So I know everyone’s reparenting journey is a little different so I thought I’d explain what reparenting is, why I’ve decided to do this and how I’m doing it. Because I can already tell this is gonna be more or less a pretty wild ride.
Reparenting is basically this:
I didn’t get.... well, basically any of this from my parents as a child. I was always told that children should be seen and not heard, my desires were never met. The only thing that was really met for me as a kid is was food and water/other means of hydration, even that was on shaky ground when I lived with my mother. I may or may not go into details about my childhood later on on this blog, I haven’t really decided as it’s incredibly personal and painful to have out there for everyone to see.
I’ve decided to go on this journey because I’ve noticed that most of my romantic relationships mirror the relationship that my parents had and as a result I either 1) pick people that are either like my mother or my father or 2) feel like it’s going too well, nitpick every single thing and end up leaving before it can become disastrous. My friendships are thankfully pretty solid, but my romantic relationships have always been a mess and I either end up getting hurt or hurting someone. And I’m tired of repeating this cycle. The neglect and abuse I experienced as a child affects other areas of my life obviously but I recently broke up with someone who was a little too much like my dad and dipped cause he was becoming very toxic to me, so that reason is what drove me to this journey.
What I have decided to do, because I like guidance in general, is follow The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It is first and foremost about recovering your artist, healing from the people who hurt your inner artist and unleashing your inner artist to create the art you want to create. However I’m using it a little bit differently — I’m using the basic principles that it highlights.
The artists way is made up of three individuals concepts:
Morning pages — three pages of stream of consciousness writing
The artist date — taking your inner artist child on a date once a week for 2 hours. No other people, no distractions. Nothing. Just you, your inner artist and whatever you decide to do.
The weekly reading and tasks.
How I’ve modified it to fit what I’m doing:
Morning pages: I’m not doing these in the morning like Julia suggests. I am doing these at night after my shower. Right after I do my bullet journal stuff. I’m also not doing three pages. I’m being kind and considerate to myself by not pushing myself to do something that will inevitably exhaust me. I am committing myself to write at least one line. It’s small, but doable for me. If after I write that line and I feel like writing more than that, I do. And I write until I’m satisfied.
Artist date: Pretty much done in the same way that the artist date in the book is done. (This next line is hypothetical, as COVID-19 has made going outside for fun difficult) I go places that my inner child would think is fun, places I didn’t get to go as a kid or do things I wasn’t allowed to do, ie. Swing on the swings at a park, buy cute little things in the store just for the fun of it, buy myself a candy or two, a stuffed animal, whatever makes my inner child happy within reason, of course. Since COVID-19 is currently a thing, I plan to watch kid movies inside, maybe build a fort and read in it, color, and sing horribly to Disney songs, just cause I can 😁
The weekly reading and tasks: Since I’m doing this as someone who’s trying to heal my inner child, I’m completely skipping the readings and going straight to the tasks. I’m also adjusting the way I do said tasks. For example: every time the “inner artist” or “creative child” is mentioned I just substitute it for child or childhood or whatever so inner artist would become “inner child” and creative child would just be “child”
I am starting small with this because I never got any real structure as a child and I’m kind of at a loss on how to provide structure for myself and by extension for my own child. I am working on it and that needs to happen in baby steps because otherwise it’ll become too hard and I will give up and fall right back into old patterns because, as painful as they are, they are also easier than changing.
I am excited about this journey that I’ve decided to take but I am also terrified. I really don’t adjust to change well and this is going to be a really big change for me. I’d like to update how it’s going on this blog AT LEAST weekly. If I’ve dealt with something rather monumental or whatever, I will likely also write about that, but I think with every week I get through in the artists way(the child’s way???) I will do an update on here as well. If you have made it this far into this post thank you for sticking around and I hope this has been useful.
