The past cannot be cured

I have a set of greeting cards titled “Bad Girls Throughout History.” I use them to play pen pals with my two adult sons who live away from home. On the front is an illustration of one of these multiple women, varying in the qualities of their badassery, and a quote from them on the back. One that has been particularly heavy on my mind this past week has been the card with Queen Elizabeth I reminding me, “The past cannot be cured.”

Wise woman.

As my life has continually opened up since I left the Mormon church, I have looked back at my first 37 years through a completely different lens. And in doing so, there has been quite a bit of regret and guilt. I carry regret for experiences I missed out on, judgements I made, people I excluded or pushed away unknowingly and an underlying perfectionism that I'm still working through. I have guilt about my previous narrow-mindedness, possibly making others feel inferior, but mostly for the way I raised my three sons.

Whether from my innate personality or from the strictness of my upbringing, I was often demanding and rigid as a mother. I wanted to raise those boys to fit into the world of valiant Mormon men. I was also suffering from perfectionism and “infecting” my family with it as well. As I look back now I can see all the rules and expectations I placed on them as their mother stemmed from my overwhelming fear of “doing it right.” I unknowingly did what I'm afraid many of us parents do – which is to see our children as a living, breathing manifestation of how good or bad our parenting is.

I see parenting differently now, as I see most things differently. I also happen to be in the “lucky” position of feeling responsible for the struggles and pains of my children's lives as a direct result of how I raised them.

I cannot count how many times I have replayed in my mind a mistake I've made, followed by the pain of shame and regret, followed by the probable imagined suffering my children are experiencing as a consequence. And this week I had an uninvited therapy session with myself about just that. We had recently sent in all of our old home movies to a company that digitizes them onto a thumb drive – hours and days and years of our lives all shrunk down onto a piece of plastic no bigger than my finger tip. We've been watching a few minutes of them each day and it's always a surprise what will show up next on the video file, as they aren't labeled yet. It was during one of these viewings that I saw the parenting of our three very young boys played directly back to me. And this particular time it wasn't pleasant. I was Ebenezer Scrooge, thrown into the past to witness in real time my mistakes and regrets. It was so painful for me I had to turn it off. What followed was heartbreak and lots of tears.

I'm super fun to hang out with.

But last I checked I am firmly living in the present with no possibility of going back in time to “fix it.” So what do I do now? Right now is all that I have. It's all that any of us have. It is taking time and it's taking work, but I'm shifting my outlook on this. Because until one of my genius sons invents a time machine, I can't go back and change it. And, as my wonderful husband pointed out to me, even if I could go back I could just be exchanging one mistake for another; one problem traded for the next.

"There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.” -Mr. Rogers

The truth is that I was doing the best I could. I was 23 years old and had lived my whole life in a cultural and religious bubble. I wanted desperately to do right by my children – to be a kind and loving mother that cared for them and taught them and adored them. And I was doing all of those things. It was just in a very different way than I would now. The truth is that there is NOTHING I can do about it now. So by rotating through this guilt cycle of mistake-shame-regret-suffering, I was only causing myself unnecessary pain.

I have a very vivid memory of a time I really messed up around the 5^th grade. Sometime in the fall we started working on math with a compass. It was so exciting as a child to be using a cool metal tool for my math. I felt like a scientist! I rode the bus to and from school everyday and one of these days, I must have decided to try out some experimentation of my own. I slowly poked that sharp metal compass directly into the thick, leather bus seat in front of me. Oooh fun! Curious and enjoying the sensation, I poked another 3 or 10 more holes in that shiny black surface. No one was around to see (or so I thought) and, to be honest, I wasn't even aware that I was being particularly naughty. I'm a rule follower in case that personal attribute hasn't already been firmly established.

The following day when I went to get on the bus home my name was called over the school loud speaker, “Emily Parks report to the principals office! Emily.....Parks......principals office.” Immediately consumed with dread, my heart rate spiking dangerously, I made my way to the office. Little goody-two-shoes was waaaaay out of her element and full of panic.

What followed was a tense meeting between the bus driver, the principal and my mother who had been called in for this meeting. The bus driver was angry and yelling and clearly thought all children were evil and out to make her life miserable (Maybe a career change was in order? But what do I know). My mother was well aware of my “rule keeper” status and was protectively explaining how this was just an innocent mistake that did not require such an over the top reaction. The principal was an intimidating old man with a low, surly voice mediating between the two. And in the meantime I was sitting in the corner, turning bright red and crying from shame, mortified at my mistake. I vividly remember thinking how terrible I was to have done something so stupid. I felt like a total screw up. I was a “bad girl” and now everyone knew it.

It's interesting how when we look back on ourselves as children we give so much compassion and empathy. We view the child version of ourselves as learning and growing and recognize that making mistakes is part of the equation. Because now I look back on that girl with loving kindness and understanding. I know little Emmy wasn't trying to be a bad person. I know that sometimes children just do weird things for no reason and they're still good kids. And I know that girl was just doing her best moving through the world with what she had – mistakes and all.

I want to give that same tenderness and compassion to the adult self I'd just seen in that home video. I know young mother Emmy wasn't trying to be stifling to her children. She was just doing the best she knew how. And I know that sometimes even adults do weird things and that doesn't mean they are bad people. I also want to give that allowance to slightly older Emmy who was doing her best raising those same boys as teenagers. She was just trying her hardest to navigate parenting as they transitioned out of the church and into the world.

Mistakes and all, I was just doing the best I thought I could with what I knew. And that is good enough.

So if we forgive our past in all its iterations, doesn't it follow then that our present selves should be given the same love, empathy and understanding? There is no “right” answer to what we should do. There is only our best guess. Each one of us is just taking it all in, and spitting out our best path forward.

Just like those kids, our adult selves are still learning and growing and making mistakes. That is part of OUR equation too. I am going to forgive myself. Letting go of those mistakes and that regret is hard. But not letting go is harder.

"Some days, doing the best we can may still fall short

of what we would like to be able to do,

but life isn't perfect on any front-and doing what we can with what we have

is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else."

-Mr. Rogers