Co-Dependants Anonymous
Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Post Info TOPIC: They did the best they could!


Veteran Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 60
Date:
They did the best they could!
Permalink  
 


I know that many folks want to honor, respect and idolize their beloved parents with the excuse that their parents did the best they could with what they knew and, since I am working a program that requires rigorous honesty, I cannot give my parents the "best they could" excuse for what they did to me and my siblings that has forced me into Recovery work.

Honesty tells me to say my parents did the best AND THE WORST that they could.  Sometimes they knew better but just didn't care when they damaged their kids.  They were just like me and everyone I know and I've sometimes done my "best" and sometimes my "worst" and usually knew better but didn't care or there was nothing to STOP me from doing what I did.  My parents did what they did with what they knew.  Sometimes it was their best but more often their WORST!  And I am convinced that they KNEW BETTER when they abused, ridiculed, neglected and harmed their kids.

Someone once said, "My parents did the very best they knew how - and it SUCKED!" 

That just about sums it up for me and is more honest than the standard "They did the best they could" excuse or cover-up.  Being in Recovery has given me a taste for the truth so excusing the bad behavior of my parents is no longer and option.  I can't speak a lie just because I love or fear my parents so much.  They were good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair, kind and cruel, smart and stupid, did their best and their worst, etc.  - just like everyone else in the world.

 



__________________

Please take what you want and leave the rest.



Senior Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 259
Date:
Permalink  
 

I now, am rejoicing for the unique experience that I was able to live through and come out stronger on the other side. I think opposite of blaming my parents or any other person for what I once assume was a dilapidated life. I laugh at the experience, and move forward. Nothing to be gain for me, by chasing the wind. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I can’t re-live the past. I can learn to stand up for myself, and to say no regardless if it might hurt someone feelings.
I look at it from a point of. I should be thanking my parents, Ex-GF, and others that I allowed to walk all over me. Yes in my earlier years of life my parents may have contributed to how badly I allowed people to treat me. But just as you cannot appreciate light until you experience pitch darkness. You have to learn what hate and abuse feels like. To learn to appreciate what real love feel like. Just my opinion. Lol Don’t be hating.


__________________


Veteran Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 60
Date:
Permalink  
 

fap123 wrote:

I think opposite of blaming my parents or any other person for what I once assume was a dilapidated life. 

It's stupid to play the "blame game".

Lol Don’t be hating.

LOL, follow your own advice!

 



__________________

Please take what you want and leave the rest.



Senior Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 259
Date:
Permalink  
 

"LOL, follow your own advice!"

I will, thank you.

__________________


Guru

Status: Offline
Posts: 1190
Date:
Permalink  
 

I have a lot of parents ... I know that sounds strange.  But I was adopted and I know both of my bioparents as well.  Then you throw divorce and step parents in the mix ...  Then there was a family that took me in during high school and finished raising me and then you can add on the in-laws.  LOTS of parents.  My daughter has never met her father or her paternal grandparents, but she was never at a loss for grandparents.  We had a hard time naming them.  The only "Grandma" in the bunch is actually MY grandmother, her great grandmother, who is still alive and got the pleasure of meeting her great, great grandson recently.  It was great looking at her saying "Your granddaughter is a grandmother.  That's got to be pretty crazy!  She agreed.

Anyway, I digress.  When I got into recovery I had SO MUCH anger towards my parents for their failures.  Just the ones who raised me (adopted) as the others really didn't have enough (or no) exposure to me when I was young to inflict any pain.  Neglect was the common theme, the lack of love was the elephant in the room, but then throw in a physically abusive step dad, some extremely touchy male neighbors and life just gets crappy.

I am so thankful for recovery.  First, it let me see a set of parents that were horrible compared to mine and made my family seem somewhat normal.  We had no hardcore drug, alcohol abuse, imprisonment ... just really bad stuff.  We were a very "functioning" family.  We believed in hard work, doing the right thing etc.  I think the core was good, just the implementation sucked.

But recovery taught me to let it go.  Maybe they didn't do the best they could.  Maybe they were selfish and put themselves before their children (no maybe about it).  But that is the past.  It's done.  I can't change it.  And if I can go into a room full of alcholics that tell stories that make my stomach hurt and have empathy for them, I can for my parents as well.  It has been fun to connect my learned behaviors back to my various parents and when I see my behaviors as such I have the opportunity to change them.

Now I see them as equals.  That really helps.  I have been a better parent and more successful in the living of my life than them (in regards to happiness and lack of drama).  It was a choice that I knowingly made everyday.  I see that clearly.  Perhaps they didn't even know the choice was there.  Regardless, how they interact with me now is what effects my emotions for them.  If they are loving and a healthy part of my life they get my love, time and attention.  I have one I rarely speak to, two kind of in the middle ... could take it or leave it, and two that I love dearly and they are a regular part of my life.  I am OPEN to having loving, healthy relationships with my parents and the ones that don't have that really aren't looking at themselves. 

So I empathize and choose to not carry anger about it anymore.  I think that is forgiveness.  But I don't forget.  There is still much to learn from the many years it took to make me who I am.

