Do The Inner Work BEFORE Your Parents Die!
My remaining parent died last month.
And whilst of course I felt sad and made space to grieve the father who is no longer, celebrate the positive contributions that he made to both my life and to society, as well as honour the traits that I am proud to have inherited from him, the overriding emotion provoked by his death (as by my mother’s two years earlier) was relief…
relief at the letting go of expectations of me that died with them
relief at the loosening of the responsibility I felt for their emotional health - their low-self worth, their loneliness, their depression, their regrets
relief at the release of guilt around not having spent enough time with them
relief at the end of the anticipation and dread of further mental and physical decline
I felt newly unshackled from the parts of my identity that I didn’t choosE…
…my birth family, birth place and all of the fears, self-limiting beliefs, ancestral patterns and trauma that came with it.
As though I had been given final and full permission to launch into the world as myself, free of any misplaced loyalty that might tether me to a tribe which had come to the physical end of its custodianship.
The caretaking wasn’t great - it left deep scars.
Which is not only why I do what I do (support mothers to make peace with their past - just as I did - so that it doesn’t live on through them and into the next generation) but also why the ‘grieving process’ was far from straightforward.
Because when the attachment you experience with a parent isn’t ‘secure’ (as it should be)…
the physical loss of a parent isn’t necessarily followed by an emotional one
… such as a loss of comfort, safety and protection, a loss of knowing that you could rely on that person to meet your emotional and physical needs.
Instead, what surges up are whichever ‘negative’ emotions you experienced as a child, adolescent and young adult, that you couldn’t express at the time but haven’t yet processed and integrated:
ANGER that they chose not to see the effect their limitations were having on you
GRIEF that you never got to experience the unconditionally loving parent you deserved
DISSAPOINTMENT that they never tried to change and become more of who you needed them to be
These are mixed in with the understanding that comes with being adult:
COMPASSION that they tried their best with the tools that they had
EMPATHY for why they were the way they were - victims themselves of dysfunction with no positive rolemodels to emulate
LOVE for a parent, regardless of their limitations, precisely because they were your primary caregiver, however flawed
It is a complex cocktail to navigate.
Which is why it is so much more advisable to explore, heal and integrate these feelings BEFORE your parent passes away.
So that you have a chance to experience a healed dynamic - as an adult rather than as an inner child (who always needs others to behave in certain ways in order to feel safe).
Your relationship then has the opportunity to embody a more authentic, meaningful connection for both of you to enjoy, regardless of what it was before.
The point of inner work is therefore to make peace with whatever is still alive in you - causing you, your partner and your children pain - and process it so that it can be ‘filed away’ as the past, not the present.
To come to adult acceptance of your parent as a flawed, human being (just as you are a flawed, human being), which translates into presence, groundedness, confidence, an ability to remain calm and to love your children whatever they are feeling.
Then, when the time comes, you can mourn your parent’s passing without any longing for things to have been different.
There is no regret. Only a natural ending to a finite chapter of your life.
Relief was the overriding emotion for me when both of my parents died because I had already realeased the anger, aloneness and anxiety that were the unconscious themes of my past.
I now feel freer than ever before because I am no longer being hijacked by my wounded inner child. I am free to accept, to love and to be at peace with myself, my parents and my past.