I’ve spent decades looking within. Hoping, no, searching desperately for answers I thought were tucked away. Year after year I’ve asked why. Why am I like this? Why don’t I know what I’m feeling? Why can’t I let myself be loved?
Every layer of healing has come with more questions. On Christmas Eve a new question emerged for me. One that feels less like a mystery to solve and more like an opportunity to explore. What if I could participate in my parents’ healing?
Yes, the same parents who bear responsibility for the scars I carry.
What if I bear these wounds because my parents couldn’t heal their own? Just as matter is neither created nor destroyed, so too is the energy that creates our pain. It can be transmuted into more pain or transformed through healing into something restorative. If my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t heal, maybe their pain was passed onto me.
What if I now have the strength and wisdom to love them more actively while protecting and loving myself? Its taken me a long time for me to be honest about my love for them while accepting that the type of relationship I longed for wasn’t feasible. Love doesn’t like being kept at a distance, yet sometimes it must be.
What if it’s a strange privilege to participate in the healing of those who’ve wounded me? I say privilege because I know I don’t have to. I’d be justified in keeping my distance and my peace. I can stay where I am so that I don’t risk reinjury. Yet, it also feels like another path has been revealed, and if you know me, you know I can’t resist the opportunity to explore the road less travelled.
I want to type as many words as it takes for you to understand these questions. I want to unpack the psychological and spiritual ramifications of all this. I want to justify these feelings somehow so that I know I’m not lost. Yet truthfully, the only destination on this journey is me. And if I’m still here, present with and loving myself, I can never really be lost.
With that in mind, what if…
I’m continuing to explore. I came across this that I wrote in cursive in a journal in 2001:
From Oprah Magazine - Jan 2001
Article by Joyce Carol Oates.
Joyce’s immigrant mother’s mother gave her up for adoption, so Joyce’s mom was raised by her aunt (her mom’s younger sister who was unable to have children). Joyce found this out when her mother was 81 years old. Joyce thought:
“From this revelation, I came to understand that we are all – despite our ages, identities, professional achievements, and alliances – a single age. In some secret part of their souls, our parents are still children requiring the love of parents long deceased, as we in adulthood are still the children of our parents, vulnerable, and exposed to their emotions. Never again would I think of either of my parents in quite the same way. Never again would I assume that I “know”anyone fully – including myself.“
Thank you for sharing! Thoughts and words that stand out to me include: “strength & wisdom to love them more actively” and “another path has been revealed”.
“Maybe their pain was passed on to me” makes me think of Olivia Krall’s presentation 2/16/21 (I watched & listened through a link online through Goshen College) about inter generational trauma /trauma transmission. I’m sure you know a ton about that and it makes me think you might be proud of a youth you helped to form spiritually who chose to speak on the importance of these ideas. Some things I jotted down from her presentation:
-Resilience can also be passed on when we have knowledge
-We can prevent the same ills from happening in the future
- Think of a rope – each strand is an ancestor; each one doesn’t define you but it does contribute to you.
-Not paying attention to our history is ignoring a part of ourselves.
-The pathway to peace begins with reconciling the trauma of our past