The speech
There will be a celebration for my dad's 70th birthday while we're there. It’s a massive event—hundreds of people are invited, with a detailed program and a host to navigate the dinner through games, entertainment, and speeches. I was assigned to give a speech as his daughter. "Here, this is your script for the speech," my parents told me. They had written the entire thing. I am just supposed to walk onto the stage and read it out loud. "How can they do this?!" my husband reacted. "They truly control everything they can, and they never give you a chance to be yourself, do they? A 41-year-old woman isn't even given the chance to write her own speech..." Even after 17 years together, my husband is still in fundamental shock every single time things like this happen. But it’s true. This is the authoritarian relationship my parents and I have. Or, perhaps I should say, the authoritarian relationship they have enforced upon me. Family dynam...