Suppose An Adult Child Despises You.....

Josie talked to me at length about her adult daughter whom she truly believes despises her. I listened with growing alarm and hoped she was exaggerating. None of us can handle hostility from a grown up son or daughter with absolute ease. I suppose we all, at some stage go through a phase where we blame our parents for the negative aspects of who we are, where we stand and what life is currently throwing at us. I can certainly remember feeling very bitter as a fourteen year old towards my own poor mother for not being the kind of parent who would support me (both emotionally and financially) into a future as an actress. Stardom beckoned and at the time the fact that working class widows who cleaned other people’s houses for a living did not have a great deal of surplus cash for stage school fees seemed to escape me quite easily. To be totally fair I don’t think I was all that unusual because when things don’t go right for you as a teenager it’s almost always a big deal. Fortunately by the time we reach our thirties and forties all of us usually grow out of the cycle of blame and have long ceased to lay responsibility for our own inadequacies at the feet of our parents. The truth is that of course each one of us is inevitably a product of our parents and grandparents – but on the other hand we don’t have to be an exact replica. We can choose to be different from those we see as directly responsible for failing us. We can be better than they were in an instant if we so choose. Though supposing you grew up with physical and mental abuse or suffered from serious neglect then that’s a different matter and it may take a lot of mental energy to let go of the bitterness and anger. If, however, there was food on the table, and a reasonable amount of love then it might be more constructive to consider yourself fortunate. So, why continue to dissect every moment where you consider that your parents screwed up? Have these lapses of the past really trapped you for ever within a fate dictated decades ago? Were those that wronged you really that powerful? Are you really forced to hold onto grudges, judgements, and childhood pain throughout your entire life? Surely, your particular mother and father were simply human beings, like everybody elses, people doing what they could with the knowledge they had. The good news is that with any luck you are a great deal better informed than they were and will be a better parent than they; you will see things quite differently. Remember though that seeing things differently does not imply that all previous ways of thinking are wrong. Once upon a time people thought the world was flat simply because they did not have the technical capability to conclude its actual shape. Yes, they were mistaken but does that also make them dishonest, or sinful or stupid? How about pausing to examine the happy memories of the past and look a little harder at the laughter and the love. And whilst doing so perhaps be grateful to the upbringing you experienced for giving you this current freedom to criticise and despise those who raised you. And then even give some thought to wondering if you are still loved in that all encompassing way you were as a child. The sad fact is that ongoing hostile attitudes can be astonishingly destructive. Those are the things I might have said to Josie's daughter had she been sitting in front of me at the table in La Cigale cafe this morning. Fortunately she was not, and all I was required to actually do was listen to Josie's pain and reassure her that she had been always a most exemplary parent.