30 minutes of what – love or hatred… or something in between?

There’s four in the family. Mum, dad and two boys – one three the other a toddler. They’ve come to fish in the enclosed fishing park. Dad and mum delight in the thrill of easily catching the rainbow trout whilst the toddler remains strapped in his pusher and the three year old plays in the enclosed sand pit. Mum and dad are at the waters edge with the toddler behind them. I am standing watching and helping with the caught fish.

The toddler has a dummy in his mouth. He struggles to get out of his pusher, no one other me is aware of his struggles. He’s desperately straining himself to get free, but he doesn’t make a sound. He gives up, something has caught his attention – his mother’s voice at the fun of catching a fish.

The fish is dealt with and for the parents it’s back to fishing. The toddler struggles to free himself again. He makes a noise. His mother turns around and tickles his tummy. He squirms and giggles, she turns back to the fishing. Their other little boy is looking at them through the perspex door and has been doing so wanting to get out of the play area for some time. He doesn’t call out. His parents are too involved having their fun, he gives up and goes back to playing in the sand.

The toddler has thrown his dummy on the ground. His parents whilst waiting from me to attend to the next fish notice it, it’s sucked clean and returned to its rightful place. He seems happy with this stopping his struggles.

The young boy is again longing to come out. His father sees him, walks over and lets him out. He runs past his brother and over to a long line of small fishing rods used in the pond. His mother hurries after him, sees he’s about to start touching the rods and reels, grabs him lifting him away and convinces him that that best place from him to be is back in the sand pit. He seems okay about this idea. The fishing recommences.

The final fish is caught, the three year old is let out of the play area and off they go. The two parents are very happy about the very enjoyable time they had – mum even caught a fish! When usually she never catches anything.

Are they are a happy loving family? Do they all love each other? Do the parents love their children? This is what I want to portray in this blog. Superficially I would say yes. No one cried, they all had ‘fun’, so the parents declared, and the children mostly behaved themselves and did what they were told. And I’m sure the parents if asked would say yes they love their children – a BIG YES! And they would also probably say that yes their children are happy. They are happy, happy with each other and happy with their family and how everything is going. And if one were to ask the children if they are happy, would they too say yes?

So is this just a normal regular loving happy family?

Where I asked before I started my childhood repression healing I’d probably say yes, why not, everything seemed okay with everyone seemingly enjoying themselves. There were no fights, the parents seemed kind and caring, they didn’t chastise, humiliate, criticise, shit on their children like some other parents who come to the pond do. So yes, it all seems good, not great as the children weren’t included, but they were too young and it was probably better that they weren’t free to wander around being a nuisance nor get themselves into any trouble.

But now where I to ask myself the same question, it’s the things I didn’t notice or weren’t aware of before I started my childhood repression healing that greatly disturb me. Now I empathise with how terrible it feels being confined to your pusher unable to be free to wander where you like. Strapped in, all but caged in, without anyone – your parents – wanting to fully include you in their lives. The horror of only being a part person in your own family. A person that is coming into being but is forced to play a role as defined by being ‘acceptable’ by your mother and father. And so long as you play that role everything seems okay, but the truth is you feel unwanted, rejected – hated. Your own so-called loving parents don’t want to bother with you toddling all over the place. They have come to have their own fun all under the guise that it will be a fun thing for everyone to do, and yet you’re not included. They don’t care about you, not really care about you and your well-being, for if they did, then you would be the centre of their lives and everything would revolve around you, fishing or no fishing.  They wouldn’t be turning their backs on you and getting on with having their fun.

And where you truly loved you wouldn’t be pushed off to the play area there to stay until your parents have had their fun. And when you came out you would be allowed under their watchful and caring guidance to explore the pond area, to look at all the rods and reels, to touch and play with them. No one else was at the pond, and you can’t accidentally fall in. The parent can stop the child from damaging the rods and reels not that this three year old would do any damage, he wasn’t like that. But no, he couldn’t be free to move around enjoying his new world together with his parents and his little brother, his life isn’t about himself, it’s about his parents, he just has to fit in with them. And how does it feel to just have to fit in with your parents? It feels awful. It all feels awful, and you feel very, very bad, right to the core of your being when you’re not allowed to be as you want to be.

So I look and feel-remember how the same sorts of things were done to me. Done to me by my ‘loving’ parents, ignorant people who are that way all because they too were treated that way, all being made to shut off the real and true person, to stop being able to fully and freely express all the feelings they have. The parents are still shut away in their little play pen worlds, now including the fishing pond. And being so do the same to their own children shutting them away in their own little false worlds.

So as I look deeper I wonder where is this so-called love? And what really is it? And all I can come up with is that it’s not love, or if it is then it’s something of a superficial, even artificial and belief generated love, but it’s not true or pure because it’s all based around denying personality expression.

So all I can conclude is that this contrived love is the best these little children will get. It’s the best their parents got. It’s the best I got. It’s the best anyone got or gets, even though it might appear some people got or get more of it than others.

So is it love or is it something else – hate perhaps? Or is hate too harsh a word? But what is the opposite to love? Or maybe it’s something in the middle, a sort of friendship – being together, sharing life together to some degree, even if it is in a self-denying negative state of mind and will. Or is it as my mother often said: ‘It’s just your lot, so get on with it, don’t worry about it, of course it’s love, of course I love you – I’m your mother!’.

We are not aware or in touch with our true feelings. We’ve never been allowed to have and express them. We’ve had to deny this part of ourselves. And what we’ve been left with we have learnt to call love, being loving, living in a happy loving family. But how much is real and how much is false? And how can we tell when we’re not aware or allowed to be aware of what we really feel and what we did feel during our forming years?

