Parents: your worst nightmare or your greatest teachers?

Dad,

Since I don´t know if you´re alive or dead

You´ve become this strange enigma in my head.

A jumbled collection of memories

Tied together with a thread of tears

From the time you put a voice to my fears

 

Told me I was not worthy of your love

With me you´d tried but had enough.

A failure you said, made me wish I was

Dead as I disappeared amid a

Burning flame of anger; disappointment; shame.

 

But let me tell you dad who

Thinks me so bad… despite all those years

Filled with neglect, abuse and fear

And the wounds you left upon my heart

Of which your absence formed a part;

 

Beneath the anger, pain and rage and

Your seemingly uncaring gaze,

I see a man who´s lost his way

Amongst the debris of society´s decay

And it´s your family who´ve paid the price

 

Of a generation lost at sea.

You´ve been conditioned to believe

Life´s about working, marriage and buying TVs.

But dad, you didn´t buy us in a shop.

You can´t return us because you´ve found a fault.

 

Although it seemed you really tried

That day when I came home and cried

To find all my teddies, clothes and toys

In bin liners upon the lawn that you then

Piled high inside the car

 

With the words filled with scorn,

“You´re going to live with your mum¨.

Had I been made of porcelain, like a china doll

With those harsh words I´d have been smashed

To smithereens all over the floor.

 

Each time I asked for help; for a school trip,

A book or a coat,

You´d tell us no you´re far too broke

And so we learned to go without as weekly we were

Pushed back and forth between mum´s and yours.

 

But you know what makes me truly sad

Is all I really needed was your love and affection

(Ok, and maybe a pony)

But looking back I can now see

that you too needed it from me.

 

But each time you sent us back to mum

With her drinking, shouting and vicious tongue

The wound it left forced a hole in my heart

And now that many years have passed

A question that I have to ask…

 

Is whether it´s possible to change the past?

Because the mind´s a powerful thing.

A prism placed upon our world

Distorting, refracting and shifting.

Like a kaleidescope into which we see.

 

With a twist or a turn truth becomes distortion

So in actual fact all that´s real

Is the action in the moment as past and future are movies on a reel,

We choose to play inside our heads

 

So when I ask myself, do you have a story

I have not heard—

Suddenly I see

A man struggling to open a can marked

Father, husband, son and parent.

 

A man held to ransom over love

Who was taught like so many others in the world

It cannot be freely given.

Love carries a price, some kind of sacrifice

Or at least it must be earned.

 

So, I´ll tell you dad, who thinks me so bad

No matter where you are in the world,

How many tears I´ve bled as the years have passed

Know this. I thank you for teaching me

Infinite strength, independence and how to change a story.

 

I Love You

 

Most of us on our self-development journeys at some point will start to examine the relationships we have (or in my case, had) with our parents. Philip Larkin famously wrote, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad,¨ but the question we have to ask ourselves is, do we want these relationships and the negative experiences we´ve had with our parents to continue to define us?

 

As adults, we are given the opportunity to reshape those relationships as we re-write our own stories. We are given choices in life. Forks in roads appear, sometimes when we least expect it. Either we can continue repeating and regurgitating the same old excuses for the miseries we encounter in our lives; blaming our parents for our failings or, we can take responsibility and begin to question our decision making. We can recognise the human in the human instead of blaming. We can change our boundaries; perspectives and even our feelings.

 

This can be deep and painful work and it takes the kind of self-awareness that meditation and self-inquiry will help us develop.  Understanding that our mind creates our reality and believing all of our thoughts can lead to a life of suffering is one part of the healing puzzle but also, recognising that the body holds not only the wounds of emotional and physical abuse but also, the key to healing them is the other. To be able to experience life joyously, we must retrain the immune system to be able to experience exalted emotions. By journeying with the body through yoga, vipassana, meditation… we can undo that which was done to us and live peaceful and fulfilling lives.

 

Through my spiritual path, it becomes impossible to not understand that in some way or other, our parents are here to either make us or break us but in the end, it´s down to us to decide which that will be. Although I no longer have contact with my father, recognising his humanity has assisted me in releasing some of the anger and pain I have carried over the years lightening the burden I carried. I hope for many others, that they can do the same.

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