the eugene bean

"It doesn't matter who your parents are or how wealthy or sick or ambivalent your relationship with them is, they will always be the most powerful people in your life. They will be the ones whose approval you will always crave. They will be the ones who hold the power to elate or crush you with a word....your parents will always be the people who juggle knives over your heart. If you're lucky, they'll know it and juggle carefully."
~Lani Diane Rich from Ex and the Single Girl

So I've been tagged by Lisa to respond to this quote.

It's a hard one for me. I almost gave up on it. (Sound familiar Wen?) It's hard for 2 reasons.

I'm struggling with my relationship with my own parents. I'm sure it could be blamed for any number of reasons. In the last 9 months I've gone through many changes, and my parents have been struggling with the fun stuff of life like mental illness and hurricanes.

I know that they continue to surround me with unconditional love. I know they support me completely from 2,500 miles away. But, I still find my relationship with them to be full of stress right now. Normal ebb and flow? Probably.

On the bright side, it's not hard for me to remember the love and support I've been showered with all my life. My parents, my mom in particular, carried me. First in the womb, then as a child learning about the world, then as an adolescent struggling with life's pain. She carried me through an early pregnancy, she carried me through the birth of my first child and my short period of total postpartum shock. She carried me during a miscarriage, during surgeries, and through the terrible twos (and threes) of both of my children.

I have been lifted, loved, and praised for my whole life. And I owe that to my parents.

Side note: Am I the only one who finds relationships so stressful? I've recently wanted to crawl under a rock so as not to 'deal' with the people who love me. How awful am I?

The second reason this quote is difficult for me to process has to do with my job. Working with children who are victims of devastating abuse is teaching me a lot about trust, development, pain, and love. My students love the people who have hurt them the most. They worship parents who have abused them sexually, physically, and emotionally. They are unable to separate the pain they've felt from parental love so they freak out and associate all love with horror. Just like the quote says, my students' parents are the most powerful people in their lives; and the hurt continues because the kids have so little control over their hope and love. I wish I could scream, "Who cares if they made you? They also made you a neurotic, depressed, frustrated, sad, terrified child. Can't you see how unhealthy they are???"

But I can't. They'll live life and struggle through their own mess and sort through what they have, hopefully to become the best they can be. I'll continue to offer love and support, modeling what they should have had but didn't get.

Did I mention that I'm finding relationships difficult right now? :)