Lifestyle

Growing Up Isn’t Easy

July 28, 2019 / 95 Comments

Going Home 

This past week I went on a family vacation with my kids, sister and her daughter to visit my Dad and his family in Ventura, California, 

I was feeling really good with this trip, I was genuinely excited to see this part of my family.  

This would have not been the case a couple of years ago.  The past 5 years my relationship with my Dad has grown a lot, there was a lot of healing and forgiveness on both sides that had occurred within this time frame. 

Younger Years 

My Mom and I

Our parents had one thing in common they loved us! However, growing up in our household wasn’t easy, my sister and I grew up with two parents who were divorced and sadly enough we felt the pain my mom and dad felt because they involved us in their pain.  The pain that wasn’t ours to have, we involuntarily felt it and thus had consequences to how we grew up. 

We would hear from both sides how much each other didn’t like one another and it would affect us in different ways.  I remember one year on my 8th or 9th birthday my Dad came to pick me up to spend the morning with me. I don’t remember that day very well, but I do remember the pain that I caused my dad.  As we were shopping, I told him, “I’m bored, I want to go back to my Mom’s house.” The look in my Dad’s eyes was pure sadness – I remember that look til this day, almost 30 years later. 

As an adult, I reflect often how the relationship I needed and wanted from

My Dad and I

my Dad affected my adult life.  I’m a true believer that the relationship a young child has with their opposite sex parent determines how that child’s relationship with that opposite sex will form because essentially that parent is their first love, that’s how the child learns their worth and how to love.  I missed that growing up.

As I started to realize that I grew to have resentment towards my Dad, thinking why weren’t you there for me? Why didn’t you fight for me?  And thus I would intentionally create distance from him.  

Healing Element

When I found Yoga as a healing element that’s when it all changed.  Yoga started to heal my current relationships by showing me the patterns that I created.  The patterns were dependency, unhealthy boundaries, picking the wrong men. The Bhagavad Gita says…

“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”

This quote sums up Yoga and how my transformation grew.  Essentially Yoga gave space for me to see and let go of those patterns because I knew where they were coming from – they were coming from my childhood.  As soon as I knew the point of origin, I went straight there and organically my relationship with my Dad started to improve, our relationship was in ‘good’ standing for more than a year.  One year has a lot of meaning because my Dad and I couldn’t go more than a year with us being in good standing because my actions might have triggered him to stay away and vise versa. Ironically enough my longest relationship with a man never lasted more than a year in ‘good’ standing.  

My Dad would come visit us in Colorado and everything would be grand and I knew I had to take the next step for our relationship and bring my boys and us to visit him in California.  That’s where we are today, we had a great time connecting and learning about each other, this connection I also felt passed my dad and continued to my step-mom, step-sister and brother.  It was a beautiful thing to witness all of us coming together knowing that each of us were and are going through our unique journey through life and our journey brought us hereat this very moment.  

Moving Forward

Reflecting on this trip has given me hope for my other relationships that are estranged or need a little pick me up.  My relationship with my parents is one of the most important relationships because it sets the foundation of all of my other current and future relationships.  

A journey inward is all that it took, look inside of me of what was missing, face the stories my subconsciousness has been telling me and replace it with new beautiful ones as in compassion, love and faith in myself and in others. 

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