how to recover from a bad childhood?, part II
Moving on: tips & forgiveness
It is now safe for me to release all of my childhood traumas and move into love. Louise Hay.
When I was 20 years old and started my journey to become whole again, someone gave me a book written by Louise Hay.
In you can heal your life, Louise shares her philosophy: every thought we hold and everything we believe creates our lives. She believed that the universe responded to our thoughts and beliefs, so if we can change them into positive affirmations — then the universe would hear that as well.
After I read her book, I started believing that too.
One reason why I loved her book so much is that she acknowledges that she sounds barmy. In her book, she recalls that the first time she heard that our thoughts created our lives, she burst out laughing. That was my reacion as well, I couldn’t believe it. I said to myself it was ridiculous. There were other reasons too — we all knew them: political, economic, social reasons. It couldn’t be that simple.
And yet, Louise would say: yes, it could.
You might be wondering how on earth this relates with the subject at hand…I won’t spoil the book for you, but Louise was one of the authors whose work deeply inspired me as I healed my childhood. This is today’s topic: as last week we discussed the consequences that a bad childhood has in our lives, today I wish to explore what happens when we grow up and move away from our childhood. How can we move on from what happened to us when we were little? Can we heal it, forget it and even forgive it? Is it possible? And if it is possible — how can we do it?
Louise Hay’s books presented a new world to me — one that I hadn’t been aware of until that very moment. I cried the first time I read her affirmations; her words were so simple and yet so joyful, so positive — I realized she wrote the things I longer to hear. But Louise’s work only exposed only one side of the healing journey; I knew that, in order to fully heal, I also needed to identify the wound I was still carrying.
As we already discussed, the effect that a bad childhood can have in one’s psyque its enormous and it can last for a lifetime — sometimes more, as we have seen how trauma can be passed down through generations. Those wounds can be physical, emotional, be in our memory or our spirit; they can affect the way we live and comunicate and the kind of adults we grew up to be. I don’t remember who said “all begins in childhood”, but I feel it’s true — so it’s only fair that in order to heal and get rid of our past, we first have to take a good look at it.
Our wounds needs to be recognized so we can provide a healing counter-effect; so we make sure we won’t repeat the pattern. I call this “fixing the hole” — it’s like that Beatle song. Only that this time I will be fixing the hole with light.
This has a name actually, it’s called parenting yourself. I remember the first time I found out this term existed I felt enraged: “What the fuck, I thought furiously, “I don’t want to let them off the hook. I have to parent myself?”. I was so angry that for the next few months I refused to work on the subject, furiously leaving Louise’s book out of my shelf and refusing to work on myself, even though I felt frustrated and still wanted something to change.
Weeks later, I tried again. Parenting yourself, I found out then, really means giving yourself what you need. It’s not about getting your parents off the hook; it’s about you: what you need, what you want, what are you lacking and is stopping you from living the life you want.
I decided to make a list. If I needed to give myself what I was lacking, I first needed to find out what was my wound.
If you read last week’s article, you know I was sexually abused in my childhood. The effects it had on my life were varied, profound and lasting; but as I wrote the list I realised that what I needed to heal was the constant feeling of unsafety & consequencial need of control that the abuse had left me with. The more I let those feelings unresolved, the more I felt as the abuse was happening all over again; I realized I needed to find a healing counter-effect that would allow me drop away the old memories that were still within me.
For me, given I suffered anxious and racing thoughts each day, Louise’s affirmations were wonderful and powerful. The first step to parenting myself was to talk to me with love; but this is not the only way you can work through this. Louise mentions many other tactics in her books’, namely: mirror work, visualizations and meditations. You can also try journaling, physical exercise and many more — it depends of what you need.
To start recognizing your wounds, you can use the following questions:
a) How does my mom/dad/family makes me feel?
b) When I think about my childhood, what is one word I use to describe it?
c) What is the first thing I think when I think about my childhood?
d) Are there any situations in my childhood that I still carry with me? Why?
Once you are done, you can deepen your answers like this:
a) Why do I feel ____? (Here you can explain why your childhood made you feel in a certain way).
b) What actions did my parents took or didn’t took or what situation took place that made me feel like this?
c) What would I like to feel instead? (Here you can write a positive thought; “I would like to feel safe/happy/confident…”)
d) How would I like to be instead?
