Re-Parenting

Our parents mess us up. Even the best ones.

Sometimes it’s been awfully obvious and other times less so. Either way, we are often curiously determined not to see it.

Or, if there is a willingness to recognise these wrongdoings from the past, they are often explained away. The grievance is offset by intellectualising why it happened, rather than surrendering to how it felt. Commonly it’s excused via “they were doing their best”, or “they had their own troubled childhood”.

We view the past from our grown up vantage point and assess it based on how we see things now. But that doesn’t undo the damage. Fixing up the mess requires that we orient to how it felt then, not now. It’s a matter of recalling the experience as it was for us when we were children going through it. In remaining true to the original position, we allow ourselves into the small and vulnerable feelings of confusion, hurt, powerlessness, and injustice. We don’t use rationalising to distance ourselves from what happened. Or excuse our parents from their unloving actions. Feeling the emotions makes bad feelings go away, not understanding why they happened.

It can be really hard to admit that our parents made mistakes that harmed us. It’s an uncomfortable place to be. But it’s only when we can see where things are wrong, that we’re fully capable of correcting them.

We’re all building our lives on fractured foundations.

The world needs reparenting.

We need to find ways to open to more love than was available to us as we grew up. So long as we have gaps inside where love was missing, we will perpetuate that same pain. We all have different deficits that require repair.

Reparenting means attending to all the big and small scars from childhood that resulted from our parents failures. It means correcting all the ways we were wronged so that we can live more and more from our hearts, rather than from our wounding.

Where can we recover this lack of love to heal our broken aspects? We can do much to heal ourselves but we can also do so much for each other. We can be reparented from many directions:

Children can reparent their own mother and father.

Partners can reparent each other.

Coaches can reparent their clients.

Teachers can reparent children.

Friends can offer each other reparenting.

Companies can even extend opportunities for reparenting to their employees.

How?

The perfect parent would remain loving at all times.

Wherever we can bring love to someone’s old pain, we offer them tender care that may have been denied them as a child. In the perfect world, our parents would have the perceptive capacity to see and know us so deeply as to recognise our inherent potential from very early on. Our passions and desires would be honoured and nurtured (even if they took our parents into unknown territory). Our refined sensitivity to the unseen world would be respected. Our emotions would be listened to. Our preferences would be recognized as valid. Our decisions would be supported.

Reparenting in action:

We might see someone demonstrate great skill, yet fail to hold their own talent in high regard. We could reparent them by giving such earnest and heartfelt compliments that they become tearful from the affirmation of the loving recognition.

When we’ve taught ourselves that it’s okay to cry, we might gently support our father to get in touch with his own tears.

If our friend is afraid to go after their dreams, we can champion their passions to help them resurrect innocent belief in great possibilities.

Perhaps our partner had their sensitivity stomped on in a rough family and they need our tenderness on full display to help them feel safe to resurrect their own.

Maybe we can hug all sorts of disassociated people so closely that they feel safe to start relaxing into their bodies.

Company policies can support a culture of self care, time off and prioritizing family connection.

We can be mothers and fathers to each other in so many beautiful, kind, sweet and loving ways. Big and small. Bit by bit we can wash out the hurts from the past and offer reconditioning for each other’s hearts with devoted care all around.