Day 125: Parenthood Ep.1 - There Is Something Wrong with my Baby - Part 2

I am here starting to walk a series as I go through the episodes of Parenthood wherein I'll work my way through various aspects of parenthood where throughout generations parents have tended to behave in similar ways in certain situations - and so, taking the opportunity to release pre-conceived ideas and copied-over behaviors about parenting/parenthood and considering what would be a best-for-all approach in such a situation. So - note that these are not situations that I am faced with in my life currently, but am taking responsibility for within seeing that: it could've been me. Herein - I invite everyone to share your own perspectives in the comment section - other points you may have observed or other possible solutions!

In the first Episode of Season one of the series Parenthood, Krstina and Adam get to hear that their son, Max, might have Asperger syndrome - both use the words 'there is something wrong with my baby/son' to describe the situation. This is one of the big fears parents have - that their child will be different, that it will be abnormal, that it will be disadvantaged, that it will be dysfunctional - and where this is then labeled as 'wrong'. There are a few aspects to this point.

1. Fear/belief that there must be something wrong with the parents themselves for having a child that is abnormal - and then the ensuing guilt about it.
2. Fear that the child will have a difficult and unfulfilling life - where the parents then feel bad for the child because it's not what they would've wanted for the child.
3. Disappointment about how the child didn't turn out how they had expected and that it will not fulfill their desire of a perfect happy family.
4. Fear of how the parents' lives will change and how much they will have to sacrifice for the child - emotionally, financially and practically.

In the previous blog-post I opened up points 1 and 2 in Self-Forgiveness. Here I continue with point 3:

3. Disappointment about how the child didn't turn out how they had expected and that it will not fulfill their desire of a perfect happy family.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be disappointed in seeing that my child is not/will not be what I had expected my child will be/become - and so, to also become angry within myself, because I had invested myself within having a family and having children with the prospect of having a particular outcome as a happy family, with lovely children who are successful and unique - and now it doesn't turn out to be like that and now it feels like it's not fair, because I want a reward for all my hard work and investments and sacrifices and now they don't 'pay off' in terms of giving me what I wanted to get as a result.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to have a family and to have children so that I can experience myself in a perfect happy family, because I feel that I never experienced that in my life because my family was never a perfect happy family as portrayed in movies or what I would see in a friend's house - and so i felt 'robbed' of that experience as something I was entitled to and now I want to manifest such an experience within my life by being a parent in such a family set-up in an attempt to make up for my experience as a child - not realizing that this is impossible, as the past has already happened and there is no way of undoing it and that it is instead a matter of letting go of ideas about injustice being done unto me and letting go of a state of self-victimization in relation to the family I grew up in.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to a feeling of injustice, of being wronged because I didn't 'get to' experience family-life as is portrayed in books and families, and so believed that there was something wrong with me and my life, that there was something missing because of this.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that such perfect families actually exist, instead of seeing and realizing that harmonious families of support, consideration and respect cannot exist unless each member of the family supports, considers and respects themselves firstly - and so, that families as portrayed in movies/books are in no way an indication that such families actually exist and that the brief moments I would spend in other families are likewise not an indication of what the family is like, because so much happens under the surface that is hidden from sight that no-one actually knows what happens in the homes of others and on what level abuse takes place.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realize that that which I looked for as love, respect, support and consideration in a family, is actually what I required to learn to give myself - and so, that I in fact separated me from myself and me from my family members through defining love, respect, support and consideration as an expectation within them - as though they are supposed to provide me with it and give it to me - and so, that the lack I experienced had in fact nothing to do with my family set-up or family members but with myself and only with myself - and so, I allow myself to be grateful for the family I grew up in as it enabled me to see what I was not giving to myself and from there, could develop my relationship with myself to be self-loving, self-respecting, self-supporting and self-considering.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to a feeling and state of self-victimization in relation to the family I grew up in, where I am in fact holding on to blame towards my family set-up/family members in how I experienced myself in my childhood and throughout the rest of my life, where I used my family as an excuse for all my 'weaknesses' - and so, in fact holding on to the past and a state of self-victimization because of not wanting to let go of the excuses as to why i was not supporting myself, why i was not pushing myself to correct my own mistakes, why I was not attempting to better myself, why i was allowing myself to repeat the same patterns over and over, etc.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing my starting point for starting a family to be in the past - not realizing that when my starting point to create something is in the past, I am not in fact creating, but I am only ensuring that the past repeats - because if my starting point is in the past, then it means that I have unresolved issues towards my past - and therefore, i cannot create anything original/new until i have faced my past through walking it again - until who I am is no longer defined by my past, and so i can in fact create as here, equal and one.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to - in noticing that my child is different from what I had expected my child to be/become - immediately blame the child for not fulfilling my desires of a perfect happy family - again utilizing blame as an excuse to place myself in an inferior position, where I am now again apparently the victim of another imposing difficult family situations unto me - instead of realizing that my child is a direct consequence of my acceptances and allowances, and therefore - is specific in relation to my process - and therefore, to immediately investigate how I have created my child as how my child is and to take responsibility for myself within this creational process - actually facing myself within my child, instead of blaming my child for an experience I am not getting.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realize that this process is not about getting to experience the perfect life - where we now apparently get a chance at everything we missed out on - but that it is in fact about facing ourselves in every gory detail - and therefore, any happy-go-lucky situation of bliss will indicate deception as it would merely be a hiding place to not take responsibility for oneself and for this world as a whole.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to a picture of the perfect happy family with a father and a mother and two children and a dog and a soccer ball, all smiling in the picture - as though this picture is a promise to myself of something i will attain as a goal in my life if only I push through on the plan of starting a family - and that if I but suck up and get pregnancy and child-birth over with - then that will be the reward and I will live as a character in the picture and apparently my life will be perfect.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define family within and as a picture of a smiling mother, father, twho children, dog and soccer ball, where the parents look relaxed and the chidlren look happy and worry-free.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define life as a picture of a family with mother and father smiling with relaxed and confident faces, and two beautiful, happy children with no worry in the world, and a dog and a soccer ball, posing together on the front lawn in front of their house.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself as a character of a mother within a picture, where I am smiling and standing next to a husband as a father who Is also smiling and relaxed and confident and two children with happy faces, worry-free in front of the father and the mother and a dog and a soccer ball posing on a lawn in front of the house.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to realize that reality has nothing to do with pictures and will never have anything to do with pictures, where when one defines something as how it is portrayed in a picture, one will always be disappointed by the reality of it - but when one truly expresses oneself within something and then sees a picture of it - one will see that the picture is a complete limitation and in no way captures the actual living expression of the beings participating within that event in time.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have given credibility, value and worth to pictures by continuously selecting the pictures to which i would have a positive reaction to and mapping them out in a timeline for myself in my mind, where at a certain point in my life, I would each time have a pictures to 'look forward to' and try to fulfill - until I get at that point and the reality doesn't match the pictures - and happiness is not found - and then I would focus on the next picture on the timelines, working towards the next portrayal of happiness - repeating the same pattern over and over, regardless of the never-changing result: that reality is not a picture and one's experience in reality is not one's experience in relation to a picture, and therefore, that pictures have absolutely no use in terms of predicting the future or representing anything that is lived - and so, i forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to create a relationship of unconditional trust towards pictures, where no matter what the reality-based feedback was, I would continue to maintain this relationship and try to find new pictures to live out.