You can as try many different questions as you like; whatever works for you. The important thing its to recognize the feelings so you can find a ‘healing balm’ for it.
Let’s say you discover that you childhood left you feeling unwanted and unloved; now realize that you are needing to feel loved & seen so a healing counter-effect can be mirror work, saying positive affirmations every morning (even if at first its painful!); taking time each day to do something that makes you feel good and beautiful; the list goes on.
Or perhaps you discover that your relationship with one of your parents made you feel insecure, nervous, unstable so now need structure, discipline, boundaries and better relationships. You can do this by practicing a sport (marcial arts are great for this!); you can plan your day/week/month ahead to feel more put-together; you can read self-discipline books that will help you achieve the consistency that you are searching for; you can also learn what it means to place boundaries in a relationship and how you can set them so your needs are met.
Or maybe you discover that your childhood made you feel you aren’t good enough; you can tackle this by doing positive affirmations, meditating (if meditations aren’t your cup of tea, a lil trick I have is to listen to them at night — in this way it can be a tad easier, you don’t need to set time aside for it and plus, your subconscious absorbs all the messages even asleep!). You can also sign up to do a course (it can be online & free!), as learning new skills that later on you can apply to your work setting or resumé can be a healthy way of channelling those fears.
As you see, parenting yourself doesn’t have to be stressful, it doesn’t have to be about big acts of love; it doesn’t even have to be a full time job. It can be about making small but powerful changes in your life that leads you in the right direction — a healing balm that gives you exactly what you’ve been needing.
If parenting yourself it’s about giving yourself what you need, then it’s also about being free — free from your childhood, free from your pain. And in order to be free, you’ve to forgive.
Well — not quite.
Nobody can force you to forgive, but what I discovered is that, once you start parenting yourself, you also have to face the choice of letting go your resentments regarding your past, as you can’t move on (which essencially is what healing is about) and at the same time turn to your mom or dad and say: “See! You did this to me!”.
Okay, you can do that but eventually you realize it won’t take you very far. This doesn’t make your anger unvalid (you’ve every right to be angry and express it) but it does reminds you that if you want to move past this, eventually you also have to let go anything that is blocking your flow of happiness — -including your anger about what you parents did to you. I had to learn that it wasn’t about what my parents did to me but about what I needed in order to heal.
I know I am making it sound very easy. I also know it’s not.
And how can one let go of those angry, frustrating feelings of unfairness that childhood sometimes give to us? It’s not about forgiveness (that comes in later); letting go of any feeling regarding your childhood can be deciding to focus in the part of you that needs healing, vs the part of you that is angry. I know that the angry part of me whispers still: “You have to be upset, you have to be angry!”; but another part of me says: “I rather say a good affirmation and focus on that.” Focus on what you need to heal and not on the anger that the wound is causing you.
Another way to let go is accepting your parent’s flaws. This will depend on your situation — maybe you talk to your parents, maybe not. But if you do talk to them and you are dealing with a parent who refuses to change their painful behavior towards you, a step towards healing can be accepting your parents for what they are. Instead of trying to make them change, focus on giving yourself what you need and in this way you won’t be waiting for your parents to wake up and change. how you can heal so your parents actions don’t affect you anymore.
I know it sounds easier than it is. You’ll need to try it many times, as those feelings don’t leave you overnight; but these small acts can help you move from a place of pain to a place of peace.
I say all of this in order but actually, in reality, the process is much more dirtier and almost impossible to explain.
It’s like grief: it’s not one straight pathway towards forgiveness and light; you go through many phases before being okay with it — and even then you know it can start over tomorrow morning.
Maybe this is the reason why forgiveness (in situations like these) can be controversial: can we forgive our parents? Should we forgive them? Do we need to forgive them? Is it necessary to forgive?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
But, again — forgiveness takes many forms and has many layers. Often there’s this colective idea that forgiveness means that you free the other person of what they have done, when actually you only free yourself. It makes you okay with what happened, not because it was okay, but because you have moved on; you’ ve learned from it; you moved past it. You aren’t angry anymore.
