Cherise breaks the chain
Read on:
What I did foresee was some hardship on the practical front, and the reading definitely needed to go in this direction to provide her with the help she required.
The couple still lived with their respective parents: Cherise had only recently finished studying, and her boyfriend was saving up for a van to work for himself as an electrician. They felt quite helpless when it came to changing their life into that of independent parents.
But Cherise wasn’t in the slightest worried about the practical side: her main concern was around people. She worried that her boyfriend would think she had fallen pregnant on purpose; she worried about her parents being ashamed of their unmarried daughter being with child and she worried about her group of friends looking down on her for getting herself in this situation.
I understood her worries about her parents: they lived according to the traditions and rules of their culture. They had hardly come to terms with the fact that their daughter was seeing an ‘outsider’ and now he had made her pregnant.
I confirmed that they wouldn’t like the news, but as far as I could see they wouldn’t love their grandchild any less for it. I felt that this would be the same for her boyfriend’s family.
As for their friends: as this would be the first baby in the group, he or she would receive a lot of attention and presents from the excited extended aunties and uncles.
Again Cherise looked relieved, but soon returned to fretting. “What if they say….?” and “What if he thinks…?”
Over and over I had to guide her away from hypothetical family dramas and towards learning how to become an independent couple. Because this was the answer to everything. After all, their families would mainly be worried about them being unprepared and inexperienced.
I booked some moderate successes and Cherise left with a few guidelines and some new found courage.
The next time I saw her was years later. I didn’t recognize her: she had grown from a girl into a woman. She told me she was pregnant again, and that had made her think of me. Ha, connected in pregnancies, I liked that.
Again the pregnancy came as a surprise and caused a lot of upheaval in Cherise and her husband’s world. The reason was that they were in the process of buying a house. The owner of the house was Cherise’s uncle. The man was planning to retire, sell up and become a grey nomad.
He was flexible and not in a hurry to sell. He had agreed for them to make the down payments in instalments. The young couple had calculated it would take them two years altogether to get a lump sum together.
This would send uncle off with a nice car and caravan and they would start paying the mortgage as soon as they moved in. All this was put on paper by a private lawyer. All had gone smoothly and they were 11 months into their deal.
Having another baby didn’t just mean they would have to delay their payments, it also meant the house wouldn’t be suitable for the 4 of them. The house would have been big enough for the 3 of them, but not for 4. Although they had never said it out loud to each other, they had both been happy to have just the one child.
Cherise was devastated to have to break the deal with the uncle. He had been so generous and accommodating, and now they had to let him down. It would put her parents in an awkward position: Cherise already knew the story would go around in the family; it would even travel all the way to their country of origin, where part of the family still lived.
I couldn’t see any major problems for uncle, quite the contrary. Uncle would be able to up the asking price and upgrade to an even nicer caravan!
This time I refused to let the reading be about a non-existing family-drama. I asked her if she was always so easily embarrassed and afraid of what others would think or say, or was it only connected to her parents? She looked at me nonplussed and I explained to her that in both readings her fear of losing face had dominated.
As in both readings the embarrassment was connected to her parents and family, I asked her if, for example, when she was out with her daughter and the girl misbehaved in public, did that make her anxious? She gave me half a smile and told me, almost shyly, that her daughter was probably the best-behaved child anyone could wish for. Ha-ha, wrong question, but yay for having a perfect child!
She did get what I meant though, because she asked me if I thought her worries were abnormal. I responded that more than anything else they felt sticky. They would have felt completely normal – after all some cultures, families and individuals care more about ‘losing face’ than others – were it not for the heavy energy of shame surrounding her when she talked about it.
Cherise thought for a while before asking me if I thought she only had shame when her parents were involved.
I told her that from my point of view as a psychic, I thought the shame was running through her family. I felt it was a karmic issue she had come into this life with. She had it, her parents definitely had it - even though not equally strong from both sides - and her grandparents had it in various degrees.
Cherise had the pensive look of someone who sees things from a different angle for the first time. When she started to speak she told me the following story:
“When my brothers and I were small, two of my father’s brothers set up a business together with 2 brothers in law. My father had a thing with numbers. Well, that is how his family described it, but nowadays you would say he had a talent for maths. A major talent.
They asked him to do the administration for them and my father agreed.
Besides being a wiz with numbers, my father was also a bit of a dreamer, like me” – here she gave me an almost apologetic smile -. “He badly wanted the company to succeed, but things didn’t look good.
It started off with my father masterfully juggling the money that came in to cover the bills. When he could no longer do his magic, he ended up falsifying ‘paid invoices’ for bigger companies that provided them with materials”.
“He never took any money for himself”, Cherise said defensively, as if I had suggested otherwise, “he did it to help them”.
She was silent for a while, then continued: “When the story came out my father had a hard time convincing the duped companies that he had operated on his own. Somehow the whole family contributed to paying back the companies involved and convinced them not to sue my father.
