Secrets & the Family Foundation
What foundation was built for you at birth in the family system that is set in concrete the ties to lies? What are the untruths that loyalty commanded of you to hold secret and in what ways were you meant to behave or keep quiet about so that you could keep those secrets in place? Is it infidelity? Is it sexual abuse? Is it addiction? Is it emotional manipulation or control? Is it gaslighting? Is it narcIssism? Is it victimization? Is it patriarchal abuse? Is it mental abuse? What are the strategies that prevented you from actually owning or knowing the truth? And does that come from your cultural, ancestral, societal, or political experiences or views? What does it mean to be honest and truthful to yourself? How do you work through it? What beliefs have you put in place that are keeping you from being fully grounded and in your solid foundation?
In family systems, we can get quite stuck in the untruths of how to face our own woundings. Those woundings are passed down either energetically, and perhaps the trauma as been done to us as a result of say your parents woundings. It is a certainty.
I have done much introspection and have a good understanding of the German culture, for instance. I can see that due to Second World War there was much trauma sustained from the atrocities committed by the German people and that what was endured by the German people.
If you observe the oldest German people that were witnesses or participants of that era, there is disassociation that occurs when they are speaking. They have little emotional accountability and truthful recognition of what occurred. You can see that they defend their positions and justify their actions because of the duress that they had to accept what was occurring. Generally speaking of course, their minds had to work out a way to protect the emotional trauma and denial of what was actually occurring. If they were to face the truth, it would have been perhaps a breakdown that they were unable to survive or it wasn’t safe to be honest. It was a survival instinct. In order to continue living, a system of lies, denial, shutting down emotions, silencing, control/manipulation and beat downs of your own personal truth were necessary to just survive.
But at a point, when you are on the spiritual journey, we are uncovering the dark, the shadow, the untruths, the layers of family secrets and the underpinnings of the cost of loyalty to the family do to your Soul. They are systems that we must break from of so that we may be congruent within ourselves and live from a place of healthy masculine ideals and patterns.
As I look at the trauma that has been passed down generationally in my family system, I have had to look at all the ways that I have lied to myself. It hasn’t always been easy and I have learned ways to lie to myself and get around these truths but at what cost? It is at the cost of my Soul. It is at the cost of my health and the health of those around me. It is a lack of responsibility and accountability for my behaviour. I would say that this has also been passed down energetically in the family and cultural system that I am in. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have to now be an adult and not take responsibility…..NO. What that means is I can recognize those untruths that I must own now so that I can be whole and have trust and faith in myself. I can never have trust and faith in myself if I continue to lie about what is true for me. I need to uncover it and get real about it. I need to hold myself to the fire of truth and live it.
Am I angry? Yup. I own that. Am I disappointed in my parents? Yes. Am I really pissed at what I have ended up being and feeling? Absolutely. So what do I do about it? I work out the anger. I let go of the disappointment and understand that they couldn’t or can’t work out their issues. I forgive them. I forgive myself. I live with the truth that perhaps I will never fully understand how I got this foundation. I have been slowly changing but that I have the power and ability to make a new foundation with new integral, truthful, trust worthy, congruent, and a solid value system that we seem to be missing or lacking as a species no matter what cultural background you come from.
I think being human is complicated and perhaps difficult in some ways but when you have a solid value system that you have established for yourself, you can work towards being congruent and in integrity so that you can really love who you are. So you can build a foundation of faith and trust in yourself and know yourself so that you can operate in a way that is trust worthy. Do you stumble along the way….sure. But you can always make amends until you can get that foundation more solid. Sometimes that takes time, experience and knowing yourself so well that you can call yourself out on your stuff and get real with how you are really doing and feeling and then you can get it right with other people.
For me I would say that being kind to myself through this will be the key so that I can be kind to others when I don’t get it right. Because, this is our learning isn’t it? This is where the mistakes are our learnings, this is where we build the foundation so that we can be comfortable in our standard answers for each and every scenario. Or that when we have a new scenario we can trust that we will do the right thing for ourselves in that moment. We will have the maturity to work it out.
What I know is that denial is dark. It is fear. It is toxic. It is a low energy in the foundation of what we learned growing up and it doesn’t serve your Soul, your mind, your emotions or your body. It is a suppressor of the truth. It is a control mechanism. It is a manipulator of the truth. It is the shadow. Uncover your denial and get congruent. You will thank yourself and all parts of yourself.
With grace,