Hey #097: Realizing the humanness of parents and making peace with it…
“Parents are humans too” — This realization isn’t pleasant for adult-kids, that is, us. It makes us see what we’ve been ignoring. And it begins a rough phase of our relationship with our parents.
If you've had a tumultuous relationship with your parent(s) due to extreme situations (and trauma) that happened during your growing up years, read this edition with care. Or you can choose to skip it altogether.
If your parent(s) have passed on to the other side, don’t force yourself to read further.
You know what’s best for you. Do that.
Much love :)
Adulthood has a myriad of challenges.
One of them, which I personally find one of the trickiest, is:
Coming across the humanness of parents. Getting our reality shaken by it. And with time learning to accept it.
From childhood we treat our parents as Gods.
Okay, maybe not God, but definitely as people who are invincible. We believe…
They don’t falter.
They don’t crumble.
They don’t get it wrong.
This belief works in our favor and helps us feel safe throughout our childhood.
Then come the oh-not-so-easy teenage years.
During these years, the wind of developing-maturity starts to blow the veil between our perception of our parents and their humanness.
Our teenage-self does get shocked by it.
But in the mayhem of our teenage-ing, we find it hard to make sense of that startlement. And that confusion comes out as our *cough* rebellion *cough* towards our parents.
Years pass. We pass those years (somehow).
Then comes the mighty adulthood.
Our world gets shaken once again. Only this time, it shakes at the Richter scale of 10.
Now we become of the age (or come closer to the age) at which our parents had us.
The veil between our perception of our parents and their humanness starts to lift.
As it lifts, we feel unexplainable (emotional) pain.
We find ourselves in the trenches of disappointment, resentment, hurt, betrayal, anguish, grief…
Rarely we realize the source of such pain. Yet we remain gripped in it, and continue with the journey of adulthood.
We begin finding a home for our individuality — we get into/ out of relationships, we move out/ relocate, we build/ change our careers — we start getting a hold of the concept called “self”.
That pain, though, remains with us.
And without us knowing, it keeps creating chaos in our adult life.
Sometimes, the chaos is so tiny that it goes unnoticed. Other times, it’s so big that we become tiny in front of it.
Then there comes a time in our adulthood when things go out of control.
In extremity of our confusion, we look around, trying to figure out the reason for why life is going downhill.
Sooner or later in our search, we (yet again) come across the pain hidden in the deepest chambers of our hearts.
Some of us become a one-person army to defeat this pain. Some of us take professional help. And some of us, well, start ignoring it with a hope that it’d stop existing on its own.
As we move closer to this pain, we start seeing its roots in our childhood and teenage years.
We now get in touch with our upbringing, and its cause and effects on our development as a person.
As we deep diver into this upbringing, we inevitably come across the role that our caretakers and/ or parents have played in it, knowingly or unknowingly.
This leads us to discover the humanness of our parents — how they were never invincible. And that…
They do falter.
They do crumble.
They do get it wrong.
We come face-to-face with the daunting realization:
Our parents did their best for us, yet their best may not have been the best for us.
Such a discovery is not pleasant.
Because it fuels our pain, and makes us question everything that our parents didn’t do, did do, could have done, and should have done for us.
Thereafter begins a rough relationship between adults and their parents.
(If the relationship has already been rough, it escalates.)
A lot happens in this rough relationship, rather a rough phase of this relationship.
The major implication remains on the emotional reality — of not just of adult-kids, that is, us; but also of our parents.
It’s also the phase when we witness the fragility of life via the aging of our parents.
Each one of us deals with this fragility of life differently:
1. Some of us don’t pay attention to the aging of our parents at all.
For we don’t want it to become an excuse-pass for the shortcomings of our parents, of which consequences cause us pain.
Result?
Distance (emotional and/ or physical) from our parents.
2. Some of us do pay attention to the aging of our parents.
For we find it difficult to let go of the fact that in a few years our parents will be gone, in front of which their shortcomings and our pain don't matter (even when deep within our pain persists).
Result?
Distance from self.
3. Then there are a few of us…
…who pay attention to the aging of our parents. And also choose to not ignore, but deal with our pain by creating a space where our parents’ shortcomings, its consequences, our pain, our healing — all can coexist.
Result?
Closeness to self, with an imposed a conscious choice of distance or closeness to parents.
Personally, I see all three groups as different stages of a progression.
And it’s not a linear progression.
Majority of us begin with either group-cum-stage one or two.
Then the beginning of our conscious healing journey leads us to the group-cum-stage three.
Sooner or later, we realize:
We can expect/ wish from our parents to accept the role their humanness played in our pain. But whether they accept it or not, we need to move on for OUR inner peace.
We need to let go of the pain, accept what they did or didn’t was not deliberate, and come to a point where we don’t hold their humanness against them.
Realizing it is much easier than accepting it.
Because during the process of acceptance, we oscillate among stage one, two and three.
At one instant, we feel anger towards our parents. The other instant we find ourselves feeling compassion for them. Then again, we feel unbearable hurt. On and on..it goes.
We feel so much, all at once.
It’s the pain of getting torn between two opposite poles of emotions.
How to navigate such pain?
By consciously choosing to reparent ourselves. That is:
We become the parents that we needed but didn’t have.
Reparenting is not about discarding the significance of our parents in our life.
Reparenting is about giving them that significance AND understanding our own needs which they may not have fulfilled.
That’s why, while reparenting ourselves, we get in touch with our own humanness…
…which then brings us closer to the humanness of our parents.
As this journey proceeds, something in us starts shifting.
We still feel the pain of our upbringing. But now we also feel the joy of it.
We still get disappointed at our parents. But now we also become grateful for them.
The oscillation among emotions (and respective stages) which was once tearing us into pieces, now becomes our medium of personal development.
The focus shifts from:
parents to ourselves
blame to responsibility
what they didn’t do to what we need to do
This shift doesn’t happen in a few months.
It takes time, patience and self-compassion.
But the shift surely arrives, only if we remain committed to reparenting ourselves.
I cannot tell you if you “should” begin the journey of making peace with your parents’ humanness.
Because it’s your choice.
If and when you make that choice, this edition would certainly help you in some way.
Whenever that happens, remember that…
Recognizing the pain which the humanness of parents might be causing us, getting in touch with it and healing it — all of it begins with a simple question:
What do I feel and think about my relationship with my parents?
Speaking from personal experience, it’s not an easy question to answer.
It challenges you. It pushes you to look at what you think you’ve been successfully avoiding.
If you find it hard to sit with this question by yourself, consider seeking help.
You don’t have to do it all alone.
May you find the strength and support you need to accept and flow with the humanness of your parents!
🦋
I’ll see you next Thursday,
Ashi
ps: This edition is a glimpse of my journey of making peace with the humanness of my parents.
This journey began a few years back. It's still going on. And it gets quite difficult at times.
But I know the significance of this journey for me is to give myself the best experiences of the inner and outer worlds. So I find myself getting back on track.
You can find your why too, which will keep you on track in the times when it gets tough.
That WHY can be anything. It just needs to be something that helps you begin.
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