Читать книгу The Secret of Happy Parents: How to Stay in Love as a Couple and True to Yourself - Steve Biddulph - Страница 13

If you have been feeling overwhelmed or like a failure at family living then it is time you let yourself off the hook. Before we start to talk about how to make things better, it is vitally important that you recognize how much you are actually succeeding. If you and your kids are alive, and have most of your arms and legs, if no-one is dead or in prison (or even if they are) then you have done millions of things right.

Without discounting the mistakes which you may have made, it’s still a fact that you have related, communicated, given and received love, and generally succeeded well beyond your conscious knowledge. One day, this will be evident to you.

We are all pioneers, hacking our way through the wilderness of millennial family living where no generation has gone before. In the past, family relationships were often simply an appearance one kept up. People did not expect intimacy or authentic communication. Rules and clichés governed most interactions. Before World War II, marriage was often something that people endured. From the sixties onwards, everything suddenly was reversed. Marriage became a disposable item, to throw away if it didn’t work. Now as we enter the twenty-first century we may become the first generation on a wide scale with the knowledge and skills to make relationships work.

You and your family are part of this breakthrough struggle. Everyone around you is having the same experience. Moreover, nothing you do is wasted. You don’t ‘fail’ if a marriage ends, or a kid gets into trouble. Sometimes these things have to be gone through to get where you are going. As long as you keep going, learning and adapting, you can no more fail or go backwards in life than a tree can ungrow.

If you feel unhappy, guilty, miserable or stuck at a particular time, don’t just ignore this feeling. But do realize that you feel bad because part of you knows that something more is possible. Pay attention to yearnings, regrets and frustrations because they are all signs of the life force in you, and will actually motivate you to keep you moving on to something better, which you know is there.