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Send your questions to Suzanne@InnerworksPublishing.com
Question: I have been working on
myself for a long time and still cannot forgive my parents for
the poor job they did raising me. Intellectually I get it, they
did their best; but I am a mess emotionally and resent them.
Please help me see the light.
Answer: It takes as long as it takes
to process our past. We ultimately must take back the power that
we had to give our parents when we were young and had no choice.
Now as a grownup we do have the power of choice and we
ultimately must become our own good mother and good father.
Consider the possibility that anger at your parents is really
not the issue here, but rather the fact that unaware generations
of people raised children and it takes too much energy at times
to reparent ourselves, to change our conditioning. That requires
a lot of vigilance for many of us who must change our whole
belief system, self-talk, emotional reactions, behaviors, and
quality-of-life choices. That kind of transformation can take a
lifetime. No fair!
When we get tired of managing our growth and
want to project our problems onto our parents, it is helpful to
go easy on ourselves. Possibly you are expecting more than you
are capable of delivering and it has gotten overwhelming. We
need nurturing and support as we pause and take a rest. It is
really no one’s fault—yours for not being able to do a
better job than your parents did at times or your parents who
were simply links in the chain of familial patterns.
Some of us repeatedly slip down to the bottom
of the mountain of higher awareness after much hard work and
progress. Yes, it is frustrating and overwhelming at times.
Eventually we are able to start climbing again. The good news is
that we can make it at a faster clip to reach the point where we
left off.
The next time you feel like blaming your
parents and are stuck in the grieving process of what you were
not given to be a fully functioning adult, consider the joy your
soul feels that you are changing your dysfunctional inheritance,
and growing to a lighter, brighter place of awareness.
My friend, Diane once said to me, "When
all is said and done and we can't seem to forgive our parents
for the mistakes we feel they made, it boils down to this--do I
want to let them ruin half my life or all my life. I chose to
only let them ruin the first part. When I became an adult, I
became responsible for the remainder of my life."
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