"We all have relationships, and if you can complete your relationship
with your parents, you can have incredible relationships,
magical
relationships,
miraculous
relationships."
...
This essay,
My Parents' Child,
is the twenty fourth in a group of twenty four on
Parents:
What happened
in the past,
happened.
It can't be changed. Nothing can change
what happened
in the past. Yet transformation teases out a noteworthy relationship
with the past: while it doesn't change the past, it reaches back into
the past, and
recontextualizes
it (I
love
that word). When we look back into the past and tell the truth about
what happened
in our relationships with our parents, it doesn't change anything that
happenedone iota. Nothing can.
What happened,
happened.
But it does transform
what happened.
And what's really
interesting
and which very soon becomes glaringly obvious, is that you can't bring
transformation
into play
with your children until and unless you first bring transformation
into play
with your parents. Now I know you may not like that, or agree it works
that way. You may be getting lots of mileage from blaming /
criticizing them. But
I'm sorry,
that is just
the way
the thing works.
There's no question about it (it's unequivocal): I only realized what
my parents faced raising me, once I had children of my own. The
difference with
my 3 children
(once I realized it) afforded me an entirely
new view
of what I had erroneously
considered
my parents had to do. With
my 3 children
it became clear to me I would have to figure out what to do as a parent
/ what good parenting entails (my children didn't arrive with
instruction manuals). Until then, I simply (and blindly) assumed my
parents knew how to raise children ie knew how to be good
parents. So when they didn't match
my opinions
of what good parenting was, I was judgemental, critical. I was a child,
yet
the way
I was about them, determined the kind of relationship that was possible
for us.
Werner's
work
presents
what's come to be known as a "rich body of distinctions" which are
collectivelypowerful
enough to transform lives - that is to say, it isn't their
practice per se (like tools, tips, techniques etc) which
brings forth transformation, but rather it's in simply
considering
/ entertaining what they point to, that's
transformative.
Taken collectively, this rich body of distinctions is
powerful
enough to blow
the mind,
freeing up possibilities which had not been fully appreciated before,
presenting an entirely
new view
of how
people
really work. And in this genre, nothing is more
transformative
than seeing how we really work in our relationships. It requires
something
big
to admit we only see
people
as we see them (as they occur for us) not as they really are.
When we say someone is a certain way ie when we accuse
them of being a certain way (selfish, inconsiderate,
ego-centric,
whatever) without owning that they're only appearing to be that way
because we perceive them to be that way, we've unwittingly
killed the possibility of being related to
people
as they really are. In this scenario, it's literally impossible for
relationships to work, and in particular our relationships with our
parents. For me, that take-away was not simply a very
powerful
take-away from
Werner's work.
It was arguably the most
powerful
take-away I'd ever experienced
in my life
until
that moment.
If you haven't completed your relationship with your parents, it's
likely that you'll carry that incompletion into your relationship with
your children, if not into your relationships with all
people.
If you haven't completed your relationship with your mother, it's
likely that you'll carry that incompletion into all of your
relationships with women. If you haven't completed your relationship
with your father, it's just as likely that you'll carry that
incompletion into all of your relationships with men. My parents didn't
have the child-raising instruction manual either. Like me they had to
figure it out. I am truly
grateful
that they did.
