I was driving home from the grocery store yesterday when Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years” came on the radio. It came out in 1985, when I was nineteen, still shaking off an awkward childhood and trying to figure out what kind of man I was going to be. Back then, I thought it was a breakup song from some red-headed English kid who had his heart crushed. Today, I know better.
The song is really about growing up in a broken home, about carrying scars from parents who couldn’t get it right. Pater is Latin for father. Mater for mother. That one line captures the pull of a strict upbringing under a dad who provided structure, and the ache of longing for a mom who wasn’t there. Mick Hucknall wrote it out of his own pain, but it speaks for anyone who has had to wrestle with the weight of family hurt while growing up.
It hit me harder today because it isn’t just my story, it’s the Shepkids’ story, too. It belongs to many of us who had a broken home. I gravitated toward my dad’s steadiness because my mom’s world was clouded by depression and alcoholism. George has already leaned that way, and I know Fritz and Hazel are walking the same road. Some of us never fully shake the tough start we were given. We carry it forward, trying not to let it strangle the rest of our years. I have been lucky to leave it in the past and now use it as a lesson in parenthood.
If you had a rough beginning, if you are still holding back tears or years, know this... you are not alone. The fact that you are still here, pushing forward means you have already beaten the odds.
Tonight, the Harvest Moon is at its peak... big, bright, impossible to ignore. Let it remind you that light still finds its way through the darkness.
