For some people, a family reunion can be a joyful and festive occasion, but not for everyone. The worst triggers for our powerfully negative feelings are frequently times spent with our own relatives, especially parents. Even when our parents are elderly, frail, live far away from us, and no longer have any control over our lives, we occasionally wonder why we still react negatively to them. We have successfully left home and established a life for ourselves after spending years attempting to do so, but somehow, minutes after a reunion, we can revert back to acting and feeling like a helpless child or a screaming teenager.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a kind and understanding family. When we engage with our family, we may feel a wide range of complex emotions and ambivalence, especially if our childhood had been violent, negligent, or inadequate in some respects. The interest they now show in our life may even come out as fake if there had never been a history of genuine emotional intimacy. There can be little honesty when their shields and our dissatisfaction are in place. Even though we deeply love each other, true intimacy may feel out of reach. We understand intellectually that our parents cannot change who they are, and we understand reasonably that the past is the past. We have pardoned them on many different grounds. The emotional reality, which is raw, weighty, reactive, uncontrollable, and full of fury, is unaffected by this, though. Even though we are unable to change the past to change reality as it exists, we may change our inner reality. This requires not only an intellectual shift but also a shift of the soul’s emotions.
