I always assumed my parents didn't love me very much. How would a little child get that idea? Without blaming, shaming or whining, I would say simply: whether my needs were over the top or not-they just weren't met.
I may have needed more hugs than most? I remember my mother coming into my arms when I was 18 and finally telling me that my father was not going to make it, I knew that already...my negative thinking had already prepared me for that. The biggest impact did not come from the fact that my father was dying-the strongest emotion I felt at that moment was, "My God, my mother is holding me...or is she holding on to me?" It felt like the later and that was ok but it was also sad. When my father left the house for his chest x-ray three months earlier, he looked me in the eye and said, "Take care of your mother." He knew too.
Maybe I needed more reassurance than the average kid. At one time I was absolutely sure that I was adopted-and therefore loved less. I think I was about 12 and alone in the house, when I searched the forbidden-to-touch desk for my adoption papers. I didn't find them. That of course brought about a whole new set of adjustments in thinking. They had me but I wasn't what they wanted.
They wanted to adopt the neighbor girl because she was in a chaotic home. They wanted to bring my cousin home because her parents picked on her. What's a kid supposed to think? That she had very compassionate parents would have been a great choice, and they were, but somehow the stand out was that I wasn't enough.
It is proposed by some that we spend all of our adult lives trying to heal our childhood. I know I have done that-spent the time and done the healing. I think that's why I'm still around here. I really want to help folks get through the healing.
When I went through the program it was obvious to me that the 6-year-old sick child, the 10-year-old fat child, and the 12-year-old "adoptee" needed some attention. I don't know how I thought to do this, but I found two pictures of me as a toddler. One is with my mother, I noted that she was smiling and looked genuinely pleased to be showing me off. One is my father looking not unpleased to be holding me. (It took a lot to make him smile...I remember with pleasure that I made him laugh out loud a couple of times.J Perhaps this is why making a joke is so important to me.) I took those pictures and framed them. I sat them beside my bed and they were the last things I looked at before going to sleep and the first thing I looked at upon awakening. I looked at my parent's faces for a year, on purpose.
I healed those children inside me. I'm not saying that they still don't influence me, my behavior, my decisions, but deciding that my parents did what they knew how to do at the time, with the intelligence and information they had at the time, has been a source of great comfort to all the parts that make up the whole me.
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