One lady once said to me that forgiveness it’s not something you once but “something you do every day”. I love that. It doesn’t mean every day you have to say: “okay, I forgive you dad, I forgive you mom” because that would be exhausting; but it does mean that each day we have an opportunity to go into anger or move on with our lives. It also means that forgiveness that happen at any moment — in any way, through different days.
Does forgiveness and healing means you need to repress your anger? Absolutely not. Being angry is part of the process, but I believe you don’t have to be miserable. You can channel your anger in positive ways — in ways that won’t hurt you but free you. For example, working out can be a great way to let go of what is hurting you; you can punch pillows or scream as much as you can in an empty room (and obviously, in a place where others can’t hear you, otherwise you’ll have some awkard explaing to do). You can write angry letters and burn them down; you can paint, listen to music and dance it out (Grey’s Anatomy anyone?); whatever you need to do to get it out of your system and move on — but in a healthy way. Your childhood hurt you long enough — you don’t need to keep punishing you.
I discovered that, sometimes, the intention to forgive is enough to crack something open in your life; maybe it’ll push you to watch inspirational videos, to search for answers; maybe it will push you towards compassion and therapy. One big piece of understanding that helped me forgive was being aware that what happen to me wasn’t about me: it had happened to me.
What I mean is I thought I was broken. I thought this had happened to me. But then I became aware that many women in my family had suffered the exact same destiny as I did growing up. I discovered that my father’s childhood was less than ideal. I learned that my parents weren’t horrible people who hated me because I was a fucked up, they were just people that went through something terrible wrong growing up and they never got over it.
Does that make them right or excusable? No, but I think it can give a good reason to forgive.
Parents only give us what they know — I know this now. Whatever your parents have taught you it’s what they carried for all their lives — it’s what they have felt growing up and probably what they feel now. What you experienced in your childhood had nothing to do with you; it wasn’t your fault — there wasn’t something you could’ve done differently to prevent it. It happened the way it did because your parents failed to look at their own wounding and therefore, they gave that to you. It was the only thing they had.
Whenever I felt furious with my dad, my therapist told me I should picture him as a child, no more than five years old — crying and upset, because “it’s how he felt all his life”. That always made me feel a wave of compassion towards him — to understand that, even if I didn’t knew it, he had suffered as well.
I can feel the complains coming up my way: “but that isn’t fair, they did this, they did that!”. Yes of course they did. I am not trying to justify it and also I don’t think that compassion can justify what someone does; I just think it can be a good tool to heal us understand why our childhood played out the way it did and why we should move past it. Forgiveness doesn’t make what your parents did or didn’t do right — I believe in karma, I think people eventually have to face what they have done. But forgiveness it’s freeing. It can help you move past the chains that’ve been holding you prisioner for all your life. You can either hold into anger and waste your time trying to change the past…or you can, day by day, trying to move past it.
We all deserve a happy, joyful chidhood and it breaks my heart to think you might’ve not gotten exactly that. But it doesn’t mean you should be angry/upset/frustrated forever. It’s okay to let go. In some point, forgiveness becomes unavoidable: you read the books, you shed your tears, you have grown up. You can let go.
And I know it’s not easy — it takes courage and strenght and the fact you are trying to do this means you are one step higher than you parents ever got! Forgiveness looks different in each on of us. Maybe it makes you look past your parents’ mistake and accept them for what they can offer to you; maybe it makes you cut all ties with them as they don’t longer deserve your time nor energy; maybe it just means that you are starting to accept what happened to you and you are ready to move on — not because it was okay but because you are okay now, and it feels like a good time to start over.
Whatever shape forgiveness takes in your life, I think it always feels the same — peaceful.
This was all for this week. Next week will be the third (and last!) article on this healing childhood series, where we’ll discuss famous examples on surviving bad childhoods and overcoming trauma that I find inspiring and we will deepen a bit more on accepting your past, as I feel there is more to say on that…
I don’t want to go without showing (some of) Louise Hay’s affirmations that can help you in your journey, as well as her book catalogue (she even had her own editorial! You go Louise…). Sending all of you love, hope you are well, have an amazing week & feel free to comment.
S.H.
x
