This Time
Even the most articulate and hard-working of us may find we cannot erase the imprint of a parent who was too busy or depressed to notice us or who seemed to consider us a burden. We then interpret this as our caregiver wishing we’d never been born. When we internalise such stances, our shame, if it could speak, would repeatedly tell us that “the world would be a better place if we were dead”. Our lives change only when we reconstruct the missing inner maps that should have been formed in safety and attunement…
Unlearning
When I thought I was heading to the most densely populated central quarter of town, I could feel the energy of the city ebb away into the calm of the countryside, beyond the countless improvised homes of the peri-urban belt. Then, in a moment of clarity, the riddle solved itself. Of course! I had, as always, been working on the premise that the sun was in the south. Not here! Roughly 2,500 km south of the equator, the sun appears to be in the north. This was the first of many lessons in unlearning which came my way during my African adventure…
Redemption
That is what the Twelve Steps are all about: a shift in perspective. Before we begin the journey of recovery, we are caught firmly in a trap that we cannot spring through self-sufficiency or mere egoic willpower (ergo the need for a “Higher Power” of our own understanding). We also suffer from a chronic perception disorder because of having lived so long in chaos, overwhelmed mode, denial, delusion, and the suppression of all the emotions we could not process or endure during the first, formative years of our lives. As traumatised adult children, we see the world as we are, not as it is..
Violence
Down on all fours, searching in vain, he hears the voice of a policeman who has happened upon the scene.
„Good evening, Sir. How can I help you?“
„Thank you, Constable. I have lost my keys.“
So, the policeman also gets down on all fours, pulls a flash light from his pocket and joins the search. After ten minutes, they both stand up, perplexed and disheartened.
„Are you sure you dropped them here, Sir?“, asks the policemen.
„Oh no,“ says the man. „I dropped them in that dark side street across the road over there.“
„Well, why in heaven’s name then are you searching here?“
„Because it is bright here, in the lamplight,“ was his laconic answer…
Generational Grief
My new friends in AA suggested placing my focus on what was needed in terms of new behaviours in the light of this discovery. The first, of course, was not to take the first drink. Much more was to come later, in the form of a new design for living as described in the Big Book of AA and summarised in the Twelve Steps. That work is still ongoing today, one day at a time. I also had a bizarre hunch in those first months, one that has been recently confirmed in my heart and soul, without solid external evidence: That I am the grandchild of one or more alcoholics.
Family Matters
From the child’s perspective we could apply the Zen proverb: `We never step into the same river twice.´ It is not the parent, per say, that determines the experience, but the relationship between the child, at any given moment, and the parenting at that same moment. Each interaction between a parent and any one child is a reprise of stepping into new waters, and for each parent-sibling combination there is a different river. In the overall picture, my impression is that our parents always acted with the best of intentions. Like all human beings they had their good days and bad, and sometimes their actions were determined by inner Saboteurs of which they had little awareness…
Weariness
In the neglect arising from the absence of the caregiver attuned to our needs we soon learn to take care of our own needs. We become the children who are often admired for our maturity beyond our years, a target of warm praise from our caregivers, our teachers, and later, our bosses. We are the hyper-independent self starters everyone wants on their team because we require little or no supervision. We learn to become the compliant partner in relationships or flip to the other extreme of trying to dominate them…
Isolation
Taking the bird’s-eye perspective, this would explain how we, as a species, have arrived at the point of jeopardising life on the planet through our self-centred actions. Were we truly connected (to ourselves, each other, and Creation), we would not, as a result of focusing on short-term material gains, drive other species to extinction, abuse billions of animals so cruelly to uphold unsustainable, outdated nutrition practices, and violate our nest through the proliferation of toxins in agriculture and industrial activities, as we are doing today…
Imposter
The only explanation I could find as to why this `unbearability of being´ had become my daily reality was that there must have been something inherently wrong with me. The only alternative explanation, — that my parents were so overwhelmed that they could not meet my basic emotional needs — would have been too much to endure for a child still dependent upon his parents. Add to these internal ruminations the messaging common in any group trying to function as best it can under severe pressure and it is no wonder that some of us arrive at the conclusion that we are useless, not good enough, that the world would be better off without us…
Longing
In our hyper-cerebral, post-modern culture, we may have been looking for answers in the wrong place all along. A fellow recently shared the following acronym during a meeting: FAITH = Finding Answers In The Heart. When we have begun to embrace all that resides within us, and only then, can true healing begin. Everything in there belongs to us. There are no bad parts, only those that pull us towards wholeness and those that would attempt to take us backwards, to the status quo of our early childhood sense of dis-ease…
