Brooklyn Not So Beckham
Cutting ties with parents and what we can learn from it - Spoiler alert, this piece may have nothing to do with the Beckhams.
Like every motivation in life, the desire to remove yourself from certain people has its origin and doesn’t come out of nowhere. Every living being will naturally gravitate away from environments that cause them harm. Humans are probably one of the only species who will endure and tolerate harmful environments for far too long before moving away. Would you have a desire to remove yourself from a circle where you are treated with kindness, gentleness and respect? Chances are, probably not because there is no need for it when you are treated in a way that makes you feel safe and respects your individuality.
I don’t follow much of the celebrity world and have, like most of us, no insight into the Beckham’s family dynamics and how their lives look like behind closed doors. However, imagine being a celebrity son of one of the power couples of our time, a name known in every household, a brand behind them, so well reputed that it seems impossible to imagine there could be even a trace of a skeleton in their cupboards. When a young man with such background decides to go no contact with his parents, I believe, it is worth listening.
I don’t think that any of us quite understand the gravity of such a decision. There is nothing for this young man to gain by being public about it. It is quite the opposite, he is flooded with a wave of disapproval, hatred, lack of understanding. Mostly from a large audience, complete strangers, who have never or will never meet any of the family members involved or take a moment to try and put themselves into someone else’s shoes let alone have the ability to see through the veil of the seemingly perfect family picture. Most likely because they themselves have to keep up some distorted idea of a perfect family.
Some seem to have very strong opinions on why it is inappropriate, wrong, a sin to cut off one’s parents. Parents who have given us life and fame and money. As though that is all a child needs. While being born into wealth certainly comes with great advantages, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the child feels heard, seen, understood and loved. This requires sensible, self-aware parents, rather than heaps of money and well-rehearsed mannerisms that might not always be genuine.
It is unimaginable what kind of strength and bravery the act of going no contact from someone with such public presence must require. It is one of the hardest and most distressful acts for a person to go through in private let alone for someone under the magnifying lens of the entire world.
Every person who has strong reactions to a stranger’s decision and feels compelled to leave a comment on the internet without grasping the complexities of such a situation, is failing to use outer triggers as an opportunity for their own healing. “Go call your mother.” “There is only one mother.” “Wife is temporary, mother is forever.” “Shame on you for doing this to your parents.” Doing what? Removing yourself from harm? Such comments rarely bring any kind of release but subtly or perhaps not so subtly reveal those individuals’ inner worlds and fearful beliefs that end up spilling into the world. Think about it, isn’t there something odd about my behaviour, if I have a complete freak out and the urge to scream and shout at some stranger who did something that does not affect me in the slightest?
We can actually use those moments to become more interested in the story that is going on in our own bodies that drives us to comment on other people’s private business. What is coming up in our own systems? What is that great fear of abandoning one’s parents and the underlying belief that whatever they do to us, we are never allowed to say anything or God forbid, leave them? What consequences or punishments do we fear for speaking up?
Some even cite passages from the bible, that one should respect and honour their parents. Surely only if parents are good to us in the first place? In the name of religion we turn a blind eye and defend poor parental behaviour, so parents are freed from their responsibility and don’t have to face the consequences of their actions. But actions have consequences regardless of the name and fame we carry.
Stepping away from parents is often the very last resort. No child wants to exclude their own parents. Or be without parents. But before anyone goes no contact, there is usually a long and stressful period of trying to express what is causing harm, trying to communicate from all sorts of different angles, trying to select the right words, to make themselves understood with little to no success. And only then, when they find themselves at the end of their tether, they resort to no contact at all. The tragedy is that parents who would understand their child’s last resort are parents who the child would not have to step away from.
As a society we rather blame and disapprove of such an act instead of taking it as an opportunity to learn something about human behaviour and the way we ought to treat each other. Parents and people on the outside often fail to understand another’s perspective, their children’s experience and how their own behaviour might negatively affect them. That lack of introspection results in others removing themselves from them. No relationship can survive without the willingness of everybody involved to reflect, to have each other’s best interest at heart, to be conscious of our actions or non-actions and how they affect the ones around us. No relationship will survive without the skill to own our mistakes and repair the damage we have caused.
Personal growth and disentanglement hardly ever come lightly. They are often brought about by chaos, dramatic actions and uncomfortable truths. As parents we must ask ourselves, which is more painful: to very honestly have a look at our own patterns and behaviours and admit that perhaps a couple of things we do are in fact hurting people or avoid looking at it altogether and end up repelling our very own children? Why is it so hard for us as parents to consider the possibility of our own shortcomings? Why don’t we put our pride and ego aside and ask the much more important questions: Why does my son feel the need to get away from me? What kind of environment are we creating that drives him away? What is my part in this? What have I missed that he has been trying to communicate to me perhaps for many years in many different ways until he gave up and removed himself?
