Complete Your Relationship with Your Parents

This was your first relationship.

When you were small, they were all that mattered to you. You first knew your relationship with the universe only through your connection with your parents. They were your one and only relationship. This is how your ability to relate took shape.

The quality of this bond is the foundation of all relatability in your life.

When this relationship is whole, it becomes a foundation for deep and meaningful connections with others. But if it has remained unresolved and incomplete, this incompletion weakens the emotional foundation of all your relationships.

Your relationship with your parents is built on their unconditional offering of love.

They cared for you out of pure fondness and affection. You could give them nothing in return except trouble and inconvenience. If they had loved you any less, your very survival would have been in question.

Medical research and experimentation have shown that infants who receive all nourishment but do not receive love, affectionate care, and physical human touch in the first few days of life struggle to survive and thrive (René Spitz, 1940; Harry Harlow's Experiments, 1950s-1960s; and John Bowlby, 1950s).

So the presence of love in the context of your relationship with your parents is clear and unquestionable. Yet, in this 'context' of natural love, you hold some ‘content'—your grudges from what happened in childhood.

1. Understanding Incompletions

Many of us unknowingly and subconsciously hold onto childhood grievances—resentment over how we were raised, what our parents did or didn’t do, how they disciplined or punished us, or how they supported someone else more than us.

Grudges for how they forced us to do things they shouldn't have—what we didn't want to do. How they made us eat things we didn't want to, took us to places where we didn't want to go, and even left us there alone!

As children, our frustrations are real and substantial.

It is only fair to feel helpless, frustrated, and furiously angry with these huge and powerful people who often behave like giant bullies!

It is understandable if, as children, we are sometimes deeply resentful that they aren't doing what we want or bringing us up as they 'should.'

Clearly, they shouldn't have 'forced us' to go to school and eat those strange and foul things! If only they had tried to convince us and negotiate! We could have agreed. It wasn't at all fair to force us.

Parents were our first heartbreak. Sometimes, they neglected us, loved someone else more, and abandoned us—leaving us when we needed them the most. At other times, they were outright cruel. They reprimanded and punished us, and got inexplicably angry. How they scared and terrified us! It is only natural to feel hurt and angry.

2. Withholding Love and Well-Being

As a part of natural upbringing, even loving parents have to judge, reprimand, and often force their children to do some things. In children, this naturally generates frustration, anger, and even deep resentment.

But being small, children have no way to 'get back at their parents'—they can't punish them. So children do the only thing they can. They take their love away from their parents.

“I am angry. I’ll show you!”. ?

• Contemplate, have you been withholding love from your parents?

Children can see that their being 'not okay', troubles their parents deeply. So this becomes the only way to 'get back at them' to punish them for their bullying. Children begin to 'withhold their well-being' from their parents.

• 'I am not okay!' (I am unwell, or someone bad or some misfortune is troubling me).

When children share their pains and troubles, the parents are stunned into a desperate need to make them feel fine. When they are unable to make them feel better, they lose—feeling helpless. The child wins. They have control.

Withholding well-being develops into a subconscious pattern that can continue to persist even into adulthood.

People who haven't let go of their anger, resentment, and judgment of their parents sometimes continue to punish them by withholding their well-being from their parents. This manifests as numerous struggles across many aspects of life, even when parents are no longer in the picture. To get back at their parents, people neglect their health, emotional well-being, and even self-sabotage careers, all to show them they were wrong!

Like this, unresolved feelings of resentment influence not just our relationships with our parents but also with all others. They cause emotional blockages that impact health, struggles in career growth, and difficulty forming deep, meaningful connections. Unhealed, incomplete relationships with parents become the reason for bad career moves, broken marriages, and failures throughout life.

• Can you spot incompletions in your relationships with your parents? What are you holding against them—resenting? What do you have to drop? Let go of? In what way are you unable to let them be as they were—and as they were not??
• Did you withhold your well-being from your parents in any way? Do you see any residual signs of this subconscious behaviour? Do you hold pain to prove your parents wrong? Subconsciously resisting success and blocking chances of being happy?It is important that you finally choose to grow up and drop all of those resentments—lock, stock, and barrel!

