MEMORY
We are in thrall to our traumatic memories. We cannot even bear to look at them, but we must. Rip off the thin, soaked bandage and take a look. This wound was inflicted long ago. Sometimes the circumstances seem too ridiculous even to explain. We hesitate to return to that childish world. “My mother called me crazy.” “Well, she’s the crazy one.” So why can’t we just shrug it off? Because of the LACK implied. Why couldn’t my mother see my uniqueness as positive? Accept the mourning that gushes in over fathers who called you a sissy, compared you to siblings, refused to stand up for you – ever. Ouch. We mourn, we weep, and then we look in the mirror. Aren’t we all grown up with dependents of our own” How do we treat them? Once the pain ebbs, we see our suffering parents for who they were – people longing to be different. They castigated us as they shamed themselves. It’s an ugly cycle. Where is the love?. Sometimes it’s a snuggling cat, a dog who lights up when we come in, a child’s confiding hand to cross the busy road. We have to accept that history is replete with terrible events and we are part of that. We survived. We recover. We pass the love, not the pain. Pass it along.
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