on my bed, staring out the window as the tears continued to build up and roll down my face.

I was so disappointed, angry and resentful. It took me weeks to process the information, but then I started to go on my investigative quest to figure out the timeline, I become paranoid about my dad just showing up at the house, I got angry about what he did and how he treated my mom and I got revengeful. So much is left out of the story, but my dad went from being someone I so desperately wanted a relationship with to someone I couldn't bare to look at. I found myself developing some obsessive door locking behaviors and researching phone logs and piecing things together. It got to the point of needing interventions and assistance from specialist.

Before I knew it, I discovered my father was meeting his girlfriend every Friday night while I was at open skate, right around the time he stopped skating with me, but continuing to still bring me EVERY Friday night. I never actually understood why he was taking me if he wasn't actually skating with me. He wasn't that 'type' of parent. Looking back, now I get it and once I figured it all out I got even more angry, more resentful. When someone with so much optimism and love for the world is confronted with such betrayal and hatred... you have the possibility of losing yourself.

I lost myself (for a while).

When I was left with the hard fact that my dad was using me as a pawn to cheat on my mother, I made him resign from coaching hockey. It didn't take long for the rumor mills to start and I couldn't even walk into the hair salon without hearing about my fathers scandal. People no longer wanted to do business with him and I no longer wanted to go out in public anymore, let alone play hockey.

I decided half way through my junior year that I wasn't going to play anymore and I quit, but I tried finding a girls team where my past wouldn't follow me. I found a team for a short period of time and I played with them from time to time. It just got increasingly worse as I went off to college. I became depressed, severely overweight, still angry and now I had bills to pay. In the mists of all this, my little sister suffered tremendously, my mom struggled to stay strong and my other sister was living her best college life!

My relationship with my father got worse. I quickly found myself giving up on my college goals of playing hockey, I stopped playing all together. I started working full time, got my own apartment off campus, paid most of my own bills (thanks mom for always coming through with my child support check to help me). Then when I thought it couldn't get any worse... I went off to work one day and my father had my car to help me get the registration fixed (the same one he gave me for my 16th birthday) I was 18, a freshman in college, working and commuting every day to make money. He brought me back to his house after my shift and to my surprise my car was sitting in his driveway without the plates.

Well, this was a slap in the face! I turn to him and ask what happened. The back story on this was simple... my parents were divorced. The registration was in his name, the insurance in her name and now it all had to go in his name, incase I was in an accident. I was only 18 and my mom didn't want me to be burdened with a high insurance bill and they agreed to help me. But during that day between picking up my keys to get it insured under his name and celebrating my birthday with me... he decided I was a liability and he took my plates in to the DMV instead (his words not mine). A carless, 18 year old young adult, working everyday to may 90% of her own bills on her birthday weekend with her father. If you can imagine the panic that came to mind on that day. The actual tears that flow from my face as I write this (18 years later). This kind of pain doesn't go away, it becomes bearable... but it still stings when I think about the person he had become.

I lost my damn mind, struck with panic followed up with an asthma attack and no inhaler to help me (cause it was in my car and the keys were being dangled in front of me... by his girlfriend, you know the one he cheated on my mom with). All I could think about was how horrible life was.

My aunt came to my rescue, the state police came to assist me in getting my property from the car. I grabbed my personal belongings and my hockey gear and my aunt took me to my grandparents house, where I would stay for a bit while we figured out the car situation.

It was the beginning of the end for our relationship and the start of my hatred for hockey. I grabbed my equipment out and never put it back on...

That is until my 30's when a friend called me up and saw that I was struggling with life. I skipped over 14 years... Mom got a new car, older sister got her old car, I got my sisters car and then a year later I traded it in for a new one, my first big expense and the start of my financial issues.

Back to the hockey... My friend said, "Tina, I know you used to play and I want you to come with me, I think it would be good". It was also during a pretty difficult year for me and doing something productive about it would be good! I lost 116 pounds, I just recovered from a lower body lift and I was trying to move past my own relationship issues and live life for ONCE on my OWN!

Oddly enough.. I never got rid of my equipment. I moved from apartment to apartment and it just traveled with me. When I moved into my house at 24 I just continued to move it around in my basement and in my early 20's I even tried to coach for a little while, but discovered I was pregnant. Deep down, there was a love for hockey, so pure... but I internalized that pain and relinquished it all to hockey! Hockey was the cause of it!

I knew to move on, this equipment would need to be worn again. I dusted off my equipment and moved it into the basement by my washer. I cleaned it, let it dry and returned it to the bag. I got all ready and brought it up to the living room a few days prior to the practice.

I remember being nervous, I remember meeting all these women that evening and really connecting with a few. I was welcomed and asked to come back. Before the end of the night I promised to be back. I went home and figured out how I was going to budget this one!

Here I was, single mom, recently out of a relationship and being asked to join a women's team. BTW's they asked me to go to a tournament as well in the upcoming weeks. I got on the phone with my mom and she was excited and offered to watch Gia for the weekend. I remember thinking about how this all unfolded and I spent some time crying about it.

I always thought I hated hockey and it was just something my dad did with me so I could be close to him, but here I was carrying around a bag for 14+ years, place to place and refusing to throw any of it out. Talk about baggage!

I was in my early thirties and realized I had not yet fully healed from all the hurt, anger and untrustworthy behavior. It wasn't until that tournament that I realized what I missed out on in college, what I gave up on in high school and how much I had cut my own happiness out of my life. For what? To spite my father, to take away from him? Come on girl, he wasn't even worried about me. He was clearly focused on himself.

So what's the take away from this story? If you are carrying around baggage it's there for a reason. Deal with it, before It deals with you. Once I got my life back on track and I became a healthier person, hockey came back into my life. It's now become the center of my wellness and the connections, relationship and comradery in the locker-room has become a motivative think tank for all the creativity in my life. These women are family, they are amazing fighters and many of them also have stories to share as well!

Deal with your baggage, before it deals with you!

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