Okay, NONE of us can see, let alone love, anyone "exactly as they are." The best we can do is approximate, based on our always subjective experience. That nit-picking caveat aside, its truth is clear. We need to accept all of a person, including their deepest darkest challenges, rather than recast them in our mind & hearts as bright & shiny. We need to do that because that is how we respect love honor ALL of the person, not just the parts that make us feel good about them & ultimately about ourselves.
Mom couldn't. Oh, she talked like she could. Mom was famous with her friends for being able to see her children in an unsentimental light. But that light only went so far. She might not have idealized us - as some of friends did with their children - but she didn't genuinely realize us, either.
To my own dying day, will never fully understand it. Was it that Mom was genuinely blind to our troubled sides ~or~ that she didn't want to see because it would require parenting she might not have be up to attempting.
All I know is that it never made sense. How could anyone not see that refusing to acknowledge problems also refused to help children move past them?
It wasn't so gosh wonderful, understanding & being willing to accept the responsibilities that came with seeing/knowing. It wasn't anything I learned - the awareness was part of the original operating instructions that came with my birth.
To me, it was a given. To Mom, it was a forbidden.
If a parent can't bring himself or herself to acknowledge when a child is in trouble, has a particularly other- or self-harming trait, seems to work against his or her own best interests, is generally messed up, what are the odds the child will be able to see & accept & change?
We can only change what we first see. It's that straightforward, simple but not easy.
“Go and love someone exactly as they are. And then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered.” THAT is not simple. That is hard. It requires radical acceptance. First, of yourself & then of others. And radically accepting ourselves is way way way harder for most of us than accepting others.
Mom seemed way messed up in her experience of others acting in harmful ways, whether hurting themselves or others. Even when she technically acknowledged a problem, she found it impossible to do anything constructive. It wasn't that she wouldn't; she couldn't. Attempting a better outcome made no sense to her.
Many years ago, before I married John, when Peter & Mim often camped out at the Woodland Road house for long & short stays, I asked why she never at least asked Peter or Mim to lend a hand around the house. "Why would I ask, when they'll just say 'no'?" she replied.
My thanks to the always amazing Edie for posting the quote by Wes Angelozzi & getting my thoughts meandering ancient paths, ones I still too often trod, old paths that too often lead to current sadness.
Edie's FB posting drew me to a thought - maybe Mom didn't let herself see difficult stuff because she knew she couldn't do anything about it; perhaps it was easier to be oblivious than feel obliterated.
Praise be for that AH HA possibility, which frees me to pack the confusion & sadness away, move forward & passed it!
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