Parents

Growing up, I was never really close to my parents. I used to blame them, like a lot of children do, for the majority of bad things in my life. Only recently have I discovered that these things weren’t entirely their fault and that I have to take some responsibility for my own actions. I’m not saying that they never did anything wrong. I mean everyone makes mistakes. But they did the best they could for the amount of wisdom they had at that age.

I think we tend to dwell more often on what is wrong in our lives rather than dwell on what we are thankful for. This has detrimental affect to our wellbeing because it causes depression and other effects on us that hinder us in our daily lives. A big part of overcoming this condition is to try and forgive our parents for whatever wrongness we think they have incurred on us in the past. I know this is easier said than done. I have problems with it myself. In fact, only recently, after several support groups have I even been able to entertain the notion of objectively understanding the bad parts of my life and trying to heal from them instead of getting angry and lashing out at the very mention of their occurrence.

This has been an exciting journey for me because it has brought a lot of peace and restoration to my otherwise chaotic life. It’s difficult when your parents expect you to heal faster than you are ready to. They shouldn’t pressure you into it no matter how healthy the processes may be for you. In the end, you’re not really healing, you’re just stuffing it own deeper. Which says a lot about the parent, but I’m not going to go into that right now.

I would like to end in saying that I am grateful for my parents and admire any efforts they made to do the right thing when raising me. If it were not for their diligent work during those years I would have ended up a very different person; most likely not for the better. Some people say we are a product of our cumulative experiences. If that is the case, then we owe some of that good result to our parents. As I said before, I don’t think the issue is really deciding whether or not our parents were good parents. The real issue is deciding whether or not to dwell on the positive, instead of the negative.