What a penny can reveal
and how much that revelation can cost: a vignette of family dysfunction
Growing up, my father had nicknames for myself and my siblings. Mine was Jenny Penny. I hated it. I always hated it. I always made it clear that I hated it. My feelings on the matter never mattered.
Seems silly and trifling, doesn’t it? To have been, and still be, upset over a nickname?
But the fact is, it is far from trifling. The names and references we have for others, and, more importantly, how we respond to their receiving of those names, is how we convey how we really think and feel about them. And it can be a big component of how relational dynamics form and are sustained.
That was, in fact, my experience with my parents and siblings throughout my life. However they cared to treat me, whatever they cared to call me, whatever stories they cared to tell and retell over and over and over, it never mattered one iota what I thought or how I felt about it. My opinions and feelings had no value. They were worthless or next to worthless — much like the penny my assigned nickname conveyed.
It is not a far leap for a young child to come to the conclusion that if what they think and feel is worthless — especially as modeled by the family who are supposed to love them the most and who are their constant companions in their formative years — that they themselves are in fact worthless.
As Gordon Flett conveys in his book, , “The sense of not mattering is often equated with a feeling of being invisible to other people. People need to be seen and heard and have people respond to them.”
When a child is young, that feeling of being invisible and of not mattering becomes the foundation of their sense of self.
A nickname, any nickname, that is bestowed by others and then maintained despite the consistent objections and clear harm being done to the recipient by doing so is a form of abuse. Whether that is a derogatory label at the individual level, such as an unwanted nickname, or at the cultural level — as in a racial, ethnic or gender slur — the effect is the same. It is a form of verbal and emotional abuse.
Importantly, it is never something that is executed in isolation — but is a component of a much wider and pervasive pattern of relational problems. Consider this a glaring red flag for family dysfunction: the insistent and unrelenting use of an obviously hurtful nickname regardless of the pained reactions and objections of the person so named — no matter how seemingly innocuous the nickname might be.
As Peg Streep shares in heron this subject, “Verbally abusive behavior is an active choice, and it is highly motivated. Verbal abuse is sustained and, in its own way, consistent.”
Much later, after I had graduated college and was living on my own in Chicago, my brother determined he would give me the unasked for “gift” of a new nickname, “Tiger Jen.” It was delivered in the same manner as has been executed by my family over anything I ever expressed hurt or displeasure — in mockery.
I was presented a framed certificate announcing the retirement of the old nickname and the installation of the new — one that, again, I had no say in but was nonetheless definitively pronounced as the replacement. The act of creating and framing the certificate required a substantial amount of deliberate forethought and planning and was delivered with a typical smirk and smug, self satisfied chuckle.
Mockery is a form of contempt and disdain veiled behind a cutting form of humor. Everyone laughs and finds the quip or the comment funny, but the target finds themselves bleeding and is left to tend to their wounds on their own.
Mockery as rare, isolated incidents is one thing, and bad enough as it is. Sustained mockery is a pattern of destructively abusive behavior. When done within a family system, it is a reflection of the emotional immaturity of the parents and their inability to create and sustain healthy communication and interaction within and among its members.
Ongoing emotional abuse at the hands — and mouths — of a dysfunctional family where you are the scapegoat is a daily experience of interacting with people who are always wielding razor blades. It is an experience of receiving cut after cut — so routine and so expected you don’t recognize you are being cut — until one day you realize all the places you have received them and that they are all still actively bleeding.
Nonetheless, I hung the framed certificate in my apartment because at the very least, it demonstrated what I had long suspected: my family had always known exactly what they were doing when they maintained using a nickname that I hated and found incredibly hurtful — along with all of their other hurtful behaviors similarly known to be hurtful and similarly maintained. Because again, this type of abusive behavior is never in isolation.
The levels of contempt and disdain for the scapegoat by a dysfunctional family reveal themselves in glimpses and fragments over the course of decades. It’s like a gigantic and intricate jigsaw puzzle of never ending pieces that are only received one at a time and never in adjacent order to the previous so it takes an inordinately long time to be able to visualize the pattern or image that slowly and painfully emerges.
Contempt, it is worth noting, is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse identified by the as a predictor of eventual relational collapse.
The weaponization of the dreaded nickname — and it’s unasked for replacement — was invoked again many, many years later by my father in a further revealing, deliberate and decisive act of verbal and emotional abuse.
