How to finish childhood

Rumi says:

I open and fill with love and

other objects evaporate….

Soon, I’ll begin a new blog with a broader focus. Today, I’m writing on the subject of valuable healing tools for personal and planetary healing.

The Hoffman Process:

The Hoffman Process is one of the powerful ways to finish growing up.  Finishing childhood means letting go of the futile hope that our parents can and will change. Most of us waste decades on the unconscious fantasy that the parents we had as small children must change or pay the price of our judgment.

Saying it out loud exposes its foolishness: “I want the parents I had when I was five to be different.” The bumper sticker cliche that says “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood” is wrong. It is is too late to change the past. The present though, has unlimited potential for joy.

Refusing to forgive our parents now is  a way of saying “You were wrong when I was five or fifteen. Until you fix that, I won’t love you and be glad to be your son or daughter.” Refusing to forgive parents who are dead is even worse; your  inner child waits forever for a dead parent to change.

Here’s the principle: we can change our parents (and partners and siblings and in-laws) only by changing ourselves. We change them by changing our attitude toward them. It works whether they are living or not. The Hoffman Process offers unique attitude change tools perfected over 30 years. Those tools are safe and powerful.

How the Hoffman Process works: the “Prosecution of Parents”

With great skill and gentleness, the Hoffman Process uses time-tested tools to help participants let go of the past and be in the present with forgiveness and love. First, participants express and honor their feelings about every mistake their parents or caretakers made; nothing is left out. The wounds you remember and the wounds you’ve forgotten or repressed come up and are addressed. Mistakes made knowingly and mistakes made by omission are all included.

The cathartic work is extensive and deep. Unlike group therapy, no one is on stage, because everyone works at the same time. Skilled teachers assist you; they send you back to do more when they see you’ve left something out.

At the end of this phase, you’re drained. A great weight is gone from your shoulders–the burden of the bad feelings you’ve always had toward parents who hurt you.

I learned through the Process that true forgiveness cannot take place until anger and hurt has been addressed and released. Sunday School forgiveness done because you “should” usually fails.

The “Defense of Parents”

After the “prosecution of parents,” the “defense of parents” begins. You get to know your parents for the first time by walking through their lives. You learn what their birth was like, and how they felt at three and five and ten years old. Who was there? What happened? How were they hurt by their own parents? What decisions did they make about doing things differently than their parents did?

The French say “to know all is to forgive all,” and they’re right. When you really understand someone–when you can see the world through their eyes–forgiveness comes without effort. You become free.

I had always been angry at my dad for smoking himself into an early grave and leaving me without a father. In the Process, I came to understand my father’s extreme loneliness and the lack of nurturing he experienced as a child. The cigarettes he discovered at 12 helped him deal with those emotions; once addicted, he was unable to get the help he needed and to muster the determination to quit.  Along with many of my psychotherapy clients, I’ve had my own issues with addiction; I understand.

The Gift of Love

I forgave my dad, and came to realize that the gift of love he gave me was far more important than any of his character flaws. Any parent who loves you is gold. You start counting your blessings.

If you had a parent or grandparent or caretaker who didn’t love you, you learn that you can forgive that too; it wasn’t about you at all. Some of our caretakers were damaged in their own childhoods. As adults they may exhibit problems like addiction, abusiveness, inability to love and worse. They deserve compassion.

When you completely forgive your parents, you forgive yourself as well–and not until. When you can look into your mother’s and father’s eyes, and see the sweet little girl and boy they once were, something shifts forever in your heart. It doesn’t solve everything that happens after that point in time, but once you’ve come to prize and to cherish those who gave you birth, the quality of your own life is forever enriched.

I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to do the Hoffman Process. I’ve done too many seminars and workshops to count,  both as a participant and as a leader. The Process was the most powerful. It changed my life permanently and allowed me to forgive my parents and other crucial adults who hurt or disappointed me in childhood. I was able to become free of old feelings about:

• being beaten with sticks and leather belts throughout childhood and adolescence

• rejection from my parents because from age thirteen I developed religious views that were different from theirs

• harsh criticism and rejection from both of them whenever I took a different path than the one they had chosen for me

• what I thought was my mother’s lifelong inability to love and accept me. To my surprise, I learned that a large component of that problem was my failure to love and accept her; I wanted a mom without character defects and limitations!

A time of intense joy and peace follows the Process. When you’ve learned to cherish your parents, cherishing yourself follows. You can look in the mirror and see the precious child you were looking back at you with love.

My father had already died when I did the Process. Nevertheless, I’ve felt his love ever more intensely since then. Years later, when my mother was dying of cancer, I was able to serve and assist her in ways that would never have been possible without the Process.

After the surgery that revealed there was no cure for her advanced disease, there was a moment when she woke up in her hospital bed. Her face was old, luminous, and beautiful. She looked straight into my eyes and said “I love you. I’ve always loved you.” Then she fell asleep again.

From that time on, she dropped her lifelong habit of criticizing everything I did. For her remaining weeks, she was the loving mother I’d always longed for. I’m certain this death bed bonding would not have happened if I had not prepared myself by forgiving her as much as I was able. The Hoffman Process showed me the path, and I am forever grateful.

====================================

Why Not Psychotherapy?

For those who are wondering whether you can accomplish the same things in private psychotherapy, my answer is a guarded yes. I’m a psychotherapist myself, and have assisted many patients in following this path. If you spend only one hour a week with your therapist, though, achieving similar results can take years. Another issue is whether or not your therapist understands this journey, or even sees forgiveness of parents as a goal. Some actually think they’re helping by fostering anger or emotional distance from parents as a way of life. Others are biased against any and all workshops. Finding a therapist who encourages you to take the Process, and who knows how to support you in maintaining your new growth afterward can be very helpful.

The power of healing group energy is another factor that’s hard to duplicate. Being in a group where it’s you see that everyone has  longstanding and troubling emotions toward parents helps you understand what you need to do and helps you have the courage to do it.

The Hoffman Process is available in several locations in the United States and Canada, as well as in a dozen other countries. Contact them to find out about locations and times.

http://www.hoffmaninstitute.org (USA)

http://www.hoffmaninstitute.ca (Canada)

http://www.quadrinity.org (other countries)

You may post a response here (Hoffman grads, please do.) or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

Blessings to you, dear visitor. Live long and love well.