Mohini Kundu

I recently watched the movie The Sheep Detectives with my husband. It’s about a flock of sheep who help a dim-witted local policeman solve the mystery of their shepherd’s murder. Stay with me…

It was actually a joy to watch, both funny and unexpectedly tender. It introduced me to the concept of the winter lamb. Most lambs are born in the spring. Lambs born in the winter are exposed to harsh cold as newborns and rely on careful care for survival. They usually stay indoors with a human minder and rely on them for warmth and bottle feeding. While they can bond with those humans, winter lambs are naturally shunned by the flock — perhaps because they are taxing and risky to care for.

I am a winter lamb. I was born at the end of January, and I’ve long been uncertain of my place in my flock. I was born not just in winter but during a fraught time in my parents’ marriage. Things were heading south, and I was something of an unwelcome surprise in the midst of that.

I discovered this in the middle of planning my wedding. My attempts to involve both of my parents brought us all straight back to the custody battles of my youth. It had been more than a decade since they actually had to share custody, but apparently it’s something like riding a bike. Wedding events became chess pieces in a political battle, and I was just collateral damage as they hurled grenades in each other’s general direction.

In the process of all this, they confirmed something I’d long suspected, felt like a chill on my skin but never explicitly heard or uttered aloud. Somewhere deep down I believed I wasn’t truly wanted as a child, that I was unloved. My brother (who I also love dearly) was the chosen child, always celebrated and comforted first. I felt like a sore thumb around my cousins and grandmother, somehow other.

For a long time I attributed this to my own childishness and the unintentional neglect that happens when parents divorce with small children. The stress is unimaginable: parenting young children while rebuilding your entire life, fighting battle after battle that embitters you terribly to your former partner and even the person you once were.

Hearing as an adult that this was my parents’ reality when I was young, of course, I understood they were going through something monstrous. But at the same time, it felt like being stabbed. My inner child was screaming from the pain of her worst fear being realized.

It’s been a process to be able to hold those two truths at once: compassion and understanding for my parents as people (not their fault), and acknowledging that they made me feel unwanted (not my fault).

I’ve come far enough to find comfort in the idea that perhaps I’m just a winter lamb, meaning sometimes it’s just bad timing or bad luck. And at the very least I’m not alone in any of this.