It Ends with Me
What love really means
There are sentences you have to say to yourself before you can believe them. Especially when you spent a very long time learning something else.
For many years I took the blame for things that weren't really my fault. I apologized even though I knew I hadn't done anything. Just so there would be peace again. So no one would be angry, no one would leave, no one would suffer, and in the end everything would somehow be okay again.
The problem is: if you do that long enough, at some point you no longer know yourself what you're actually responsible for and what you're not.
Guilt
To me, the guilt lies with the person who deliberately did something. Not with the person who was simply there. Not with the person who had feelings, was angry, disagreed, or said no. And certainly not with a child, because an adult can't handle their own feelings.
Of course you can and should feel bad if you have deliberately hurt someone. You can do something wrong, apologize, and try to do better next time. But you don't have to take the blame for everything just so there's peace again.
That's exactly what I did. I kept the weather fair, justified myself, and tried to keep everything in balance. Even long after I was grown up and had children of my own. Today, that is exactly what I don't want to pass on to my children.
Anger is allowed
For a long time, anger was something bad to me. Anger wasn't allowed, wasn't taken seriously, or was simply dismissed as a bad mood. So I learned to swallow it.
Today I see it differently. If you're angry, you're allowed to be angry. That doesn't mean you're allowed to hurt other people because of it. But anger is, first of all, a feeling – and sometimes quite an important one. Because it also shows you when something isn't right.
The same goes for joy. You're allowed to be happy. You don't have to make yourself smaller so someone else can feel better. Really simple things. And yet I had to learn them first.
Privacy is not a secret to be ashamed of
For a very long time, I was used to laying everything open. Decisions, relationships, feelings, and even things from my intimate life. There was hardly any room for privacy in my life. That makes it all the more important to me today that my children know: there are things that belong only to them.
Every person has a right to intimacy and privacy. A child, too. Children are allowed to have secrets. They're allowed to keep thoughts to themselves. They don't have to tell everything just because an adult asks.
And they're allowed to have boundaries. A no is not an attack. Having your own opinion is not disrespect. And not everything parents want to know is something they need to know.
Children don't have to take care of their parents
Parents are responsible for the emotional and physical well-being of their children. Not the other way around.
A child is not responsible for whether their mother is happy. It is not their fault when there are marriage problems, gray hair, bad moods, or arguments in a family. And they shouldn't have to learn to behave in a way that keeps anyone from losing their balance.
That is exactly what I learned. I tried to calm situations down, to prevent arguments, and I took responsibility for things that were never my responsibility. I don't want to pass that on to my children.
Children are allowed to grow into themselves
Of course children need boundaries. I set boundaries for my children, too. But those boundaries should serve to protect them and help them grow.
Children are still allowed to be their own people. They're allowed to have a different opinion than their parents. They're allowed to have different interests, like different friends, and one day make decisions you might not have made yourself. They're allowed to talk back and, yes, sometimes be a real pain.
None of that makes them bad children.
Mistakes don't erase love
Children make mistakes. So do adults, by the way. Sometimes you hurt someone, sometimes you make the wrong decision, and sometimes you just do something silly. Then you can talk about it, apologize, and learn from it.
But a mistake must never mean that love is suddenly gone.
I want my children to know that they are loved even when I'm mad at them. That I can find their behavior completely out of line sometimes and still love them. That they don't have to achieve anything to earn love. And that they don't have to bend themselves out of shape for me to be happy.
What I want to show my children
Maybe, in the end, this is one of the most important points of my own story. I can't change what I was given. I can't change what happened for decades, either. But I can very much decide what of it I pass on.
I want my children to know that they're allowed to be angry and allowed to be happy. That they have a right to their opinion, their dignity, their privacy, and their boundaries. That they're allowed to make mistakes. That they're not responsible for my feelings. And above all, that they are loved unconditionally.
I don't just want to tell them that this is so. I want to show them.
And for me, that also means standing up and facing what poisoned me for decades. Not just for myself, but for our little family system, too.
There are things I want to pass on to my children.
And there are things that end with me.