Letting go of the past

[Spirit in the sky]

I spent most of last night crying and writing a letter I will never send to my father.

His cancer diagnosis has brought up so many buried feelings from my childhood, anger, resentment, sadness and even some gratitude. There's still a very sad lonely afraid little girl inside me and so many emotions I need to process.

I hadn't cried when found out my dad was dying, I willed myself not to. I didn't want to admit I was upset and found it easier to deny my feelings and pretend I didn't care. That didn't really work out too well when the stress and anxiety caused me to think I was having a heart attack.

Thankfully I wasn't,  but I was blocking my feelings and finally I'm getting to a point where I can stop blaming my parents and judging them and just accept what happened. But that also means accepting I do actually care about my dad, and accepting that he does actually care about me even though he can't express it.

I've always done this dysfunctional dance with my parents trying to figure out which one did the most damage to my inner child.  I Know neither of them intentionally did anything to hurt me they are so damaged themselves that they didn't even know how to parent a child, or look after themselves.

I realise now it's just life, people are messed up. They will always be messed up and all I can do it work on un-messing my own life. I know I can't rescue or fix them and I do find it very sad that they have never been free of their emotional baggage. I am grateful I have seen the light and I was following in their footsteps by burning the pain and pretending it didn't exist but hings have changed.

I'm opening Pandora's box, I'm discovering things about myself and I'm growing stronger. It's a difficult journey but I feel it begins when we throw off the chains of the past and choose to be free. The difficult part is knowing and watching their suffering but it isn't mine and I need to keep reminding myself that. They do have a choice, but they choose to remain in shackles.

[SunnyMeadow]

I realise now it's just life, people are messed up. They will always be messed up and all I can do it work on un-messing my own life. I know I can't rescue or fix them and I do find it very sad that they have never been free of their emotional baggage. I am grateful I have seen the light and I was following in their footsteps by burning the pain and pretending it didn't exist but hings have changed.

I like this Spirit. People really are messed up and I occasionally remind myself that everyone out there has a "story". Some are worse than mine, better than mine or somewhere in between. We are all trying to get through life and like you, I'm grateful I've seen the light and have more clarity in dealing with my uNPDmom and my early years.

I'm opening Pandora's box, I'm discovering things about myself and I'm growing stronger. It's a difficult journey but I feel it begins when we throw off the chains of the past and choose to be free. The difficult part is knowing and watching their suffering but it isn't mine and I need to keep reminding myself that. They do have a choice, but they choose to remain in shackles.

I need a fancy wall plaque with this written in pretty script! 

I was in my late 40's when I started realizing something was very wrong with my mother. Although I wish I had figured this out in my 20's, I just didn't. But I'm grateful I eventually did and can observe her without thinking all these stressful interactions were something I caused.

[Spirit in the sky]

Sunny Meadow,

I'm 47 and it took me a very long time to realise I wasn't the one with the problem. You naturally assume your parents are well rounded individuals and it comes as a shock when you realise there's something not right.

I realised 20 years ago when I was in therapy that a lot of my issues weren't actually mine but as a result of my mother's mental illness. I have struggled with trying to understand her and help her up until a few years ago when I realised I was actually making myself ill.

It's only within the last year that I have been able to process my childhood trauma. Like you said some people have experienced much worse abuse and some people had happy childhoods. I was unfortunate that both my parents had issues and being an only child I felt very alone.

But I have survived and come out the other end, it's made me the person I am. I still struggle with my conditioning and sometimes the old programming kicks in but I soon see the patterns and can stop myself. It's an ongoing process, I'm healing everyday and it's made me more aware and less judgmental of other people and their problems.