You Can Literally Create the Person You Desire to Be

My father and me. He dreamed of a better life for himself and his sons.

A handful or more years ago I was deeply involved in plant medicine work.

One evening as we were about to go into ceremony, the guide asked about my relationship with my father.

“Oh, it’s fine,” I said, “I’ve made my peace with him.”

Famous last words …

That night I experienced how when I was five and my father started a new family, I felt unloved and unlovable. I experienced how that feeling drove me to sex, and how that drove me to drugs and how that led me to putting myself in sometimes dangerous situations, and how all of that was playing out in a life in which I felt like a victim (though I would never would’ve used that word).

It wasn’t that my father caused this string of unfortunate events, but rather it was how I reacted to his behaviors that led to the string of behaviors that became part of my (unconscious) identity.

I became acutely aware of how I had spent a lifetime (40-something years at that point) literally constructing everything in my life in reaction to my parent’s ability/inability to parent me.

I became acutely aware of how the careers I chose, the partners I attracted, my friendships, even the city I lived were all constructed in reaction to my parents and my childhood.