We live denying our true selves, and so deny our children their true selves. And we call this way of life ‘loving each other’. And this is what we have to become aware of, at least those of us who want to live true and come back to their true self.

I present such posts not as a judgement and criticism of us or of these specific individuals at the fishing pond – we’re all in the same boat and we’re all fucked, only in different ways – but to make it be known. To make it be said. It has to be said, it has to be brought out before it can be accepted, spoken about, and then dealt with – the truth seen. And it’s the cause and at the root of all our problems, of every bad feeling we have, and mostly we just accept this is right, normal, generally ‘good parenting’. And because we don’t want to do anything about our bad feelings so far as uncovering the truth of why we feel them, we mostly do as my mother advised and just GET ON WITH IT, wrongly believing there is nothing we can do.

And it’s all so sad, and it IS all so wrong, and there IS something we can do about it.

Dancing bears of India

Put yourself in the bears place.

How can they be so cruel? To pierce the baby bears nose with a red hot iron needle, and then put a horrible coarse dirty rope through it, all so they can make the poor bear dance and do whatever they want it to do.

Why are we so cruel to animals? And why doesn’t everyone do something to stop it?

Big James read the brochure about the plight of the dancing bears in India, and Maddy couldn’t bear the fact that they are taken from their mother, who is killed, at only four weeks old – just tiny baby bear-cubs; kept in sacks and then have all sorts of cruel and terrible things done to them, all so the people can make them dance to try and get some money.

It’s not right. It’s not fair. Nothing, no one, not even an animal, should be made to suffer so cruelly – and to suffer so badly for the whole of ones life. To not be fed properly, to be kept in tiny rooms and cages, to always have that yucky rope up your nose and a tight painful muzzle strapped around your mouth and nose – it makes me want to cry.

I wish I could make the people stop doing it, but what can I do? Some good people are trying to help the bears and stop the cruelty, but it happens too much. Too many bears are suffering too much.

Maddy says the bears make her feel so bad, because they remind her of how cruelly she was treated by her parents. They hit her a lot, like the men hit the bears with their sticks. Maddy felt caged in, and was harshly controlled with no freedom of her own; none of her own life to do whatever she wanted to do it, always being made to do what her parents said. The bears being treated so badly greatly upsets her, she wants to go to India to help free them, but I hope she doesn’t go, for what will Big James and me do without her?

Seeing the pictures of the poor lovely friendly bears makes us all feel so bad. So many bad things are done to such nice kind animals. So many bad things are done to children.

And it makes sense that we hurt animals because we hurt our children, and all because we – as Maddy and Big James tell me – are hurting ourselves. I don’t want to hurt myself, or anyone, or any animal. I want everyone to live free. Yes, that’s what I want.

I’m not old enough to do anything to help the poor dancing bears in India (and they’ve nearly all been freed), although Maddy and Big James did send a little money; but if you can help, you can go here www.hsi.org.au so the rest of the dancing bears can be rescued and live free in the special sanctuaries for them without any horrible rope up their nose.

Put yourself … in your child’s place

Childhood repression and parenting

Put yourself in your child’s place.

“My feet are cold!”

“Well go and get some socks james – put your shoes on. Go on, don’t just sit there, if your feet are cold, go and put your shoes and socks on. It’s bad sitting around with cold feet, you’ll likely catch a chill, so hurry up, go on, do it now!”

But I don’t want to do it now. I want to sit and finish my bread and peanut butter, then I’ll do it.

Why can’t I just say what I feel, and do what I want to do? Why can’t she leave me alone – stop telling me what to do all the time? Does she think I’m an absolute moron and don’t know I can put shoes and socks on? Why doesn’t she just wait and see what I do? And if she wonders why I’m not doing anything about it, then ask me, not just take over and order me around. She’s always taking over having to be the boss of everything.

I feel so anxious. Every time I open my mouth I am told to do something, all when I don’t want to do it. I wish I didn’t speak, but if I don’t say anything, then I get told to speak!

Why can’t she be nice to me? Listen to what I say and just empathize with me, leaving me to my life. I just want to say my feet are cold so I can get some sympathy from her. And with her love and care of me, I would feel good, better, and I’d be able to sit a little longer with my cold feet while I finish off my afternoon snack. Then I’ll go and attend to my feet.

I wish she would leave me alone and stop interfering all the time. I don’t want to get into trouble for having cold feet, and saying so; and I don’t want to have shoes and socks on yet, I like my feet being bare. I don’t want to feel worse than my cold feet are making me feel. I don’t want to feel like I don’t matter and my feet are more important than me.

Jake’s mother, when he said he had cold feet the other day, didn’t tell him what to do, she even offered to get his shoes and socks for him! I wish my Gran was like his mother and would do the same.

Jake’s mother isn’t always telling him what to do and making him do it when he doesn’t want to. She doesn’t interfere in his life. She lets him live it and be just how he wants to be. She doesn’t think he’d catch a cold if his feet are cold. She knows he’s old enough and quite capable of looking after himself. She doesn’t treat him like a dumbo, like he doesn’t know anything. She’d let Jake have cold feet all day long if he wanted them, and she likes him telling her what he’s feeling. She doesn’t see that feeling bad about something like having cold feet is bad. It’s just having cold feet. And having cold feet isn’t going to kill you. And so what if it does, you die and go to heaven. What’s so bad about that?

Put yourself  … in your child’s place