It's Not Enough to Leave Home

How many people hated their parents while growing up?

For many, Mom and Dad become an affront to their freedom, a flesh-and-blood tyranny which prevented them from excelling, from doing the things that they wanted to do.

Then again, some people grew up in very abusive homes, households filled with strife, fear, deceit, and abuse.

How many people can claim that they have shut the door on their parents, on their former lives as children who refused to be bullied any longer by bad parents, men and women who had children because they have believed, wrongly, that bringing children into the world would grant their lives the meaning, the peace, and the purpose that they were hoping for?

Such was never the case, though, for many, for the parents and for the children.

The children to do leave home, yes, they get away, they make sure that they never endure  such abuse again. They even pledge to treat their own kids better than their parents had treated them.

Sadly, though, they never realize that they cannot give their kids what they want to give them. They can only give them what they have, and even leaving home is not enough to leave behind what bad parenting may or may not have done.

It is not enough to leave home, to reject abuse, to repudiate the wrongdoing that was perpetrated against us. We need life, we need a standard, we need something positive to stand on to face the backlash and the shocks that this world dishes out.

Man cannot identify with the negative. His opposition to the wrong in itself cannot set him on the right course, for rebellion with direction is just anarchy, whether personal or political.

Many people act out the same shame and blame as their parents ultimately because they have nothing else to  lean on, to identify with. They do not like what their parents did, yet they have not sought out any other way to make it in the world. The  unforgiveness which young people harbor against their parents almost assures that they will be moored in the same mire of dysfunction. A child who resents the physical abuse of a parent will inevitably practice the same abuse against his or her own children, unless the person chooses to forgive, and forgiveness is something that has to be modeled for us in order for us to share the same with others. Certainly, why should anyone forgive if we still feel hurt and hindered by the wrongdoing of others, especially our parents?

It's not enough to leave home. We have to find a new home, a new place where we can say: This is who I am, this is where I live, and no one is going to take this from me, no matter what they may think, say, or do.