Lately I've been thinking a lot about the concept of forgiving our parents.
My parents had a rough marriage while I was young which culminated in a very ugly divorce. They acted in ways that most people today know not to do. But the concept of divorce was new and there wasn't the resources available then to help people through the process.
Louise Hay explains that before we can love ourselves, we have to forgive our parents. She explains that we actually pick our parents and that we pick them to teach us an important life lesson in our multi life spiritual journey. That concept is a little far out for me, but I can relate to resolving our relationship with our parents in order to be spiritually healthy.
Another reason this has been on my mind is the central theme in the movie, Into the Wild, which I got to see this weekend. It is a delicious and wonderful movie about a spiritual journey of a young man after college. He harbors a lot of anger towards his parents, but seems to slowly come to grips with his anger. Some may argue that he resolves it.
I've often wondered if I've truly forgiven my mom, and I think I have. During our talk last night, she talked about what she did wrong during the divorce. I think it came up after we talked a little about my brother, who is recently divorced. I found myself defending her to herself. Telling her that she did the best she could under the circumstances and she knows different things now, but it is not fair to judge herself against today's knowledge.
Now I need to learn to be as forgiving of myself . . .
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.JPG)
2 comments:
So interesting. I feel like I have forgiven my parents a lot now that I am a parent myself. I realize that they did the best they could with limited time, resources and knowledge, just as I am doing.
I will have to check out that movie. It sounds really interesting. Tomorrow is my night to go out, but I don't know if I can make it to the 7pm show. I should try -- I could meet my husband at the theater with the kids on his way home. That might work since I know I would not be able to stay awake for the 10pm show.
I so relate to the idea of being forgiving of self. I am right there with you on needing to do that.
I think it is important to forgive our parents, because our parents formed our foundations on nearly every issue. Some of those get ripped up and relaid by new information, but really, our parents are our "first impression" of how to be.
I can't wait to see the movie... we don't have a theater up here, but I will be moving at the end of next week to somewhere that does. Yay!
Post a Comment