Willing

 



__________________

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.   ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. ~St. Francis of Assisi



Veteran Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 60
Date:
Permalink  
 

willing wrote:
I have been a better parent and more successful in the living of my life than them (in regards to happiness and lack of drama).  It was a choice that I knowingly made everyday.
I am very proud of you and also happy for your kids, for being able to do better than those who raised you.  Many parents, in and outside of Recovery take an angry, defiant attitude if their parenting or anyone's parenting is "questioned" and, since I am not a parent, my opinions on parenting are of absolutely no value to any of them.  I  wish I was your child!  (I'm 79 now!)
So I empathize and choose to not carry anger about it anymore.  I think that is forgiveness.
I don't "carry" anger (keep a grudge) but can become temporarily angry when an old, painful feeling or memory pops up when triggered and then I use whatever tools I have to disarm or vent the anger rather than stuffing it back down.  For me, Forgiveness is the feeling I have when nothing HURTS any longer - at least for a while.
But I don't forget.  There is still much to learn from the many years it took to make me who I am.
Me too.
jim

 

 


 



__________________

Please take what you want and leave the rest.



Newbie

Status: Offline
Posts: 3
Date:
Permalink  
 

My experience of this has been more of the "both/and" type vs. the "either or" variety. One of the dysfunctional things I learned from my FOO was to have denial as my primary coping tool, as it was theirs. Therefore, I looked past a lot of elephants in the room and continued in my belief that the conditional love I received from my FOO was because I was defective, or "not enough," to distill my core issue into two words.

When I first got into recovery, I had to strip away layer upon layer of denial and acknowledge the failures of my parents. While there were certain abusive things that were done to me (the whippings paled in comparison to the verbal shaming), it was the things I didn't receive that had the longest lasting effects - things such as the modeling of boundaries (there were none in my family), validation of feelings, etc. As the denial fell away, I had to walk through a lot of buried rage, rage that had been turned inward for a long time. To the uninitiated that would appear to be blaming.

Before I could arrive at a place where I could extend grace to my FOO, I had to come out of denial, acknowledge what happened, take ownership of it, feel, grieve, rage, and shout to the world that, yes, I was screwed out of having a "normal," healthy, nurturing childhood that would have equipped me for healthy adult relationships. It was this long, difficult process that taught me that, in order to be able to let anything go, I have to have ownership of it first.

My parents were damaged people themselves. (That is why I'm fond of saying that family dysfunction is the gift that keeps on giving.) I saw behind my father's macho bully facade to see the frightened, lonely little boy inside. I saw past my mother's rage and emotional unpredictability and saw what was likely a personality disorder that arose as her way of coping with her parents who kept comparing her unfavorably to others. In recognizing their own wounds, I was able to take the things they had projected onto me and give it back to them where it belonged. It then that forgiveness was possible.

People indeed do the best they can with what they've been given. Many are so entrenched in those patterns that they are unable to recognize that choices even exist. Then there are those of us who are the lucky ones (yes, I consider myself extremely fortunate, because recovery in general, and the 12 Step fellowships in particular, have given my life a richness and depth that I doubt I would have attained otherwise) who realized that there has to be a better way and are breaking the chain by finding healing.

__________________


Veteran Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 60
Date:
Permalink  
 

I love it, NoMoDo! Keep 'em coming.......
jim

__________________

Please take what you want and leave the rest.



Newbie

Status: Offline
Posts: 3
Date:
Permalink  
 

I agee with this, 

 

whever someone sasy, they did what they best can do , I just feel werid. there are lots of people who were abused in childhood, but they still have warming , caring hearts to their kids,

 

not used, manipulate, abuse, bilittle, shaem their kids..

 

but I really really teird of blaming my huge narssarst mom, I am tireld of it..

 

it waste time ,they are still " others" like other evils in my life who abuse me

 

 

 



__________________


Veteran Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 31
Date:
Permalink  
 

Well I will add my share to this and say that my father was a serial offender against girls 13 to 17 years old and his daughter was not exempt nor were my cousins. So no he did not do the best he could do. He was to possessed by evil to do anything but evil and his enabler wife the one who gave birth to me is just as much to blame because she covered up for him, defended him, kept him out of jail. God only knows how many of us had our lives destroyed by this one evil piece of manure. There are some cases where the parents did not do anything but the worst worst most evil they could do. He was a classic narcissist who was entitled, he felt, to do anything he wanted to do. He had no capability of any empathy at all towards another living creature. He could only feel his own pain when the karma caught up with him. He never ever shed a tear or showed sorrow for another's pain whom he Caused. Some people are just stone evil and that's that. But I don't want to dwell on him. Because he is not worth it, he does not deserve the same breathing space is me, his soul is in hell where he belongs, and I choose life and light over his darkness

__________________

Katie J. 

Love begins within me and then radiates out to the universe



Guru

Status: Offline
Posts: 1190
Date:
Permalink  
 

Wooo hoooo Katie!  You go!  Good for you.  Yes, there are those out there that are pure evil and the best we can do is walk forward into the light.

 

I have had dealings with those types of people before, intimately.  I am very proud to virtually stand next to you, flip them the bird and go live a happy and healthy life.

 

 

Willing



__________________

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.   ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. ~St. Francis of Assisi



Veteran Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 60
Date:
live a happy life
Permalink  
 


willing wrote:
flip them the bird and go live a happy and healthy life.
Willing

 Yep, that's as good a SOLUTION as any.......I'll take it!

Happy Holidays,

jim



__________________

Please take what you want and leave the rest.

Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.