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Originally Posted by ECHOES
I do believe it is that child within that springs to life and recognizes what is still so important, who still hopes. I suppose that means the needs are still there.
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This made me hold my breath. That the child within still hopes. I guess the child within, no matter how old we are, remains small and still has some hope of getting what she always wanted. That takes my breath away.
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Neglect isn't necessarily something intentional. It is misattunement, or maybe chronic misattunement, but not necessarily intentional. This is what I struggle with.. that my parents did do the best they knew how, and that should be enough. But it wasn't.
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That is so true. And even if the abuse or neglect was extreme, it could stil be unintentional. I am so glad you wrote that. It seems to me to be a very forgiving and peaceful attitude. No matter what our mothers did, it was most likely unintentional. And I believe that even the intentional meanness that I may have experienced was all she knew. It was how she reacted for whatever psychological reasons she may have had. I dont think I can ever really know all of those reasons.
They werent enough, and they should have known that. They might not have had all of the information that we have about how children should be treated when their natural inclination was to be mean, dismissive, invalidatiing etc. I find with my own children it is not easy to be consistently validating about every sentence they say to me. I try very hard and do the very best I can, but sometimes I want to say, "oh, c'mon! Enough!" I do the very best I can to listen to everything they say and listen for the feelings behind what they are saying. To be there and to validate, but it is work. And my mother? Was she going to put that much effort into being a mother? Not by a long shot.