Publisher's Synopsis
When we have been abused or neglected as a child it can leave us feeling wounded, deprived, and wronged by those whom we love and trusted. The characters in the book Eli, Edward, and Rashod were going through a lot, but it started with their family first. The hurt can be especially deep if those who caused pain were our own Parents. If these struggles are not resolved, they continue to affect us and our subsequent relationships. As a result of such experiences, we might try to find new relationships with people who give us the things we didn't get from our damaged parents attached ourselves to people who remind us those who hurt us and fix them as a way of vicariously repairing our damaged parents change our parents so they will finally give us what we needed when we were young. The problem is that although these efforts may feel terribly right in the moment, they will be unsuccessful in bringing about real healing and fulfillment. Worse yet, the pain often won't go away on its own or over time. Memories of these events are painful, so we tend to avoid thinking about them too deeply. Or if we do think about them, we focus on certain parts at the expense of others, precluding a complete picture of the events. Thus we have an incomplete and child-like view of the harms experienced, and any mental "solution" to the problem is likewise incomplete and without the benefit of being properly vetted by our mature higher mind. The child's mind wants to rewrite the story and change the ending. But doing so at this late stage will not change the past nor will it remove the pain experienced nor will it fix the psychological and spiritual damage. When emotional wounds occur in childhood, these injuries are experienced from a child's perspective. Memories and understanding of the events are stored in the brain in that child-like state. Children do not process information like adults. They tend to place too much blame on themselves and internalize negative messages received from others. We carry this blame as adults and still believe and replay those negative messages. "You're stupid," "Why can't you do anything right?" "I wish you were never born." We may tell ourselves these things for years after those who made the original tapes are long gone. Confronting the totality of our painful experiences is the only way to gain mastery over the past. It allows us to objectively revisit what happened so that we can reassess it from a more mature and objective vantage point. It allows us to gain a more complete picture of the events and come to more appropriate conclusions about the cause and meaning of what happened. This understanding allows us to move past the futile urge to reenact these experiences and allows us to recreate an internal understanding of who we really are in a more functional and accurate way.
