Our grandparents definitely couldn’t do it. They were just surviving. Our parents couldn’t do it. They were raised by our grandparents. But as I observe my peers these days, I see we are experiencing a lot of life’s curveballs. And I’m noticing that in order to navigate these curveballs, we are starting to look within. I’m seeing us begin the work of acknowledging the parts of ourselves that we hid during our childhood to fit into society’s vision of who we should be. I’m seeing us unearth pain. And so, I’m beginning to think we can do it. I think we can begin to heal the pain of generations.
If you are currently a parent of younger kids, chances are you grew up in the late 70s or 80s. This was a time in our society that held quite an emphasis on ego (or ‘the cloud’ as I call it in my children’s book): what I have, what I do, how I look defines who I am. Our culture resting in ego meant emotions were ignored. Stifled. It was more important to project an image of success than to speak one’s truth.
Our parents were raised by parents who often had very difficult lives. My Oma, for example, was a refugee orphan from Russia who never seemed to recover from the trauma she experienced there. And so, our parents had parents who focused more on survival than thriving. Feeling emotions took a back burner to settling into a new country, finding community, preserving their culture, and living with residual anxiety from the Great Depression or deep trauma from war and/or genocide.
Our parents learned to hide their truth in order to get approval from their parents. As they grew older, this truth or ignored emotion became stuck inside of them. It was something they lived with. Then came the 80s. What a wonderful escape to have the distractions of the ego-driven fast life of the 80s: convertible cars, miniskirts, double-breasted business suits, shoulder pads, movies about Julia Roberts being saved by a millionaire prince…the microwave. Generally speaking, it became important to our parents to appear fun, popular, successful and driven, and this focus was projected onto us as their children. We were an extension of their self-worth. And if we could all keep climbing, progressing, and accumulating then we could escape forever.
But apparently progressing has its limits. Our earth isn’t doing so well these days. And it seems that all that progressing meant many of our parents didn’t face the emotions that were stuck inside of them, and so they weren’t comfortable with us feeling ours. When we expressed our feelings, many parents didn’t learn the patience to sit with us in our pain, not because they didn’t love us, but because they were taught that moving away from pain was more important than facing it. It was survival.
Now a lot of us seem to be seeking our truth. Because we want to raise our kids in a better world, a lot of us are embarking on the journey of self-development; of looking within, of putting more emphasis on their heart or spirit (or ‘the sun’ as I call it in my children’s book) than on what others want of them, and of embracing their emotions and facing traumas. The truth is emerging. And as it bubbles up, so does pain.
When we are healing this pain by sitting with it and allowing it to be heard, we are healing the pain of many generations. Sometimes there is a tendency to want to direct this pain at our parents, but it is important to remember the history; to remember the pain they were not allowed to feel themselves as kids, and to remember the pain their parents held within. It can help to call it ‘the pain’ instead of “my pain” because we all have it inside of us in one way or the other. It is collective.
When we heal the pain, we are preventing it from traveling to our kids. We are stopping it. Ending it. A large task indeed. But I have found that when I look at it as a larger task of my generation then I feel inspired to commit to my own personal growth because it is bigger than me and my pain. It is huge. I imagine the ripple effect through generations, and I thank life for giving us all these curveballs. Without them we would never be forced to look within. We’d still be progressing and accumulating and escaping with Julia Roberts and double-breasted business suits forever…
The sun, cloud, and rainbow metaphors that make up the story in my children’s book The Girl and the Sun were molded piece by piece from my own pain and subsequent drive to overcome it. I use these metaphors every day to parent myself and my children. They are not my own ideas. They come from many teachers along the way: Anita Johnston, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Jeff Foster, Tara Brach, Marianne Williamson, and many counselors and colleagues who guided me along my journey. Through The Girl and The Sun I can now share them with the world. Please visit www.ashleyandthesun.com/free-handouts-parents-and-teachers for free handouts and www.ashleyandthesun.com for a thorough explanation of the sun, cloud and rainbow metaphors.