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
