“There is no enlightenment without forgiveness for our parents.
Whether we like it or not, our mother is our primary archetype of the adult female, and our father is our primary archetype of the adult male.
If I am a man and I harbor resentment toward my mother, I will continually project guilt onto other women who enter my life; and if I am a woman, I will be unable to avoid self-contempt in my adulthood. If I am a woman and I harbor resentment toward my father, I will continually project guilt onto the men who appear in my life; and if I am a man, I will be unable to avoid self-contempt when I reach my masculine maturity.
That’s it. At a certain point, we forgive because we choose to forgive. Healing occurs in the present, not the past. It is not the love we didn’t receive in the past that holds us back, but the love we are not expressing in the present…
These days, there is a lot of talk about people growing up in dysfunctional families. Who didn’t grow up in a dysfunctional home? The whole world is dysfunctional! But there is nothing we have gone through or done that cannot be used to make our lives more valuable today.”
— Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
