Healing the Pain that Keeps Families Apart

Family matters. It's the source of our greatest joys. And also our deepest heartaches. It gives rise to our closest connections. Sometimes, though, it digs our deepest chasms as well.

Lord knows how we love our families. Somehow, that doesn't seem to be enough to heal the scars that often come when those we care about most hurt us.

Whether our hearts are ripped apart by a single event or we die a death of a thousand agonizing cuts, the result is often the same -- the hurts of our past are carried with us and become the obstacles of our present. Rather than moving smoothly into the future and allowing our relationships to evolve as we do, the memories of our pain is so great that we're locked into rigid beliefs and perspectives about each other that keep us from seeing our family members as anything other than what they were in earlier days.

Sure, we recognize all the many wonderful traits each other has, and can even let our hair down long enough to enjoy the moments of laughter and love we share together as life moves on.

But the memories of that past are always lurking in the background, waiting to be pulled out, dusted off, and spewn back whenever opportunity strikes. And eventually it will.

Something will happen that bumps up against an unresolved family dynamic, in the process pushing our emotional hot buttons and releasing a lifetime of pain, resentment, and judgment against those we love most. And when this happens, it's not long until we drag out our laundry list of all the things we harbor against each other that we've unsuccessfully tried to forget.

Little do we know that something within us is holding tight to the pains of the past and dragging them forward to poison our experience of the moment. We just can't let go. We're like Linus, and those pains are a security blanket we carry around with us to assuage our guilt over not being able to meet our families as they are now without imposing upon them the burdens of our discordant past.

Many times these situations arise when we struggle to get what we want within the family. Unmet desires for acknowledgment, attention and acceptance are often at work both within the parent-child relationship as well as between siblings, unleashing rivalries and resentments formed long ago when we perceived there wasn't enough love and attention to go around, or we were denied something else we wanted.

No matter how we try to reconcile these differences and accept each other for who we are and what we have become, too often it just puts a bandage over a wound that continues to fester. And when something happens to rip that bandage off, we revert to the battles of our youth.

Regardless of how such conditions were formed or how they manifest now, we must realize that the problem is not with the family member against whom our anger is projected. Rather, it is within us.

Something in our youth activated highly-charged hot buttons that are easily pushed when similar circumstances arise throughout our lives. And when they are, we resort to the same means of expression and approaches we used when we were younger.

Yet despite the perceived righteousness of our positions, too often these battles stem from cracks in our self-image. The situations triggering our wrath reinforce our own issues and inner conditions, and result in subconscious efforts to get our family members to see us as we want to see ourselves.

Unfortunately, no matter how much we act out otherwise, the underlying cause really isn't about them not giving us what we want, or even accepting us as we are.

Rather, it's all about how we see ourselves. The blinders of these egoic shells keep us from recognizing the magnificent, powerful and loving beings that we are at our core. Instead, all we can see are the limitations and weaknesses of our human condition, and from them interpret these expressions as imperfections that must be eradicated. And being unable to rid ourselves of them, we fight with anyone and anything that reminds us we are less than perfect.

When gripped in the throes of such misconceptions, anything anyone else might do can at best only provide temporary relief from the gnawing pain that eats away at us inside. Yet still we make war on those who refuse to provide such relief, not realizing that we are the only ones who can do anything about it. But we don't.

We all want to be loved. But most of all, we want to love ourselves. Too often our false images of self cause us to withhold it from the one who matters most -- us. When we do, we hope against hope our families will step up to give that love to us.

Most times they probably will. But there are times they can't, like when they are so affected by other circumstances or doing what they think is right that there isn't much left to give, at least in the form we want it.

And when that happens, those old views, beliefs and response patterns are once again dragged out and put to work, spewed as a venom that tells everyone we're not getting what we want and need. But what we rarely say, or even recognize, is that we want it because we aren't giving it to ourselves, either.

The answer isn't to build the walls higher and go our separate ways, though too often families so hurt each other that is often the case. It's simply to recognize that within these bodies we are imperfect beings manifesting conditions that allow us to experience separation, not only from each other, but from the love we crave that seems so hard to come by.

When that separation leads to misunderstanding and conflict, all we can do is take a time out from the battles, regroup, and then set about loving them as best as we can, regardless what they do or don't do. After all, life is all about our spiritual evolution, and that growth is best demonstrated when we love others just the way they are -- and that includes forgiving them for not being what we want them to be.

No matter how much we'd like to think otherwise, there's no escape from these situations, nor should we try. They offer us great opportunities for growth, and most importantly, to learn the lessons of love we came to get.

So if you find yourself fighting these family battles over and over again, unleashing the pain, resentment and grudges of your past, perhaps you might give thanks for the chance to try another way. For they're simply holding up a mirror so you can see what's going on in you (as you are doing for them) -- and the wars will probably continue until you all figure it out.

If have the presence of mind, you might try to enjoy these moments that aggravate you so. After all, you created them, or at least did your part to make them the way they are. And most importantly, one day you won't have the chance any more, and you'll miss each other terribly regardless of how you feel in the heat of the moment.

It is, after all, the bond of your love that allows you to act this way in the first place. Maybe when the dust settles, you'll find a way to show it.

I love you no matter what you do. God bless you indeed.

- john