I've discovered this for
myself.
I'm not claiming it's "the-truth", rather that it's
worth
trying on for size to see if there's any free-ing truth in it.
It's threefold:
I made three
originating
judgements about my parents when I was young, before my early teens in
fact. It took me years to locate them, 'fess up to them, own them, undo
them, and complete them. They're
"originating"
judgements because they
originated
/ became the foundation for all judgements I made about my parents from
then on. Not realizing at the time that doing so was just nailing my
foot to
the floor,
I held all three as indubitably accurate. There was never
one shred of doubt in my mind that my three judgements were accurate.
Yet there was one problem with not doubting that they were accurate:
when judgements of a relationship (any relationship actually, but even
more so in the case of our relationships with our parents) are not
accurate,
trouble
and confusion are sure to follow - and they did. These are the
three
originating
judgements I made about my parents, which I held as indubitably
accurate:
1) I assumed they knew everything there is to know about parenting, so
I blamed them when (in my bratty, childish
opinion)
they didn't
act
accordingly.
2) When they didn't show me they loved me in ways I'd determined they
should
show me they loved me,
I made it mean
that they didn't love me at all.
3) As I (privately) became my own person, I chided them for not
embracing who I was becoming - even though they had no way of knowing
who that was.
Now that I'm a parent myself, I get to deal with (often to my own
chagrin) exactly the same things in my relationships with
my children
that my parents had to deal with in their relationship with me. Now,
the more I appreciate being a parent, the more I appreciate my
parents. I've gotten clear that nobody gave me the job of judging,
evaluating, critiquing, and criticizing my parents' parenting skills.
It was just one more of the things I took on unquestioningly, bravely
hanging on even with one foot nailed to
the floor,
being right, avoiding being dominated. And now that I'm a parent
myself,
I've discovered that:
1) Surprise! I don't know everything about parenting (I
learn more and more about it every day as I go along ie I'm learning
in the process of
Life itself).
2) I love
my children
totally, unconditionally, and sometimes I don't express that
fully in the heat of the moment with the imposition of
the circumstances.
3)
My children
are surely growing into becoming their own people. Whether I know who
they're becoming or not, I support them - no matter who that is.
In
the light
of what I've realized being a parent myself, my parents did a simply
amazing, stalwart, sterling job raising me. Looking back at
all the chapters of my
life-history,
my parents have never not supported me. All my erstwhile judgements of
them have ceded to admiration, appreciation, love and
respect.