Making Amends to My Children and R.I.P.

I had a person say to me, "You're so nice to me.  Like a mom.  Except my mom was mean to me."  "Maybe", I said, "she was stressed out, overwhelmed and didn't know what to do?"  "No", he said, "she was mean to me because I was bad."  My heart went out to him because I could relate to him in my own development and relate to his mom the way I did to mine plus to the "mom" I personally used to be.  I see now where children in their heart-filled loyalty to their parents can internalize the "blame" for all the things that go "wrong" and in this way absolve parental guilt.  Like sacrificial lambs of the spirit they take on the blame which become legacies of generational, traditional and racial guilt.  Some people will completely deny their parents had problems, they were "guilt-free".  They were fine and so, therefore, are their children who grow up to be "fine".  Denial is incredibly powerful.

The truth is I fought so much to not be like my mom but I was more like her than what I could see during that time.  The biggest legacy I carried was of emotional, mental and physical abuse wrapped around neglect, abandonment, and deprivation and guess what?  That's what I passed on to my children.  Maybe I didn't do this all the time and in everything, I did it enough to hurt them.  Maybe not on the level for the law of the land to intervene but I did it enough to pass on the family legacy.  Did I know then?  I knew something was wrong but I didn't know exactly what it was and what to do to fix it.

Not all abuse is apparent.  Some of it is hidden behind smokey mirrors, foggy windows and spooky incantations of "don't say anything".  A lot of the times children keep things to themselves to protect their parents who might not be able to handle the truth.  I've seen Dr. Phil and Oprah shows where children told their parents who in turn acted-out and in the long run the children ended-up in worse, life-threatening desperate situations than before, plus without their mom or dad who ended up in prison for life.   Jeesh.  It seems to me, when children survive to adulthood it is a big testament to their amazing courage, resiliency and independent thinking.  Wow!  Good job.

The gift of recovery is not just about me.  A great motivator in coming to AA and quitting drinking was to help my children.  I knew I could never go back and change the past and all the harm I'd done to them.  No amount of words would ever change the past.  I've learned the best way to extend a loving, healing hand to them is by making living amends.  As I work the 12 Steps program there are multiple opportunities to clean my side of the street by owning up to the messes I made and asking how can I make it up to them?  My mom was never really able to do this for me but she gave me a great opportunity to see how it felt to not have it and want it so I could, in turn, by distinguishing the difference, extend to my children what I'd wanted from my mom.

How can I make amends to my own children?  By working the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions I can change the family legacies of "me, me, me" and "more, more, more" to Freedom At Last in the Sunlight of the Spirit, so help me GOD...one day at a time placing principles above personalities...etc.