Family dynamics

It seems to me a lot of our adult lives are an experience in re-parenting ourselves

This is a heavily paraphrased sentiment from someone I respect and admire. When he said it I took to heart that I have the capacity to provide myself everything I need emotionally, regardless of who my biological or chosen family is.

Osho says one of the core models for our enslavement originates from the nuclear family model. I think about how our families trap us-- in therapy to heal the wounds of childhood, in expectations and obligations from growing up, into believing any number of lies we as children had to tell ourselves, any number of stories we as small ones had to make up to explain away why daddy hates mommy why sister is so angry why brother does those bad things why why why why why.

It was all out of a need to survive not being old enough to understand or be told the truth. The motivation beneath it was survival. When we are trapped in fight or flight we cannot find how to simply exist, we lose ourselves to all kinds of vices and demons just to quiet the ones whose voices are, have been, the loudest for the longest.

My healing asked of me to go back in time and envision those memories (you know the ones burned into your retina memories so clearly you can revisit them at a moments notice) and put myself now into them. I held myself at age two, age six, age ten, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, I held myself as I am right now. I told each and every one of my same faces over the years,

"I love you, I am so sorry you are going through this. It will get better and I am so proud of you"
"This is not your fault. You are feeling so lost and in so much pain, and I love you for doing your absolute best to get through this. I love you so much and I promise it gets better"

Family dynamics. The second definition according to Google is "the forces or properties that stimulate growth, development, or change within a system or process", and within the system of self, the development of everything each of us is, resides those dynamics which propelled us to be who we are today. Good or bad, families are the forces which created us, stimulated our growth in-, out-, up-, and down- ward in so many ways.

I love my family. I have no emotional connection to my biological father. I do not miss him, but I have finally found myself in the emotional and spiritual place to reach out to him.

It is no longer out of a desire to prove myself to him-- that he fucked me up or that I was best off without him-- no longer out of a compulsion steeped in regret and sadness-- that I should call and that I owe it to him-- because I had forgiven him a long time ago.

The healing came when my own child self forgave me now. Not because I did this to her, not because this was my fault but because she needed to forgive herself to heal the inner turmoil within ourselves that I'd been looking to everyone and thing except her to heal.

I have a lot more parenting to do. I have a lot more learning, so much more self-examination, so much more exploration, so much more in life to find out. I still look to relationships to feel better, still crave all the numbing agents of mind silence and thought stagnation that my vices promise.

But I try continuously (and I forgive myself each time I do not fulfill those efforts) to remember their faces, to remember I am my own family, to remember the dynamics of families are not the only forces which "stimulate growth, development, or change within a system or process" because this is my process. I am not an island but I am also not enmeshed with anyone else except myself. I try to always remember her, even when I am fucking up, even when I am lost, even when I am actively doing things which I know cause her turmoil. Because I fuck up I tell her I am sorry again and again.

More importantly I think though, I tell her over and over that we are safe. I remind her I am strong enough for the both of us. I remind her she is loved and protected and powerful beyond her wildest dreams. I thank her and she thanks me.

We are the same person, always have been, and I continue to create my own growth, I continue to spiral downwards, I continue to lose battles against myself, I continue to thrive and to fail.

But what is most important is that I continue, with her, and with my own resilience, and through each day, whatever the day, knowing we are not alone.