Chapter Four. Part VII
Without a doubt I would say that my family had one or two behavioural issues, which to some degree or another I see many families of those 40s/50s post-war years as having. It might well have been a time notable for its talk of togetherness and new beginnings, but to me those early years growing up in the north-west of England seemed quite grey, bleak and love-less.
Just as the WW2 soldier had few places, if anywhere to go with his post traumatic stress (a term not even invented until the 1980s), other than that of a cheery nature, there was little room for emotional or individual expression; more than anything else it was just a case of getting on with things. Without going into all the details here, much of what happened in those early and important years resulted in a good number of issues and personal challenges, not just at the time, but also later on–and far more profoundly.
Naturally, these inherited issues, this baggage, though often accepted initially without much thought when young becomes more of an apparent burden when one goes out into the wide world, as life scenarios and relationships become chronically problematic.
Brenda's words that follow marked the beginning of something for me - a seed was planted in my mind. This was an idea that had never occurred to me before, not exactly in this form, anyway.
The old saying, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", is to some degree a truism, and now, that very principle was to be given a much wider and far-reaching gravity.
This is a subject that will become something of a theme to many of the sessions that follow; a principle that seemed so logical and credible on one hand, and yet would at times involve issues of such trial and tribulation to the human experience, that there couldn't be anything other than a reluctance to accept the merits of the principle.
The view that hardship itself was something you can't do without, if indeed you want to evolve, was a new and intriguing perspective.
This is not a case of enduring hardship just for the sake of it, but more as a self-presented opportunity to surmount and overcome the challenges of hardship, and to grow spiritually in the process.
More than anything, it did all seem to make sense.
Could it be that the very obstacles that we are bound by are also, potentially, the keys to our freedom?
Addressing our difficulties, she says ...
