Faun shares the importance of parents and how making peace with your parents is making peace with yourself. Thank you Faun for sharing this beautiful story!
Regardless of the details of my story I am here to tell you that there are no winners in estrangement. As justified as you may believe that you are in estranging from your parents, it is not healthy. It is not normal. It is not an act of love. If anything it is an act of intolerance.
The saddest thing for you is that if you have children, no matter their ages and or how close you may be at this time, by virtue of the fact that you have chosen this, you have now modeled behavior for your own children. They are very likely to dismiss you from their lives the same way they have witnessed you do it to your mother and/or father. Believe it. Case studies support this.
What you are in essence modeling for your own children is that 1) parents aren’t important and can be easily erased from your life 2) disrespect 3) silent treatment 4) judgment 5) lack of tolerance and lack of forgiveness. What you are losing is your roots, your family history and heritage. If you are a biological child you miss out on your family health history. Your children are missing out on knowing their family and their grandparents. Lost years can never be made up.
I believe that most all parents love their children. Maybe it isn’t perfect but they aren’t perfect and neither are you. No one is perfect.
Like many of you I have other relationships that I created through the years, I have “other mothers” and “other children” that I have loved and have loved me too. They have helped me to heal and to fill many of the voids. But the reality is that no one can take the place of our birth parents. That history cannot be re-written. And our children come from us. They are a part of our being and our souls and our hearts are forever connected.
Do you need to be “right?” or do you need “peace?” Loving ourselves allows us to love others, loving our parents is an extension of self-love because whether you like it or not, that is where you come from.
No one said that you have to see them every day, no one said you have to speak with them every day but having peace with your parents is what you do for yourself. Remember one day your child will grow up and they too will judge you. Could you measure up to the same yardstick you have chosen to use to measure mom or dad? Would you want your grown adult child treating you the same way that you have chosen to treat your parents?
It’s not over until we take our last breathe. Making peace with your parents is making peace with yourself. Forgiveness is the gift that you give to yourself!
Make 2015 the year of love and of forgiveness and watch how much better your life becomes when you aren’t holding onto anger or ill will toward others. Bernadette Moyers
Story shared by Faun Witten on FaceBook, 2-16-15
FB https://www.facebook.com/lsfaun.witt?fref=ts
Shared Parenting Confessional 