What I’ve been reading (and watching) this week ending 1 February 2026 https://medium.com/@jchyip/what-ive-been-reading-and-watching-this-week-ending-1-february-2026-ee53cbc44943 #Lean #Leadership #Physics #Nonviolence #Forgiveness
forgiveness
THE CHILD IN THE MIDDLE 🔹
This morning, after my breathwork, I sat looking out the window.
It was only nine degrees, but I didn’t need the heating. Pete was steam-cleaning the floors, the house smelled of lavender, and about two metres from me, a huge green parrot with a bright red crest was having his breakfast in a tree fern.
The window framed him perfectly. He couldn’t see me through the glass. He stood on one foot, held his food with the other, and then, just as I was admiring him, he fell over.
He recovered his dignity. And I laughed. He’s still there as I’m writing this.
Making peace with the past doesn’t seem to stop memories from surfacing. It just changes the way they land.
Sometimes an old piece comes back without asking to be fixed, only to be seen from where we are now. And sometimes something you have blamed yourself for all your life suddenly becomes clear: it wasn’t you. You were a child. You weren’t responsible.
My parents were unhappily married. My mother became pregnant with me, and in those days, that meant they had to marry. I grew up with a deep sense that I was basically unwanted.
It has taken me a lifetime to see that whatever was happening between them belonged to them. It was never the responsibility of the child who arrived in the middle of it.
Something similar has been happening with my memories. I can look back at my childhood and see what happened without carrying the old guilt with it.
Children are not responsible for what happens to them.
That recognition has released something very old in me.
And then the forgiveness goes further.
I can look at my mother and father and see two very young people who hardly knew one another, trying to live with what they knew at the time.
I don’t have to pretend the family wasn’t a catastrophe. I don’t have to rewrite the past or make painful things beautiful.
I can simply see more clearly now.
I was mistaken about my parents.
That doesn’t mean the events were different. It means my perception of them is different.
And strangely, wonderfully, I find deep gratitude there.
The Course calls it a movement from insanity to sanity. For me, this morning, it feels much simpler than that.
The past is still the past.
It just isn’t touching me.
Meanwhile, the parrot is having breakfast, Pete is cleaning the floors, the house smells of lavender, and life keeps presenting itself.
One miracle after another.
@3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek
#Forgiveness #Childhood #HealingThePast #ACourseInMiracles #ACIM #Innocence #Perception #Family #Gratitude #Miracles
THE FIRST LIE WAS:
IT MUST BE ME? 💎
I realised something this morning that has been sitting quietly underneath a great deal of my life. Kids feel guilty about things they are not responsible for and don't understand.
Dad is angry.
The marriage is unhappy.
Mum withdraws love.
The house becomes frightening.
The adults behave badly.
And somehow, as children, we concluded:
IT MUST BE ME.
That is an extraordinary burden to place inside a small human being. The child does not have enough information to say, “These adults are frightened, damaged, confused, overwhelmed, or simply behaving badly.” The child only knows that something has gone dreadfully wrong.
SO GUILT ARRIVES.
And because children are brilliant at adapting, they may spend the next fifty or sixty years trying to correct an error that was never theirs in the first place.
Trying to be good enough. Useful enough. Quiet enough. Successful enough. Lovable enough. Trying, without ever quite knowing it, to repair the house they grew up in.
BUT THERE MAY HAVE BEEN NOTHING TO REPAIR IN YOU.
That is the part I find so liberating. I am not interested in blaming anybody. Blame is just guilt travelling in the opposite direction. I am interested in seeing the original error.
As a child, I assumed responsibility for something beyond my understanding and control. Then adulthood grew around that assumption. Seeing the error clearly does not require years of punishment, explanation or excavation. Sometimes the correction is astonishingly simple.
THAT WAS NOT MINE.
And perhaps it never was.
@3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek
Edited 24d ago