Friday 27th June 2025
Location: 32 Parnell Street Kilkenny
At some point in life, many people have said to themselves:
“I will never be like my mother…”
“I will never be like my father…”

But somehow, life ends up leading them down the same path, and they create a life that looks very similar—or even exactly the same.

Why does that happen?

• • • • •

Parents are the people who give us life.

We get a lot from them. Our looks, character traits, talents… but it doesn’t stop there. We are a part of our family system. And we also inherit the entire generation’s thought patterns, behaviour patterns, beliefs, fears, and traumas.

Most of us feel a lot of hurt toward our parents. Some of us are aware of this and feel anger toward them, while others justify them, trying to avoid the unpleasant feelings they don’t want to face.

The hurt we feel comes from our unfulfilled emotional needs, injustice, betrayal and many other reasons. And because of all of those reasons we end up wanting to push our parents away.

We fill ourselves with resentment and anger, shame and regret, which doesn’t allow us to accept them those two people as they are. Then, we avoid them, blame them, or we’re doing everything we can to change them.

The truth is, it is impossible for a child to not love his parents. And when we don’t allow ourselves to accept them, our inner child is not able to feel whole.

• • • • •

What happens when we don’t allow ourselves to love our parents?

First of all, we feel that something is missing. We feel some sort of emptiness inside. And we begin to look for ways to fill that inner void with something, but no matter how hard we try, we always return to the same feelings of sadness and emptiness.

How does this show up in our lives?

We try to prove our worth through other people’s validation. When in reality, all we want is to be valued by our parents.

We keep creating relationships that hurt us because subconsciously we are seeking the same emotions we felt as children because that’s the only kind of “love” we were taught.

We keep forcing ourselves to achieve more and more, never allowing ourselves to enjoy what we’ve created, as it never feels good enough. Because subconsciously, we want to feel “good enough” in our parents’ eyes.

When we’re angry at our parents, when we hate them or blame them – we’re desperately trying to be different from them. That’s where people say, “I won’t be like my mother”. “I won’t be like my father.” But the more we run away from them, the more we become just like them.

Because the more we run from them, the more our inner child wants to reclaim his right to love his parents and be close to them. And the only way to be closer to them is to become just like them.

We inherit their fate. And we can’t create our own life.

Some people call it karma, but what it really is – it’s our inner child wanting to be closer to his parents and to be able to love them.

• • • • •

If we feel emptiness inside that we t
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