Family

In this lifetime it seems that I one of my major lessons has to do with family. I felt a lot of pain as I was growing up in relation to my family of origin. My dad abandoning me when I was six years old was tremendously painful to me. I have not yet touched the pain of that experience at its depth. Instead I carry it around with me. I hope in the next year to reach towards this pain in a counseling context and try to work through some of it.

Taking on a caretaker role with my mom from the time I was about six years old was also disruptive to my growth in childhood. Instead of receiving nurturing from my parents and imprinting on a healthy model, I had to use my own forces to keep the family afloat. I had to become a pillar long before I was of an age to take on such a task. I now am living with some of the consequences of growing up in that way. Now that I am an adult and would like to carry more, I find that it is difficult for me to do so at the level I would wish. I do the best I can but I also look around and see that others have a far greater carrying capacity than I do. Some of my "investment capital" vitality seems to have been spent in childhood when it should have been invested. Because it was spent then I have less now.

I am not saying this to be in a "poor me" kind of state of mind. I just need to face the facts. I can see that I have a path in the world; that I have unique gifts to offer. And in order to do this it seems important that I have an accurate picture of the vehicle I have been given. If I pretend that the vehicle is something that it's not, then I can be more likely to go into fantasy thoughts about what I can do in the world. That doesn't serve me or the world.

At the same time, it is crucial that I don't get into a negative self-talk and sell myself short. There are deficiencies that I have which I can overcome. But time also continues to march along. I am not thirty years old anymore. I need to take stock of what I have to bring and then try to bring it.

When I was growing up I often felt less than, like I was the deficient one, the less cool one. My friends all had more "normal" families and had more going for them. At the same time I could experience a potential within myself that was not related to my family. By the time I finished high school this potential was largely buried in drinking, drug use and trying to have sex with as many girls my age as I could. I was lost in the woods.

When I was seventeen I lived overseas for a year with a family who showed me a different way of living. They showed me what it was like to live in a warm and functional family. Coming back to the U.S. I started to try and live my life more out of the values I had learned from that family. But I was still very confused and felt lost in the world.

As a child I developed social skills differently than those with tighter-knit families. Relationships were for me less involved. I didn't have any siblings and I spent a lot of time alone. My mom was also both a single mom and kind of "whacky". We were different than the other families. I didn't see a single other family where I said to myself, "they're like us." I looked at families with many members and wished I had more family I could have been close to.

As I look back, it was certainly a grace that I had no siblings, as it would have been extremely diffficult for all of us, and it very likely would not have turned out well. It seems infinitely better to be an only child and have spent some lonely hours than to have siblingss who are really messed up and needing support. In the latter case I might have felt just as lonely and have had a lot more responsibility. Mom ended a pregnancy when I was 10 years old. I think that was a good call. She was not going to marry the guy and she was not able to take care of me adequately, let alone a new infant in addition to me.

I felt responsible to play an important part in keeping my mom afloat. I felt very isolated in many of my experiences and took on more responsibility than was healthy for someone of that age. I had been molested but didn't tell people about it. From the time I was seven years old I knew that there were things that had happened to me which were "bad" and which I needed to keep secret. My father had abandoned me. I couldn't even speak that to myself. It was just too painful. It is almost too painful for me to say it today. I had to keep it all to myself. My mom was so involved in staying afloat herself that she never really asked me how any of these things were for me. And, having taken the caretaker role, I didn't expect her to.

My mom's illness, my dad's leaving and my being molested affect my current life every day. I will likely be dealing with their affects for the rest of my life. And, until recently, I haven't been able to talk about them. I've been profoundly ashamed of all three.

I don't keep in touch with the man my mom married when I was 15. They divorced when I was 23. He sent me a Christmas gift for several years before cutting back to a card and then stopping that a while back. I sent him Christmas cards too, though not every year. This past year he called me up when he was in town once and we had dinner. He said he was thinking of relocating to an area near where I live. It seemed to me like he wanted to connect with me to see what kind of contacts he had in the area. I don't really feel any kind of familial connection to him. I'm not really sure how to describe what the feeling is. It's ironic. I am actually legally his son. My mom really wanted him to adopt me when I was in high school. Because she wanted it I agreed to it. So legally I am his son. But I don't feel like his son, nor does he feel like my father, in any other way than on paper.

