On Forgiveness and Healthy Family Relationships

Learning to parent consciously has made me realise just how difficult it is to change one’s internal programming. Some of my knee-jerk reactions to stressful situations are often less than honourable and I wince afterwards at just how out of control I was and the garbage that came out of my mouth. Some phrases or behaviours are not ones that I rationally condone and yet I do them anyways and this frustrates me. While researching child development and how internal scripts are formed, I began resenting my own upbringing at times because of how much work I have to do with myself now to become the person I want to be for my son. Although I had a fairly happy childhood, I noticed that many of my hang-ups today can be traced back to the choices my parents made for me while growing up that they didn’t anticipate affecting me but have nonetheless.

Past conversations with my mother revealed some of the attitudes my parents had about raising me and my brother and this has given me an understanding about why they parented the way they did. Speaking to my Grand-mother about her parenting attitudes revealed how she raised her children and how it affected the way her son (my Dad) parented in return and it is quite interesting. The main thing I noticed is that each generation sought to improve the way they parented their own kids. Through small changes or vast, my parents genuinely tried to make my childhood better than what they experienced and this effort has not gone unnoticed. It still annoys me however, how I now have to deal with my unresolved childhood issues in order to parent the way I want to parent.

My main qualm is managing difficult emotions, something I was never really taught because ‘negative’ emotions were either ignored or punished growing up. Both my parents were inconsistent with their approach to discipline and this confused me to no end, never knowing what was really expected of me. Coupled with being unable to express their own difficult emotions appropriately for me to emulate, I grew up being suspicious of my darker feelings and suppressed my emotions rather than confront them. Most of the ways I tried expressing my feelings were either overlooked or reprimanded, but because I was given no other alternative, I simply learned to repress them. There is a tendency in my family to avoid conflict to the point of self-deception, a habit I learned and am having a difficult time overcoming. It is far easier to pretend everything is okay instead of dealing with tough situations and am often at a loss and to how to make the necessary changes in order to set everything right.

Anyways, in Hybrid Rasta Mama’s Unconditional Love Challenge #4, she asks us to forgive our parents for their mistakes and I have been resisting this strongly because of recent altercations with them that have made me bitter but it is something I am working on. Becoming aware of just how messed up I am because of the choices my parents made for me growing up has made me resent them to a point, all the more because they refuse to acknowledge it on any level. On the other hand I can also understand and have compassion for the place they were in their lives which contributed to the way they behaved. It does not excuse it, but I can get it too.

I think what I am hung up on is that they so far have been unwilling to work on having an authentic relationship with me now as an adult, and I refuse to just put up with certain behaviours anymore now that I have the choice to walk away.  So because of this, I am less willing to forgive them for their mistakes because they neither acknowledge them nor work to improve on them. Our family issues still need to be addressed instead of swept under the rug, which is the apparent norm, and I do not find this to be a healthy thing to do. I still feel open to work on our relationship despite everything that has gone down this year but am no longer willing to do all the work anymore. It isn’t right for me having to take sole responsibility for healing our family rift. So I suppose my forgiveness is being withheld until some sort of improvement is made in our relationship, but until then, I’ll just live and let live. It may not be the ideal thing to do but it is all I am willing at this point in my life.