3. Get off it!

So it is important that you finally choose to grow up and drop all of those resentments - lock, stock and barrel!

Make a choice to let go and move forward with an open and kind heart.

Forgiveness does not mean excusing past actions or condoning them but rather releasing yourself from the need to hold on to blame and criticism.

Get off it! Drop whatever it is that you are angry about—that you are holding against them. Give up that need to show them, punish them someday because they didn't do something or did something wrong.

Get off all of it! Drop your resentments forever. Let it all go.

(Studies show that forgiveness improves mental health, reduces stress, and enhances overall well-being. Toussaint, Worthington, & Williams, 2015.)

4. Choose Completion

Create completion with the past. Let it be.

‘Only what you can let be would let you be.’

Completion does not mean that you say the past was perfect—it simply means accepting as it was or it wasn't. Giving up the need to continue resisting what already happened.

You drop the need to hold on and talk about how bad it was!

Completion is about letting the past be. Without approving whatever happened you give up your resistance to it. You release your efforts to fight and change it in any way. It can't be changed even if you keep resisting. So you let the past be as it was.

You finally choose to put the past in the past. By doing so, you release it and open your mind and heart to a fresh, new outlook.

5. Choose Them as They Are

You now begin to recognize that they had their own life's complications and struggles. They had limitations to wisdom.

It is time to release your need to hold onto blame or resentment. You let go of your need to judge and be right.

The path to emotional freedom starts with accepting our parents as they were and as they weren't, as they are and as they aren't.

There was no manual for perfect parenting, and they did their best with what they knew - some of it was right and some wrong. They gave their best shot.

You got what you got, didn't get what you didn't! This is it.

To be complete does not mean you approve everything, it simply means - you give up your resistance, judgement and the need to punish.

You let go of your need for them to be different from how they have been. You choose to have them as they were and are. The shift is simply a release of resistance.

Allow your resentment and resistance to their dominance to slip away. You don't have to do anything, you are all grown up to pick up what you will do. Just give up your resentment. Simply stay with the feelings that their dominance evokes, feel the sensations within. Feel them to heal them. Consider that if we aren’t able to be with the dominance of our parents, we resist and resent all kinds of authority at work or in life too.

When you release your resistance, you open your heart to new possibilities of a new, more meaningful connection. A new possibility to experience natural love.

6. Gratitude

Acknowledge that your parents did do something for you. You received this care without doing anything for them. Even if their love was not perfect, it was still present.

• Are you ready to notice what they did for you when you were tiny, difficult and messy? It is time to let the natural flow of love to resume. Let your love flow now.
• Notice what has remained unspoken with your parents. Let love flow. Express the love that has remained unexpressed in all this time.

7. Create a New Dynamic. Try this:

• Write a heartfelt letter acknowledging the sacrifices, this simple act softened their bond and created room for healing.

A heartfelt letter and conversation acknowledging their contributions is a simple but powerful act that will soften the hearts, heal the relationship and open a new space for happy oneness. It will need some courage to break free from the hesitation and to be truly generous. But what you create will change lives and create fulfilment.?

Some people may have experienced deep wounds from their parental relationships, including neglect or abuse, making the healing process more complex. In such cases, completion might involve acceptance, setting boundaries, or finding peace through self-work rather than direct reconciliation.

But once past grievances are released, a new way of relating emerges. You can choose to connect from a place of love and presence. From limited transactional exchanges shift to true and complete generosity that is natural to you.

Try letting go of all expectations, and be truly selfless - like how parents are to infants and the need to be right. Shift from seeking validation or anything you need from them to offer out of your generosity - love and appreciation.

Appreciate what is, offer your presence to them fully - to listen, comfort and connect. One meaningful conversation at a time.

Your relationship with your parents is the foundation of your emotional well-being.

• What is the one step you can take today to heal and complete your relationship with your parents?
• How would you create more joy and ease?
• What words of gratitude can you express today?

By embracing completion, we step into emotional freedom, allowing love and connection to enrich our lives in ways we never imagined.