My father was a broken man. He wanted to leave the company and disappear, but my uncles didn’t let him. I imagine they didn’t want to give my father’s next employer the reason why he had left his last job, and maybe they also didn’t trust him enough to go and work somewhere else in case he did it again.
Today he still works in the family company. He has never done anything like it again. Officially they still control everything he does, but over the years the story went on the back-burner and now he does all the administration like before”.
After she stopped talking she stared at her hands, lost in thought. Going by the emotion in her voice she didn’t tell the story often. I could feel the raw pain in her.
“Your immediate family has never been the same since”, I suggested gently. “You, your parents and possibly your siblings, are stuck in shame”.
“I never saw it like this before” Cherise told me, trying very hard not to cry.
“Do you think it is time to move on?” I asked.
“How do I do that?” She asked.
“Airing the subject by talking about it is a good start”, I answered.
“Also, when the subject comes up, it normally is for a good reason. In my experience having a collective issue goes from generation to generation. Even though it may include many people, it only takes one person to break the chain.
Not only do I feel that you are this person, but I think it won’t be hard at all for you to move through this. It wasn’t as though you were struggling with the issue, you simply didn’t realise it was there”.
“If I don’t break the chain, will it continue with my children?” she asked. I was just about to give her the answer when she exclaimed: “I am already transmitting my shame to my daughter!”
This was fantastic news for me. In my experience I can talk till I’m blue in the face about the importance of breaking a chain without making any impact, but as soon as parents see the impact the issue is having on their children, miracles happen.
This was certainly the way with Cherise. It turned out her perfectly behaved daughter had been labelled ‘forward’ at playschool and recently ‘gifted’ in kindergarten.
“Probably very good with numbers like her granddad?” I suggested. “Did you tell your parents?” I asked.
“Yes”, she responded, "they didn’t answer, but now that I think about it, the room was engulfed in shame. I never mentioned it again to my parents".
“Did it change your attitude towards your daughter?” I asked.
Cherise’s mind had already travelled to this point without me asking.
“I am making the whole thing smaller. I hardly mention it to anyone and when I do, all I say that I want her to have a ‘normal’ life. But if gifted is what she is I should be proud of it. Not afraid or ashamed!”
I nodded. “Being forced into living an ordinary life when you are meant to live an extraordinary one can be dangerous. Your father is the proof of that”.
Cherise looked at me with pure admiration. “You are a genius, you know that?” she said. I opened my mouth to protest mildly, but she continued to sing my praise. First I felt a bit uncomfortable, but then I thought: “if a genius is what I am – in her eyes – I should be proud of it, not afraid or ashamed”.
What I did foresee was some hardship on the practical front, and the reading definitely needed to go in this direction to provide her with the help she required.
The couple still lived with their respective parents: Cherise had only recently finished studying, and her boyfriend was saving up for a van to work for himself as an electrician. They felt quite helpless when it came to changing their life into that of independent parents.
But Cherise wasn’t in the slightest worried about the practical side: her main concern was around people. She worried that her boyfriend would think she had fallen pregnant on purpose; she worried about her parents being ashamed of their unmarried daughter being with child and she worried about her group of friends looking down on her for getting herself in this situation.
I understood her worries about her parents: they lived according to the traditions and rules of their culture. They had hardly come to terms with the fact that their daughter was seeing an ‘outsider’ and now he had made her pregnant.
I confirmed that they wouldn’t like the news, but as far as I could see they wouldn’t love their grandchild any less for it. I felt that this would be the same for her boyfriend’s family.
As for their friends: as this would be the first baby in the group, he or she would receive a lot of attention and presents from the excited extended aunties and uncles.
Again Cherise looked relieved, but soon returned to fretting. “What if they say….?” and “What if he thinks…?”
Over and over I had to guide her away from hypothetical family dramas and towards learning how to become an independent couple. Because this was the answer to everything. After all, their families would mainly be worried about them being unprepared and inexperienced.
I booked some moderate successes and Cherise left with a few guidelines and some new found courage.
The next time I saw her was years later. I didn’t recognize her: she had grown from a girl into a woman. She told me she was pregnant again, and that had made her think of me. Ha, connected in pregnancies, I liked that.
Again the pregnancy came as a surprise and caused a lot of upheaval in Cherise and her husband’s world. The reason was that they were in the process of buying a house. The owner of the house was Cherise’s uncle. The man was planning to retire, sell up and become a grey nomad.
He was flexible and not in a hurry to sell. He had agreed for them to make the down payments in instalments. The young couple had calculated it would take them two years altogether to get a lump sum together.
This would send uncle off with a nice car and caravan and they would start paying the mortgage as soon as they moved in. All this was put on paper by a private lawyer. All had gone smoothly and they were 11 months into their deal.
Having another baby didn’t just mean they would have to delay their payments, it also meant the house wouldn’t be suitable for the 4 of them. The house would have been big enough for the 3 of them, but not for 4. Although they had never said it out loud to each other, they had both been happy to have just the one child.
