Parented

My spiritual teacher asked me to write letters to my parents. Honest, if angry, letters about the ways they failed and betrayed me. Perhaps that should be a straightforward task. It doesn't feel that way for me. As a parent myself, I now consider my parents' actions through different lenses, and I worry about the ways I mother my own children. I'm quicker to excuse their behavior (or lack of) and try to explain it away or hold space for their own experiences. But that's not the point. 

The point is that I'm profoundly hurt by the lacking relationships I've had with both my mother and father, all my life. I've desperately wanted their love, understanding and approval, but I can't recall a time I ever felt that I had it. My relationships with them have formed impossibly deep beliefs about myself as a person, and none of them are good. I vacillate between grief and anger over these histories. Despite my acknowledgment that neither of my parents can or will ever be what I need them to be, I don't stop hoping for my mother to prove me wrong. I have struggled for so long with acceptance of this fact. I'm heartbroken repeatedly. I don't even know if she is aware of it. Or if she would care.

Processing those feelings (namely sadness and anger) has proven quite difficult as well, for reasons I don't completely understand. The anger that exists inside my cells is white hot, and right beneath it is sadness that feels so deep I may drown. Sitting with or in them is nearly impossible. I fidget. I avert my eyes. I hold my breath. I get up to do other things. I walk away. I pick up my phone. I leave the house. Simply allowing the emotion to exist and tuning into it feels like a Herculean task. Something my body no longer remembers how to do.

When Prem asked me to sit still during neurolinguistic exercises, I clenched every muscle in my body, and barely opened my mouth to speak. Retraining my nervous system feels impossible. IT IS POSSIBLE. But most often, it feels like it isn't. I haven't given the exercises put before me a fair chance. Meditation. Breathwork. Vagus nerve exercises. Movement. I know what I need to do, and I avoid it. It's like I have a potential roadmap out of this and won't use it. What the fuck is that about?