Healing our childhood awakens the unconscious hunger for the love of our mother and father. We cannot be in the present until we satisfy the loneliness of the child’s deep craving to be loved, seen and cherished. This is where romantic loves begins. Children believe that their parents are the perfect gods, all knowing and all loving. The trauma that comes from the first sting of rejection, criticism and abandonment in our youths carries on into our adult relationships. It is our parent’s validation of our existence that gives us a sense of meaning, purpose and worthiness. As adults we remain frozen in the past, searching for the perfect mother or father in our intimate relationships to fulfill the child who felt unloved and forgotten.

We are so attached to this unrequited love for mommy and daddy that we sometimes give up finding our true SELF. We become what our family wants us to be rather than follow our dreams; afraid to express anger, hurt, and even sometimes happiness dreading that we might betray our family’s expectations.
This is the first part of the journey; to individuate and grieve the loss of our self.

As controversial as Freud’s theories are today, he was right in his insight of the Oedipal and Electra love for our parents. The Greeks and Romans understood the gods, goddesses and the complexes that were held in the human psyche. The dark side of the human unconscious chokes us like the snake that wrapped itself around the Tree of Life and drives us to destroy our very essence through (ie. Addiction, delusion, denial, depression, anxiety, emptiness, perfectionism etc.) to fill this void.

We dare not talk of this incestuous type of enmeshment toward out parents because our society shuns it. But, it is there nonetheless. Until we can realize that we need to integrate and transform the inner child’s pain of our first love (mommy and daddy) into adult expression, we cannot move forward with our potential to love. Oh. Yes. We can be functioning in society, even be remarkably successful, but there is always something missing, something driving us, something that keeps us up at night… and that is the small child, who needs to be acknowledged. If we forget her she will bring us down with her tantrums and depressions. Pay attention to the lost child. She will show you the way back to build your spirit and claim your truth.

Until we can embrace our past and use it as a road map to our true nature, organic rhythms and our life’s purpose, we will be lost seeking a love that is delusional. Allowing our parents to be human as we all are human, we can than invite the spiritual to heal us. We might never have the childhood we wanted, or the perfect parents, but we can use the material of our life’s journey to create a new reality of who we are and what we want to build. Take your time, find your pace, and slow down, breathe; the truth will emerge if we connect to our body, heart and feelings.

Write a time line. Start before you were born. Take a few deep breathes, relax each part of your body, cells and muscles. Drop into your body. Just a breathe can open up a fragmented memory. For example: a client of mine who held the pain of her mother’s rape, was able, to go back and feel that she was born holding her mother’s feelings of pain, terror and worry.

What is your impression of your pre-birth feelings and thoughts? From there label each age that still holds power in your thoughts and actions. How can you begin the journey of change? Do you need to grieve, forgive, express? Remember healing is a life process. We cannot power through it, or pressure ourselves to change. We can only be vigilante and keep moving toward the gut feelings that drive us toward wholeness. The process of recovering the Self is a deep unconscious journey into the shadow of the lost nirvanaic dream where we find the Garden of Eden intact.

Read the journal entry below of how a client holds this unconscious love evoked merely by a T.V commercial:

Client: I have always been a crier. Anything from a sentimental commercial to a song or sappy movie, not just a sniffle, but a healthy bucket of tears. Honestly I love that I can cry experiencing something beautiful or tragic. But in my own life…this is not as easy.

Saturday morning I was watching a TV episode on my laptop. At the end there was a 20 second clip of this home video of this dad who was laughing and playing in this really with his 2 sons. He tells his youngest boy about what a cool person he is… how different and weird he is, but he is the most amazing person because of that. The love he has for his kid just emanates from the clip. I started crying and couldn’t stop. I usually get emotional, but this was on a whole different level. Even now as I am writing this and remembering the feeling I had, I am crying. I feel sad. Sad because in that moment I realized that I don’t have a dad that loves every fleck of me. A dad who could nurture and love his daughter and family in the way we need to be loved. A dad who expressed anger very well, but everything else I had to desperately look for in his actions and conversations about school, work and the money and gifts he would dote on me.

I am heartbroken. This absence of the video’s father love is what I am sad about…a really deep and hidden sadness. And in this same moment I can feel my head turning on and telling me the usual, “my dad has his good aspects”… something my mother always says as an excuse… but I am rejecting these thoughts because I want to give my feelings some validation now and not just dismiss them as ridiculous or absurd anymore. The feelings I have are real and true and are much more authentic then anything my brain could produce or tell me right now.
And so I feel sadness in the emptiness of wanting a daddy’s love right now. I ache and yearn for a love like that. it has taken me so long and it is so hard for my brain and other self….the abusive self…to hear and admit this, but I don’t have a dad like this. No excuses or buts or disclaimers. He wasn’t there. And I am hurting so badly because of this absence.

But I seek hope… just that fleck in my deep stomach that tells me that I am still alive…
since this ache for this kind of love exists and is real inside of me, then a love like this must exist somewhere…. I couldn’t possibly feel this absence forever…
and so I feel, and mourn, and seek more from within, and press on…