During a visit with my sister, who lived close by while they lived out of state, my father sent me a card so as to bear a local postmark. In the card, he recounted all the things he and my mother had been doing with my siblings and their families on their visit and then added, “Sorry we couldn’t get together, but then you probably did not want to see this toxic old man who never loved you. Truth is, I really, really always loved Jenny Penny, but this Tiger Jen is an unfathomable bitch. Just don’t understand her.”
I had been unaware of their visit to the area until the receipt of the card.
The reason for the friction for not being in contact with each other: I had asked my mother to take accountability for specific hurtful words spoken and for them both to change harmful behaviors. Something I had been asking of them for many years — perhaps decades, but with this specific exchange, the request was much more direct. They refused in escalatingly abusive fashion and estrangement ensued.
The culminating exchange that started the estrangement came as a result of one-sided reconciliation attempt (mine) with my mother to resolve the latest activation of her preferred method of manipulative and punitive control — silent treatment. She had been upset that I raised my voice to her when she refused to back off of a topic I clearly and repeatedly expressed I didn’t want to talk about and so hung up on me. Her silent treatment then began — again.
In her grudging response to a very generously extended olive branch, she told me that we could start over as long as I understood that she would “never listen to anything I have ever said, or ever will say.”
I’m sorry, what was that?
My shocked reaction took a few days to process but then I responded that no, that was not acceptable and I would no longer be in relationship with her — or anyone — under those parameters.
Rather than take the opportunity to reset our relationship in a positive way that promised to be mutually respectful, she instead uttered the quiet part out loud of what the dysfunctional family dynamic had always been and attempted to openly formalize it.
From the point of that exchange to the receipt of the card (and beyond), there were rounds upon rounds of email exchanges between myself and my father (my mother reverting to her trusty silent treatment but reading and involving herself all the exchanges in the background) with successive denials, recurring bouts of spontaneous amnesia, bullying and guilt tripping (among other emotionally abusive tactics) to try to browbeat me into dropping the demand for acknowledgement and retraction and to re-engage with them and the family sans any resolution.
To never have been listened to and to renew relationship with them fully knowing that I should never expect to be.
So the comments conveyed in his card made perfect sense and were revelatory of the family dynamic that he and my mother had established.
Of course “Jenny Penny” was loved by him and the rest of the family. That was the people pleasing, emotionally neglected, abused and continually beaten down young girl who tried desperately and unsuccessfully to prove to them and everyone else that she was worth more than a penny. That she mattered.
The other, older “Jen” (no nickname necessary) no longer allows herself to be stepped on and tossed away like so much garbage. The other “Jen” holds up a mirror they can’t bear to look into on the systemic family dysfunction they perpetrated and the harm that was inflicted.
Naturally, he “just doesn’t understand” the person who would dare to call him and the family out on their behavior. It is a convenient deflection and blame shift that is typical of emotionally immature parents.
So, did I go no contact with my parents and family for the trivial and frivolous reason of having been called “Jenny Penny” — a nickname it was known that I abhorred?
No. I went no contact because they consistently and unrepentantly treated me like I was as worthless as a penny — and refused any entreaties to stop — whether those entreaties were direct, indirect or otherwise. Not only refused, but escalated emotionally abusive behaviors and vindictive retaliations for the crime of asking to be respected and treated with some measure of worth.
As is the case with dysfunctional families, the vignette illustrated here is not just a handful of isolated and superficially minor incidents. Rather, the nickname and the specific events detailed are mere reflections on just a few of the totality of pennies they carelessly — and oftentimes callously — tossed into the fountain that contains the permeative experience of the family system in which I was the deliberate target of ongoing emotional harm.
The cost of their abusive behaviors and escalations is something for which we all now pay — the breakdown of the family.
The cost to them is the unchanged and unacknowledged dysfunctional relational dynamics that will continue to be perpetuated if not realized and addressed. The manifesting cost is that I and my family are no longer in their lives.
The cost to me is the lifelong journey of healing and deconstruction from the worthlessness I was raised to believe I held.
After much, and largely self-directed work, I am well along on my journey. I fear there will be no change to theirs.
[This essay is in observance of November as Family Estrangement Awareness Month. The observance is an opportunity to draw forth productive conversations and reflections on the real life experiences of those that have had to make the heartbreaking decision to estrange themselves from their families of origin. More information on the origination of Family Estrangement Awareness Month can be found .]
