Events from childhood, our first experiences, have the power to shape our lives. Some do so immediately, offering us challenges to overcome and encouragement to make use of our talents and interests. In the process character is built, and we make the first steps upon our personal paths. Other events seem to lay dormant until adulthood, when our closest relationships help to bring out the deepest aspects of ourselves. This is when untended childhood wounds can make themselves known in a call for healing.
We may discover issues of trust coming up, or perhaps we find ourselves mirroring actions from our past instinctively. No matter the case, we have the power within us to heal ourselves at the deepest level.
My Thoughts:
My childhood was a really happy one, I was much loved by my father and my extended family who all lived in the same village, and I wanted for nothing. There was only one aspect that was as far from perfect as you could imagine … my mother. She was a career girl with visions far beyond her status, but with a determination to make them all come true regardless of who she used, abused and hurt, that is until she fell pregnant with me.
Although she did everything that she could think of to get rid of me (legally, illegally and even DIY methods), I was apparently going no-where. My dad was thrilled and adored me, I was the typical daddies-girl with a tomboy attitude, however my mother would openly admit to anyone that would listen that she never wanted children, that I was her biggest mistake, and as the years went on, I also became her biggest disappointment.
No matter what I did it was never good enough to please her. I was often in the top three places of school test but as far as she was concerned nothing mattered unless I was number one, at everything. It was no good just being the best at just some things. Nothing I did ever pleased her, including getting a fist-full of academic qualifications in my school exams, but what made it worse was that I had decided that I wanted to marry young, have a family and then go to university as a mature student when the kids were off hand. The idea of actively wanting a family at all, but to then choose that over a career was something she would never be able to accept. Once my father died when I was in my twenties, she all-but cut me out of her life.
So, I totally disagree that we all have the ability to heal ourselves from childhood pain at the deepest level … it is not that simple. Sometimes the way we view ourselves is conditioned by the past, regardless of any measure taken to dispel that. No matter how much I achieved in my life that I am proud of, the qualifications, my children, qualifying as a tutor for adults specialising in creative writing and those with learning difficulties and disabilities, and becoming an author … I always have that nagging voice deep in my soul that makes me doubt myself, the echo of my mother, her voice telling me I am a failure.
Nevertheless, I do think you can learn to live with the deep-seated pain and to overcome the traumas of childhood, but that said, however much I try and however much I succeed I often still feel like a failure. Thankfully though, I am constantly surrounded by a loving family and some great friends that think nothing of preverbally kicking my arse when I doubt myself.