Moving beyond the family bond

‘You need to diminish yourself in order not to lose the love of others’. 

This is a well accepted, toxic belief, passed down through generations, from mothers to daughters, fathers to sons.
It is the belief that you betray your kin by stepping out of the family bond that keeps you small and on hold. 

The bond I am talking about is not the free, loving connection between family members, but the hidden bonding that is forged by guilt and the need to cover up old, unprocessed wounding from the past. 

The loyalty towards your parent’s woundedness is a powerful one, urging you to not move beyond their unhappiness by stepping into your own, authentic power and freedom. It is like a silent contract binding you to the responsibility of healing your mother or father, of meeting their inner needs and easing their pain, feeling selfish and cold if you don’t. 

This bond is a strong one, and is still keeping you on hold nowadays because deep down you believe that the source of love is found in it. This belief, having its roots in early childhood, includes the idea that if you are able to heal your parents, you heal the source of love. When you heal the source of love, you will be loved and seen again.

Stepping out of the family bond, even when it keeps you trapped in feelings of guilt and powerlessness, feels like stepping into a void, evoking feelings of deep fear and not belonging, of doing something fundamentally wrong. Not only the family bond tries to pull you back into place, also cultural you are deeply encoded to never leave the clan, especially not the parents.
This is because we do not know that the source of love was never out there, but hidden in ourselves, hidden in the heart of our being. 

The source of love you are looking for is inside. You’ve heard it before, but it is meaningless until you are ready to move beyond old safety. 

Finding this source means letting go of the guilt you took up as a child and shift your focus, shift your center of gravity from outside to inside. It means listening to your inner needs and becoming an inner parent for your wounded inner child. This is not selfish, but an act of love that will set you and your loved ones free.

You cannot heal the inner wounding of your mother.
You cannot heal the inner wounding of your father.
Let it go.

You can only heal yourself by seeing through beliefs causing self loathing and feelings of unworthiness. Only you can come home in who you are, fully and totally. It is your natural state; you are meant to be home. You are meant to answer your inner calls, meant to meet your needs and enjoy your own, free voice. 

And once you do, you open the door wide to that inner source of love that was actually never yours to own. From this source love flows without a price tag, without limits or sacrifice, love that is not given or received by you but just flowing freely, as it always has and always will.