Parents have their own stories

 

 

   Parents are just people with imperfect childhoods.

   I’ve seen parents being dissected in therapy so many times. We try to understand the roots of our own unhealthy behavior so we return to the environment that shaped us. We usually find there 2 people who did a lot of mistakes through their behavior or their absence. While this is an important step in the healing journey, I think there are many benefits in seeing parents as they truly are: imperfect people.

   While looking at trauma is natural to explore the nature and source of that said trauma. Often, it’s the parents. Their lack of love, nurture, care and even abuse. Yet this goes further back, it stems from their own history.  Not being able to see this brings us a lot of suffering, anger, guilt.

   It’s such a huge relief to understand that they do have a history that shaped them. It’s that understanding that releases a lot of guilt that any child carries of being unworthy of the love of their parents. Try to see them as the result of their history and environment, with compassion and empathy or at least a bit of curiosity if this feels right to you.

   Take a few moments to look at each one of your parents from the perspective of a person that is not related to them. See them with their story, the events that you are familiar with and the ones that you can imagine that they experienced.  Imagine your parents as little children. Is there any way that they could have had a blissful, carefree life? Imagine their environment, their own parents, the struggles they had to face, the trauma that you know or imagine that they could have endured. Isn’t it a lot?

   The Dalai Lama said that love is the absence of judgement. I saw in my sessions love and judgement coexist so many times. It was obviously such a tormenting polarity. Anger and judgement close our heart. These inner children that are so deeply hurt by their parents also long for their love. Anger and longing coexist inside of us in the most endearing and often dramatic way. Yet healing comes only from integrating all of it and seeing that it was love all along.