When I was young I thought of my parents as very separate people from me. I thought of myself as a “new person” different from my parents (arrogantly sometimes better) and unique in my own way. It was only as I got older I started to see threads of them in me. When I first noticed this (or more often it was pointed out) I really fought it. I didn’t want to be like them. After awhile this became exhausting. Really exhausting. Because after all I am them so I can’t win that fight no matter how hard I try. So I relaxed and used this information to help me better understand my behavior. It was a giant relief to get to this point and it is a great place to be. To use a horrible analogy (I love analogies) it is like being a detective and having instant visibility into the motive behind each crime.

All that being said, it still really throws me to see pictures of my parents 33 years ago. I sit and stare at people who I kind of recognize, who kind of eerily look like me, yet I can’t exactly place. It is kind of like I never thought they existed before I entered their lives.