We are our parents

The thrill of the fight was my fuel throughout my life, especially if it had to do with unfairness or with defending someone’s rights. I think it was in my DNA and also modeled to me throughout my life. Raised by a lawyer who went to law school (and was first in her graduating class) in order to defend people and their rights, even though she never practiced law, it was something inherent in my mother. It became a “game” in our relationship at some point in my life. I remember family members finding it amusing because the two of us would constantly argue, she would “correct” me where she found “holes” in my reasoning, and in turn I learned to “correct” her. This created a very tense situation without either of us realizing that we were slowly digging our own graves. I am very much like my mother and I would not go down without a fight. That made our relationship tense to say the least.

Apparently as she points out, I was always upset when someone said I looked like her or acted like her. I feel bad that I rejected that notion, but with more awareness I understand now that I could not possibly have wanted to be like the “opposing council”. There was a subtle tension that was created where everything had to be litigated, even at our daily family dinners. We all learned to make arguments, to find “holes” in other’s, and to go for the jugular if we felt we had to. It is in my makeup, and sometimes it served me as I went into the world and encountered situations that were “unfair”. I felt like Superman or the Incredible Hulk, just a regular person until something unfair happened and then watch out, I would not leave anyone standing.

That adrenaline that went through my body as it was getting ready to “defend” myself or anyone in need, was something so familiar. I was not aware of how it was affecting my body, my mind and my spirit. I would put myself through that cocktail of emotions for anyone and for anything, no matter how trivial, until my body said NO.

I am like my mother, maybe neither of us was taught that the one person they needed to proctect was ourselves. Maybe we felt overwhelmed and both rose to the occasion and found that this strength, intelligence and stamina could keep us and those we loved alive and safe. Both my mom and I (independently and on different occasions) have faced assailants and demanded our wallets back (and got them) when there was no more than $5 in them, just because it was an unfair situation. I even chased after someone who was running away with my backpack. Before he reached the end of the block he had dropped it and ran away. I always wonder what I would have done if I had actually caught up with him…..

I was drawn to Family Constellations by the desire to understand myself and my most influential relationships (parents). It is arduous work to go back to look at things from the past, to look at relationships with new eyes, especially as we grow up, build our lives and are seemingly happy. But after working with this tool and witnessing the journeys of hundreds of people, we are never “free” of those two most influential relationships, not only because the way we understood the world was through their eyes, but because we also share their DNA.

I was drawn to Family Constellations after my cancer diagnosis which made me realize that life could be very short and that I was much less in control than I had ever allowed myself to acknowledge. Some people would think that at that point you would only want to look forward to your future, however long that is. But my soul knew that you can not look forward until you look back and heal what needs to be looked at. Only then can you be truly free. I was afraid to look back at those relationships, first because they were not “that bad”, I love my parents and they have always been in my life. But there were things about our relationship that I knew I needed to fix. And it was then that I decided that even if it killed me, the one thing I would not die regretting was my relationship with my mother.

It has not been easy to decide to work on that. Really work on that, not on “getting along with her”, but on going back to each situation and looking at it again with my grown up eyes, crying, feeling it all again and “storing” it differently. Getting off my high horse where I thought I was better or could have done it better was a very humbling experience. I remember as part of my training to become a facilitator in Family Constellations, we did a meditation where our teacher had us stand up and close our eyes. She guided each of us in the meditation and then instructed me to open my eyes and turn around. There were representatives for my parents standing in front of me. Then standing on top of chairs, representatives for both my set of grandparents and in the distance someone representing life or all the other generations. I remember opening my eyes and sobbing when I saw that scene. I had come from all of that, not all had been what I had wanted but it had been perfect. All of those generations and people who came before me who because of them, I found myself there that day. In Constellation work many times we bow as a sign of respect, acceptance and recognition. So I bowed to all of it and my teacher put her hand on my back and I knew that bowing would not be enough for me. As I went down to the ground sobbing out of gratitude for everyone that had come before me, a huge weight began to be lifted off me. I stayed there on the floor for what seemed like an eternity and when I got up I felt so much strength from my ancestors.

A lot of us are adults, dress like adults, but our child is still running the show. We are still waiting for our parents to give us what we needed. Becoming an adult is not about turning 21, it is about not asking for something from our parents that they could not give us. Now it is our turn to do whatever work we need to do to heal. It is up to us now to give ourselves what we need and stop asking for it. When we do this kind of work (which takes a lot of courage), we begin to feel the strength of our parents. We begin to embrace those things where we are like them. You see, we all are 50% our mother and 50% our father, so if there are things about them that we reject, then we are also rejecting them in ourselves. But we can not “talk ourselves” into a change of this magnitude. It needs to be felt in our hearts for it to be transformational.

I now realize that I see the strength in my mom much more than I see her weaknesses. I look at pictures of her when she was a young mom and we look so much alike. I now see that she was beautiful, that she was courageous to follow my dad around the world. I see that she was very faithful to her family and carried a lot for them. I can see she was a loving mother who raised three well adapted children who went on to contribute to the world. I see a mother who left behind what she wanted to dedicate herself to her family. Not all of these things might have been easy or good for her, but I now see the intention she had in her heart and it was pure love. Whatever part of it was not adaptative or positive, now it is up to me to heal and change. And my children will have to go through the same process in order to heal those things that I could not give them. That way we will form a cycle of creative energy, where we are honest, where we include everything and where we hopefully leave less for each generation to carry.

Today I cherish that “fight” my mom put in me. However I also are much more connected with my body, much more ok with living in the gray areas of life, therefore much less passionate about making my point, as I realize it is just my own personal view. I do sense my passion come out when I talk about healing, about Family Constellations, about Reiki. I feel slowly more connected, neither Superman nor Clark Kent. This passion begins to feel different, it shows me that we do not change who we are, but as we continue to grow our perspective and become more integrated, we no longer are defined to living in an all or nothing realm.