It’s not safe to believe parents who lie.
But if you’re a child with parents who lie,
It’s unbearable to know they are lying
and perhaps dangerous, too.
It’s unbearable to live with parents like that.
It’s not safe to have parents who bully and threaten, even subtly.
But if you’re a child with parents who bully and threaten,
it’s unbearable to experience that cruelty,
and dangerous, too.
It’s unbearable to live with parents like that.
It’s not safe to have parents who do what they want
the consequences be damned,
believe they can get away with it,
and actually get away with it again and again.
It’s unbearable to have parents like that.
It’s unbearable for a child to know s/he has parents like that.
It’s unbearable for a child to live with parents like that.
It’s not safe to live with parents like these
and then grow up without healing from your experience.
Without the conscious, purposeful healing,
you will become like your parent,
or the opposite of your parent,
or something in between …
each with a cauldron of intense, painful feelings deep inside you.
And … you will unconsciously create situations in the world around you
just like the one you grew up with.
You might be the child/victim of the bullying in the re-enactment;
you might be the bullying parent;
you might try to be the rescuing extended family member.
You might collude with the bully, enable the bully, encourage the bully;
you might try to protect yourself against the bully by joining with him.
But whatever role you enact,
without the conscious, purposeful healing,
it will not be resolvable.
And … you will have to live with the situations you create.
And so will everyone around you.
And all the other children who grow up without healing from their
childhood experiences …
will also unconsciously create situations in the world just like the ones
they grew up with.
You will have to live with their situations, just as they have to live with
yours.
Without the conscious, purposeful healing …
We will all have to live with the re-creations or re-enactments of each
others’ childhood traumas.
It’s not safe to have leaders who lie.
It’s not safe to have leaders who bully and threaten, even subtly.
It’s not safe to have leaders who do what they want
the consequences be damned,
believe they can get away with it,
and actually get away with it again and again.
Without conscious, purposeful healing …
We will all have to live with the re-enactments of each other’s
childhood traumas.
That is exactly what is occurring right now in these United States …
and all over the world.
We all keep creating more trauma from the buried, unhealed trauma we
experienced as children.
It isn’t safe.
It won’t be, no matter what we do in the outer world …
until we heal our inner worlds.
Please listen.
Please take this seriously.
Please take this to heart.
Please spread this truth.
Please do your own inner healing.
That is what will help us all most …
To create real safety.
© Judith Barr, 2020.
Thanks for speaking the truth I feel what you said in your email, my activism comes in the form of helping people do the internal work. And I march sometimes. And I take care of my own inner work. Thanks.
Dear Melissa …
You are so welcome.
Thank you for responding in kind.
I’m so touched that your activism comes mostly by helping people do the internal work and by doing your own internal work.
Every one of us who does our own inner work helps beyond our ability to count.
And every one of us who then helps someone else do his/her own inner work also helps beyond our ability to count.
May the numbers multiply exponentially so that real, sustainable change can occur at and from the root.
Many blessings to you, Melissa . . .
Judith