Cherise was devastated to have to break the deal with the uncle. He had been so generous and accommodating, and now they had to let him down. It would put her parents in an awkward position: Cherise already knew the story would go around in the family; it would even travel all the way to their country of origin, where part of the family still lived.
I couldn’t see any major problems for uncle, quite the contrary. Uncle would be able to up the asking price and upgrade to an even nicer caravan!
This time I refused to let the reading be about a non-existing family-drama. I asked her if she was always so easily embarrassed and afraid of what others would think or say, or was it only connected to her parents? She looked at me nonplussed and I explained to her that in both readings her fear of losing face had dominated.
As in both readings the embarrassment was connected to her parents and family, I asked her if, for example, when she was out with her daughter and the girl misbehaved in public, did that make her anxious? She gave me half a smile and told me, almost shyly, that her daughter was probably the best-behaved child anyone could wish for. Ha-ha, wrong question, but yay for having a perfect child!
She did get what I meant though, because she asked me if I thought her worries were abnormal. I responded that more than anything else they felt sticky. They would have felt completely normal – after all some cultures, families and individuals care more about ‘losing face’ than others – were it not for the heavy energy of shame surrounding her when she talked about it.
Cherise thought for a while before asking me if I thought she only had shame when her parents were involved.
I told her that from my point of view as a psychic, I thought the shame was running through her family. I felt it was a karmic issue she had come into this life with. She had it, her parents definitely had it - even though not equally strong from both sides - and her grandparents had it in various degrees.
Cherise had the pensive look of someone who sees things from a different angle for the first time. When she started to speak she told me the following story:
“When my brothers and I were small, two of my father’s brothers set up a business together with 2 brothers in law. My father had a thing with numbers. Well, that is how his family described it, but nowadays you would say he had a talent for maths. A major talent.
They asked him to do the administration for them and my father agreed.
Besides being a wiz with numbers, my father was also a bit of a dreamer, like me” – here she gave me an almost apologetic smile -. “He badly wanted the company to succeed, but things didn’t look good.
It started off with my father masterfully juggling the money that came in to cover the bills. When he could no longer do his magic, he ended up falsifying ‘paid invoices’ for bigger companies that provided them with materials”.
“He never took any money for himself”, Cherise said defensively, as if I had suggested otherwise, “he did it to help them”.
She was silent for a while, then continued: “When the story came out my father had a hard time convincing the duped companies that he had operated on his own. Somehow the whole family contributed to paying back the companies involved and convinced them not to sue my father.
My father was a broken man. He wanted to leave the company and disappear, but my uncles didn’t let him. I imagine they didn’t want to give my father’s next employer the reason why he had left his last job, and maybe they also didn’t trust him enough to go and work somewhere else in case he did it again.
Today he still works in the family company. He has never done anything like it again. Officially they still control everything he does, but over the years the story went on the back-burner and now he does all the administration like before”.
After she stopped talking she stared at her hands, lost in thought. Going by the emotion in her voice she didn’t tell the story often. I could feel the raw pain in her.
“Your immediate family has never been the same since”, I suggested gently. “You, your parents and possibly your siblings, are stuck in shame”.
“I never saw it like this before” Cherise told me, trying very hard not to cry.
“Do you think it is time to move on?” I asked.
“How do I do that?” She asked.
“Airing the subject by talking about it is a good start”, I answered.
“Also, when the subject comes up, it normally is for a good reason. In my experience having a collective issue goes from generation to generation. Even though it may include many people, it only takes one person to break the chain.
Not only do I feel that you are this person, but I think it won’t be hard at all for you to move through this. It wasn’t as though you were struggling with the issue, you simply didn’t realise it was there”.
“If I don’t break the chain, will it continue with my children?” she asked. I was just about to give her the answer when she exclaimed: “I am already transmitting my shame to my daughter!”
This was fantastic news for me. In my experience I can talk till I’m blue in the face about the importance of breaking a chain without making any impact, but as soon as parents see the impact the issue is having on their children, miracles happen.
This was certainly the way with Cherise. It turned out her perfectly behaved daughter had been labelled ‘forward’ at playschool and recently ‘gifted’ in kindergarten.
“Probably very good with numbers like her granddad?” I suggested. “Did you tell your parents?” I asked.
“Yes”, she responded, "they didn’t answer, but now that I think about it, the room was engulfed in shame. I never mentioned it again to my parents".
“Did it change your attitude towards your daughter?” I asked.
Cherise’s mind had already travelled to this point without me asking.
“I am making the whole thing smaller. I hardly mention it to anyone and when I do, all I say that I want her to have a ‘normal’ life. But if gifted is what she is I should be proud of it. Not afraid or ashamed!”
I nodded. “Being forced into living an ordinary life when you are meant to live an extraordinary one can be dangerous. Your father is the proof of that”.
Cherise looked at me with pure admiration. “You are a genius, you know that?” she said. I opened my mouth to protest mildly, but she continued to sing my praise. First I felt a bit uncomfortable, but then I thought: “if a genius is what I am – in her eyes – I should be proud of it, not afraid or ashamed”.