For many (dare I say most) people, spending time with parents can unleash some pretty strong emotions. No matter how grown up we are, our original family can put us in touch with deep hurts, primal longings, unmet needs… a tsunami of feelings. If we want to challenge every ounce of peace, wellbeing, compassion, wisdom and strength we’ve earned over a lifetime, we need only spend a weekend, day, evening, hour, few minutes, or maybe just say hello with the person who is our parent.
Jane, a woman in her 40s, recently had an experience with a parent that set off a strong and somewhat unexpected reaction in her. She met her father for a meal and he behaved the way he always behaved, asking her no questions, acknowledging nothing about her, completely invisibilizing her, while simultaneously demanding that she act as a mirror to reflect his own grandiosity. It was an experience Jane knew intimately and one she had been living for decades. But on this particular day, sitting across a table from this man she called her father, a man who had never shown Jane the kindness of acknowledgment or curiosity, it all broke—the dam that had protected her from her actual experience was gone. Without warning, Jane discovered that she could not keep pretending this kind of interaction was okay. Even if she had wanted to continue the same relationship with her father, her body had decided otherwise: being unseen and unknown, receiving nothing, inauthentically playing the role of the loving validator, was no longer possible.
Midway through the meeting, Jane took off the hat she had been wearing her whole life; she stopped confirming her father’s importance, and also stopped playing the role of the grateful daughter, who would happily enjoy the glow of his greatness while remaining forever invisible. She even went so far as to suggest that something he had said about himself might not be true, a first. The encounter ended abruptly and with obvious prickliness. While no words were spoken about the tectonic plates that had just shifted between them, it was clear to both father and daughter that their usual way of interacting was suspended, if not finished for good...
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