Re-parenting myself
I look back on pieces of my childhood with longing. The ability to go back in time and have no responsibility, to just play with my younger sister. We used to play all day outside if we could. Running to the creek, playing make believe. We created so many worlds together and I sometimes think of what it would be like to watch my young self now. The little girl I used to be possessed an innocence that had been shed through years of change, loss, and growth. I see that innocence in my children.
I viewed my childhood as ideal. I viewed my family life as ideal. Then the ideal world I had built up crumbled with one moment of clarity: I was not alright, I was numb.
To survive I had built myself a safety net of lies. I was not ready to face the truth until recently.
I was lying on the couch one evening alone. My children were asleep and my husband was on a work trip. I decided to watch a movie I had watched a thousand times with my own Mother who had passed. It was through movies that we used to watch together which helped me connect with her in the present. Then halfway through the film, the grief and weight of all that had happened, what didn’t happen, and what should have happened washed over me. I sobbed, wailing on the couch alone, a cry I had never heard before that was both terrifying and relieving.
I imagined young me in her moments of loneliness, I imagined young me watching her ideal world fall apart before her eyes with no power to hold it together. I imagined myself going to her, kneeling before her as she let the weight of grief overwhelm her in my arms. I imagined doing for that little girl what should have been done for me.
“I am so sorry.” I whispered to myself. “It all should have been different.”
I had always been afraid of being dramatic, a victim, a burden. I told myself to stay strong, to keep waking up everyday. It was this fear that kept me stagnant for years. It was acknowledging that my pain was not dramatic or something to be pushed to the side, but my pain was something that deserved to be felt.
So as I wailed on the couch letting the waves of grief wash over me I felt myself suddenly becoming lighter. I was healing a wound inside my soul that had been left untouched for far-to long.
Reader, whatever it is you are going through, or went through, I hope you give yourself permission to feel, to cry, to laugh, to yell. I have come to the conclusion that all of our human emotions, especially the uncomfortable ones, are vital tools to find healing.
