Struggling to love your parents!

While reflecting on a question that I was asked recently, I felt drawn to share it here. The question – ‘Why are we told to repair our relationship with our parents to heal from trauma? What if you don’t like your own mother/father? How do you reconcile?’

The simple answer to the question why is because we are deeply connected to our parents, they are a part of us. Whether we like them or not is immaterial. Not liking our parents, and not just our parents, but other members of our family, like our siblings, is similar to not liking parts of ourselves.

An integral part of our life purpose is to remember/learn to love all these different parts of ourselves. This is the path to reclaiming our wholeness to be able to live life with peace, love, joy, good health and prosperity – something most of us long for.

This is easier said than done though, especially if a difficulty exists in the relationship. Knowing something is easier than living it ie feeling it. Just because we are told to love our parents, is not enough to be able to feel the love.

For me, a daily spiritual practice helps to go within and figure out the way forward when I feel stuck or unable to move forward. It feels easier to love the part of me that is struggling to love the parents or someone else that I feel I ought to love. It feels easier to hold this part of me that is struggling with love and compassion, acknowledging that there is something painful, some difficulty, a wound perhaps, held in my being from the past.

It does not feel necessary to figure out the underlying cause. Trying to fix problems, ignoring them or running away from them does not seem to work either. It feels possible to transform difficulties with love.

Sometimes this approach can even help transform my feelings to gratitude from anger towards the person, gratitude for helping me to experience the difficulty and help this wound surface to my conscious awareness so that I do not have to keep experiencing it. Compassion and gratitude are different strands of love. It seems easier to feel compassion for the part of me that is struggling, than to feel it for another person.

For Reiki students, this question seems to be about the Principle – Honour your parents, teachers and elders.

For people interested in Astrology, I find it interesting that this question arose at this time of Sun in the sign of Cancer, the sign of home, family and feelings. Cancer is ruled by the Moon, the planet/star of emotions and inner self. To me, this indicates how tuned in this person is to Universal flow.

This is where I am at this time, on the journey of learning to love and heal. With continued daily practice of Reiki, Yoga, Soul Plan healing, I trust that more insights will surface in time. I find comfort from this quote when I find myself struggling with a relationship:

You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday.
You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity
.”
― Epicurus, an ancient Greek philosopher

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