It is never pleasant to look at our own behaviours and admit that perhaps we have made a couple of mistakes. We hate to feel bad and inadequate. It triggers all sorts of wounds that we would rather keep buried and hidden away from the world including ourselves. Would we really rather lose our child because our ego hinders us to listen and actually hear? None of us is as impeccable as we’d like to believe. We mess up. Every single one of us. Big time. We have to live with that. We have to develop the skill to receive criticism. Not from random people, but from the handful of people closest to us. Most importantly our children. No one will try to stay connected to us for as long as our kids. No one will have the endurance and tenacity or the desire to keep fighting for our love, trying endlessly with no improvements. Until they cannot take it any longer.
We can look at radical behaviours from our children as shame and disrespect or understand their deeper purpose: an invitation and fuel for liberation and evolution. An opportunity for disentanglements and riddance of dated family patterns that are no longer working. This is part of the evolution of consciousness. Everything that no longer works, everything that is damaging the system, has to come to light. We can no longer get away with it. And that is good news! For it creates space for a new way of relating. One that is based on genuine trust, authenticity and care. Together we can build true connection. But it requires us to face the demons head-on and then grow beyond them.
We often deprive children from the right and freedom to be their true selves because they have to take on a role in an attempt to keep the family system somewhat intact. They often grow up being what we want them to be, what we need them to be. My mother was in an abusive relationship with my father and already had two children when I was born. She had no energy or desire for a third child but was too weak to say no to my father. So she needed me to be non-existent. She needed me to not need her. That’s exactly who I became. And she didn’t have to use a single word to communicate that to me. Of course she did not intend to cause such damage and yet it did. It has taken me years of unlearning being the unwanted, invisible one that never needs anything or anyone.
Again, for us, the world, it is irrelevant what the details of the Beckham story are. This is not about who is right and who is wrong. As with every rupture, family estrangement is about connection and the lack thereof. If our own sons have to step away from us, it is time for us to put the ego aside and listen. No one would ask you to stay around people who keep hurting, mistreating or disrespecting you. Everyone would tell you to run. But when it is family, all of a sudden we are somehow supposed to swallow disrespect and tolerate dysfunctional behaviour in the name of… Peace? Tradition? Religion? No more.
Instead of fighting the fact that our children removed themselves, blaming them, making them wrong for feeling what they’re already feeling, it would be a much wiser thing to pause and turn inwards. First we would have to make space for all the feelings that our child’s action brings up in us. Parents might require help to develop their emotional capacity muscle if they wish to save the relationship with their kids. Being emotionally savvy means being attuned to oneself and the ones around us and acting in ways that are considerate and respectful and will not cause harm to the ones closest to us. It means stop defending our own poor behaviour and instead learning to take full responsibility for it. It means acting from our hearts rather than the mental concepts about how family should look like or how children should behave. Children’s behaviour is a natural consequence of the way they are being treated/mistreated. But this we do not like to hear. Emotional development would not only enable us to connect with the richness of our own emotional realm but would also lay the foundation to connect with our child again, should they welcome that.
Our children often bring so much wisdom into the family system and can and will point out patterns that are no longer sustainable if we want to have a healthy circle. And sometimes it will be a child’s partner who will slip into that role and shed a light on something that is not as harmless as we like to believe. Our child becomes part of a new system, their partner’s system, and if that one is more harmonious, it will invite for everything that is not in alignment in our system of origin to come to light. Our child might for the first time become conscious of unhealthy habits and patterns between family members that within the system no one seems to notice. They will usually go a long way of trying to change those things in more subtle ways and will become louder when they remain unheard. Only once they’re exhausted and discouraged from trying, they will eventually give up and resort to a no contact solution in order to keep themselves safe and sane.
Perhaps the Beckham story is a very different one and has nothing to do with any of the insights in this article, who am I to say. However, it definitely inspired this piece on the subject and is going out to all the ones that are going through something similar, doubting their self-worth and feel alone and misunderstood. There are good and valid reasons for your decisions. Whether a no contact decision is temporary or permanent, is to be decided by the parties involved and them only. No one on the outside has the right or power to interfere with it. Remember that it is more important that you understand yourself. Even if the entire world doesn’t understand your choices. You and only you can hear the whispers of your soul. And only you know what is true for you and what no longer is.
With love always,
Lana