Lucky for some, it’s in my nature to help out. So back in 2023 when my parents started to struggle, I valiantly ‘mounted my steed’* and rode North from Brighton to Birkenhead to help them out. After months of toil trying to keep things going, it was proving to be just as much of my own mental struggle as their own worsening condition, but over the coming weeks things started to shift. Through the lows of repeating toxic patterns, there came a new-found sense of wellbeing: - in showing up for and supporting the very people that I once couldn’t stand.
Nothing can quite raise your vibrations to the dizzy heights of loving compassion, than those touching moments of care and connection you can show a loved one in their hour of need. Decades of meditation or mantra chanting on top of the Himalayas might still never prove otherwise. Revisiting the buried feelings of filial* love have been expansive, but even the lows have been helpful in their own sweet way, in processing the childhood hurt through the eyes and experience of inner work and maturity.
All of my best adventures in life have been through the journey of self-discovery. Because it’s when we grow past the hurt that so often keeps us small, that we are able to create new realities in what we wish to be defined by. This is where huge leaps in our healing journeys can be made. Do we stay the victim of our circumstances forever or can we become the valiant conquerors and creators of our New World?
Life is a hard graft for anyone. So much so, it can make easy work of overlooking or even excusing the everyday burdenous act of giving. It is far more convenient to justify our poor relationships and try to block those extra annoyances out of our lives. As a ‘know-all’ teenager, I smartly philosophised that as I hadn’t asked to be born, I didn’t owe my parents a thing. I sailed off Sayonara* into the sunset many a time, but this time I’m back for good. After wandering the world, my new philosophy is to believe that if we have any gratitude for our lives and living selves, then let us first thank the people who birthed and raised us; in the gentle remembrance that they did it in the best way that they knew how.
Growing up with parents with ‘undiagnosed’ personality problems has been an undeniable struggle, and with effects that have been far-reaching in my life. In my experience, I have found that the best therapy has been in the choosing of empathy over anger and blame. By looking to the positive in every moment, we can undergo the mental feat of forgiveness through the understanding of one another. So why not start today and you too could soon be able to transform your trauma into a triumph. As a child, you can’t do much with hurtful experiences but to bury and forget about them. For many they will lie there malevolently for a lifetime, probably growing into a ‘Poison Tree’* of some sort. But others will care to graft, root it out and alchemise that pain into golden treasures.
We all experience different realities by what we choose to dwell upon and a little positive thinking can go a long way. Try and make your story about what your parents gave you rather than what they could not. Because we should care to remember that the life we have, is the most precious gift anyone could ever be given.
End Note: -
Some ancient cultures revere and honour the mother and father as our first gods and I think this is rather a nice concept; however controversial or fruity loops it may seem to think that we could all be considered godly! But in a sense, everything that lives and creates life is part of a godly element in its own way, every living creature or even a plant! Many ancient teachings tell us to remember our own divinity, so why not consider ourselves to be the very best that we can be. Because at the end of the day, we can only act in accordance to who and what we believe we are.
Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction and many enter thorough it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only few find it.
Matthew 7:13 – 14
*Mounted My Steed - Got in a mates car
*Sayonara – Farewell
*Filial – Affection, devotion and sense of duty that a child feels towards their parent*
*A Poison Tree – Poem by Willian Blake