There were other friends of the family over the years who were like family to some degree. One of them died when I was 17 in an accident. He was a wonderful man whom I didn't see that often but really liked it when I did. Another family friend, as I got into adulthood, started giving me the impression that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with me. He regularly had sexual relationships outside of his marriage so it's probably not my imagining things. Anyway, it freaked me out. Kind of like having your uncle hitting on you.

My saving grace in terms of my family of origin were three individuals: My two grandparents and my aunt. All three of them gave me both love and attention as well as a solid example of basically healthy adult behavior. They all three had their faults but were very good people, each with a rich soul life, intelligence, and a grounded personality. You could rely on what they said and know that once you established something with them they would remember it and hold true to it.

I did not grow up in the same town as any of them but did see them about once per year as I was growing up. They had a lasting influence on me and came to love me for the radiant person that I am inside, not just to help "the poor son of our ill daughter/sister". My aunt especially really loved me for me and was willing to tell me so. I suppose someone who can have three people in their family, even if it's the extended family, who can offer that to them should consider themselves very lucky. In fact, I do consider myself very lucky.

All three of these dear people have now passed the threshold. I miss them each a lot. I hope they know how much their example meant to me. My sense of groundedness was so very tentative as a young adult and they helped me to find my ground within the family, and help me on my way into the adult world. Without their love and support my life would be VERY different than it is.

In my late teens and early twenties the chaos of my upbringing and my unwillingness to look at those issues meant that I was something of a loose cannon. Most people I would keep a "safe" distance from. That is, I would become friends but stand just on the other side of being truly close to them. There were a few important exceptions to that rule. When I dated someone I could bounce back and forth between sympathy and antipathy with the person I was with. I looked good on the outside but once a person got closer to me they began to see some odd behaviors.

The odd behaviors were an expression of the internal chaos I felt which I basically never showed on the outside. I was pretty much collected and friendly all of the time. That was "who I was" and I was not about to show others, or myself, anything else. By the time I was twenty-four I realized that I was really clueless about relationships and that I should not date anyone until I figured things out a bit better.

Looking back to that time it is clear to me that my wife has been the person who has been instrumental in my finding a peaceful and satisfying life as an adult. What I brought into my adult life was a potential to have a good life, but also a chaotic jumble of unconscious thoughts, feelings and actions which could cause me and others even more chaos and upset. I wanted to do good but there were unconscious forces acting through me which were sabotaging me on a regular basis. I didn't have any addictions, which was very helpful to finding my way out of the mess; but it was still a mess.

My wife has shown me what a stable, peaceful and rich family life is. She has taught me countless spiritual ideas and has offered me a level of love which got around all of my defenses. The purity of our connection bypassed my lower nature and spoke directly to my heart and ideals. The wonderful thing is that we have built a successful life together. We have been able to find more and more solid levels of ground in our life together. My two step-daughters have also taught me a tremendous amount about life. I have to pinch myself sometimes at the luck I have to be family with three such amazing people as my wife and step-daughters.

And being in family life has not been easy for me. My own unresolved pain has come up again and again. My difficulties in forming healthy relationships has made the road steep at times. There is still chaos in me that would want to tear down what I have achieved. But what is healthy in me has become stronger. The higher voice is able to see the tricks that the lower self is up to and to treat the lower side with firmness and compassion.

That's on my good days. And I have more good days than bad days.

My continuing with therapy is a way that I can continue to look at the pain I carry within, to transform it, and then release it. It is an on-going process and one I have to be committed to on a continual basis. When I fail, I try not to berate myself but pick myself up, acknowledge my error and inwardly commit to myself that I will do better the next time. It doesn't do any good to beat myself up. And it is crucial that I see my error for what it is, to the best of my ability. If I try to rationalize my error it only takes me that much longer to reach the goals I have for myself. So I might as be honest for my own sake.

And what I have realized is that the pain I carry around with me every day is steadily being turned into fuel; fuel for my gradual transformation.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben