Book 161 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: A Blank Slate

Book – The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller

Book Description:

This best-selling book examines childhood trauma and the enduring effects it has on an individual's management of repressed anger and pain.

Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided millions of people with an answer - and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.

Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents' expectations and win their "love". Alice Miller writes, "When I used the word 'gifted' in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb.... Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived." But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.

Reflection:

As of this writing, I am 37 years old. Prior to this Year of Magical Learning journey beginning after losing my daughter at age 35, I feel like I’ve spent a lifetime hardly knowing anything about myself, humanity, or how the universe operates in general.

It has been mind-blowing to me over the course of this YOML experience just how much better equipped I am to understand my feelings, emotions, what I value, my purpose, and how I fit into this world. I finally have a baseline operating system in place for how to live my life in balance and harmony, but it wasn’t easy.

If it has taken me 37 years of living, the death of a child, and over 200 books in 2 years to finally start to scratch the surface of understanding myself and what is important to me in this world. If that is what it takes to get just a baseline of how to process this world, how in the hell is a child supposed to understand anything?

We all know the answer to this question…they aren’t!

After reading The Drama of the Gifted Child, I’m reminded of just how immensely important our job is as parents to be effective guides for our children. It makes me so sad thinking of all the emotionally stunted children out there in this world that were being raised by a bunch of emotionally stunted adults. In my opinion, we have an epidemic of humans navigating this world without the basic knowledge of who they are, what they care about, and equipped with the tools to live a life of fulfillment and purpose. If these “grown-ups” don’t understand the basics of themselves, how are we expecting them to teach their children?

We can do better, and we will do better!

I look at my 1-year-old son, Luca, and I see all the ways that I can impact his life these days with my behavior and actions (good and bad). He’s a blank slate that is waiting to learn and develop from anything and everything that comes across his path. The question is, what will he be taught? That is his parents’ #1 job, to teach. He is solely dependent upon myself and my wife to be his guides through this world until the day when he can start to figure it out for himself. That is a lot of pressure if you have no idea what you are doing.

For me, I was blessed that Emilia left me this journey that helped me to understand myself, my values, and my purpose as a gift to be able to be the effective guide I need to be for her future siblings. I have a duty to make sure I do everything in my power to pay this sacrifice forward and equip my current and future children with the access to knowledge, support, guidance, and a role model they will need in order to effectively have a chance to navigate their way through this world. I like to think of this as Emilia’s way to make sure she is flexing her big sister muscles through me to make sure her siblings have the best chances they can at a happy life.

Taking care of my family is one thing, but I’m not planning on stopping there. I must do something to help all those other children out there that are being left to navigate this world with lot of pain that they don’t understand inflicted on them by a bunch of adults with pain that they don’t understand. We can do this by learning about ourselves and what we care about to stop this vicious cycle. It is possible and that is my life’s mission. I want to help people to find their own balance in life by understanding themselves and what they care about most. Once people start to understand themselves, they can finally be able to effectively guide the future generations to come.

Question: What lessons on living do you hope to pass down to future generations through your actions and words?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller