“Your parents are your first teachers. Your family is your first classroom. You take your first lesson here in everything, including love. You quickly find out about your parents’ relationship to love. Every day you learn a bit more about what love means to them. Their model of love will be your first model of love… It’s your relationship to these childhood messages that you take into adolescence and beyond, into romance, careers and parenthood.” Robert Holden, Loveability

Almost a year after I did the epic five-part blog series on Robert Holden’s Loveability, I got the impulse to, once again, delve into this magical meditation on love and relationships. I always found astounding how, however many times I read a book I still get afforded with new understandings and aha moments. It is a great affirmation of how our spiritual growth leads to new levels of awakening, as we move forward in our journey towards enlightenment.

Although I was never a big supporter of dwelling in the past as a process of healing, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the proposition that, my relationship with my parents, as well as their own personal relationship, had somehow influenced the way through which I experience love. Although, Robert goes on to suggest that the childhood messages affecting our relationship to love also stem from our school, hobbies, movies, and stories we read as children, I felt guided to begin this inner exploration with my relationship with my parents.

What are the key childhood messages you received about love from your upbringing? Robert invites the readers to get pen and paper and go for a stroll down memory lane. Doubting I would discover something profound but hoping I would, I took a leap of faith and did as instructed.

Three pages later I was in tears, as all my romantic pitfalls, temperaments and obsessions, started making sense. Having analyzed all three relationship combinations (me-mum, me-dad, mum-dad), I was amazed to discover that I had somehow brought the perceived deficiencies of my relationship with my mother and father, into my present, searching for ways to satisfy, or heal them. Most importantly, I had unconsciously adopted my parents’ relationship model, their habits and roles they played, into my own romantic relationships. Although the people and circumstances were changing, I had been replaying the same plot over and over again!

Following the initial shock, I knew that acknowledging the childhood messages was only the first step to releasing them. To wholly let them go and start fresh, I had to forgive them. I’ve come to see forgiveness as a co-creative process. Its only requirement is our willingness to forgive, and the rest is taken care by Divine Guidance. Once we step into the edge of the vortex of forgiveness, through our willingness and surrender, its power will draw us in and show us the way. Taking a deep breath, I scribbled down the following prayer, and released it all to Source:

 I am willing to forgive my parents for teaching me a distorted view of love and relationships. I understand that we are all victims of victims, and I let all resentment go. I no longer believe in co-dependency or victimization in relationships. I choose to see my magnificence, knowing I am a unique expression of love in this world. I deserve to be happy, and have a loving, fulfilling relationship in which I give and receive love unconditionally.