EP15 – Hurt People, Hurt People

Hey, welcome to this episode of I don't know Jack about parenting. Where on today's episode, I'm going to be talking about how hurt people hurt people. I'll look forward to sharing this message with you inside of the episode.

People who are hurt, tend to hurt other people

So today's episode of, I don't know Jack about parenting and trust me people I know nothing Jack, Zilch, Nada about parenting, but what I do know is that hurt people, hurt people. Maybe you've heard that phrase before. I remember the first time I heard it, I was like, why are they repeating themselves? I don't understand what they're trying to say to me here. We do we mean hurt people, hurt people. No... people who are hurt, tend to hurt other people and, and what was the impetus for this particular one today?

We're in the middle of the holiday season and we have to, uh, or we don't have to, but we typically choose to embark in sharing our time and our holiday time with our families and oftentimes our families or the people closest to us, listen to me, our families or the people closest to us our best friends, things of that nature are the people who can hurt us most. And if we're surrounded by people who are hurt or had been hurt, they have the ability to hurt you. And then it got me thinking to myself, why is it that I believe because I don't know a lot about parenting, but I know a lot about people I didn't know that people in relationships can be complicated.

I was doing my research​

And I want to share a story with you because I don't know Jack about parenting, but I remember a very specific moment in time in my journey of trying to figure out who I was going to be as a father, how was I going to become the dad that I wished I had. Before my son was even born, I was doing my research. I started working on myself. How can I be a better person? And I was at an event and this event, and I'll share this with you. Oh man, it is going to get deep. I am a product of a, uh, an affair that I didn't know until I was 25 years old. Who I thought was my biological father. I hadn't seen him for over 20 years. Uh, when I confronted him and said, why didn't you want me, what was wrong with me? He says, man, you seem like a fine young man, but I just don't believe that you're my son. And I found out... I'm hurt. First I'm hurt that my father wasn't in my life. Now I'm devastated that he doesn't even believe I'm his.

So we got some scientific DNA proof that he was not my father. Uh, I found out who my father was... very hurt, very angry, angry at mom for what I perceived to be lying to me for all these years. Mad At mom for when I asked her to right... told her I'm going to go confront my father... is there anything I need to know. And she just said, you know, we were, we had our differences. We went apart. Maybe she thought that, you know, I would never find out or he wouldn't share. Um, but anyway, mom told me who my father was and when I approached him he basically said, that it's all news to him. And he rejected me also. I was a hurt individual, right? I don't know Jack about parenting, but I know that I was a hurt individual and I started working on myself and I started going to personal development camps and I started reading about self and human psychology and how is it that I'm going to be a a good father to my son because right now I'm hurt and I know if I'm hurt, I had the ability to hurt this little person simply because I'm hurt.

He says, your parents repeated the cycle

I'm going to emulate some of that anger. I'm going to project some of that anger out on him like I don't know who the heck I am. How am I supposed to figure out and help you figure out who you are, little man. And in a very specific moment early on my journey and my personal development, I went to a camp and somebody says something profound. He says, your parents repeated the cycle. If you're angry at your parents or you don't have a strong relationship with your parents, and many of you listening to this right now, you know you don't want to call mom. You're angry at mom or you blame mom. You play victim to mom or maybe it's dad. You're mad at dad. He was never around. He was an alcoholic, he was abusive.

You're blaming them for all of this stuff that you've done and I'm going to tell you why you continue to blame them because you think it's their fault. I'm here to tell you what somebody told me. It's not their fault. They were taught something from somebody else who was broken and hurt. So your grandparents hurt your parents. But guess what? Your great, great grandparents hurt your great and your great, great, great grandparents hurt your great, great... And it's a cycle people! And hurt people continue to hurt people. Somebody told me that it's my turn as a conscious individual who is seeking to figure this out. The only way to become unhurt is to forgive them and that made a lot of sense to me and I don't know if it makes sense to you and you could say I've forgiven them, but if you carry around the pain and the hurt, you really haven't forgiven them.

He didn't know I was his son

So I took this information and I said, wow, it's not his fault that he wasn't around. According to him, and I don't know if this is the truth, but it's. It's the words that were spoken to me. He didn't know I was his son, but when he found out he was, I was his son. He didn't know how to react. I don't know what transpired in my biological father's life where he doesn't want to confront his biological son. I, I don't know what he's avoided in life or what he was taught by his dad or what his dad was taught by his father. I just know that that was his truth, that he didn't want to have a relationship with me and I chose to honor him. I thanked him for saying this to my face and I said, I forgive you for anything you may have missed. You may not even need forgiveness, but I need to forgive you because I am hurt.

And if I don't forgive you, I will carry that anger, that frustration, that pain along in my life. And if I'm a hurt person towards my father, I may naturally not consciously carry that hurt, and put that hurt onto my own offspring simply because I'm hurt by you. And the only way I could not be hurt by you is if I truly, honestly, internally and externally say, I forgive you. I hope you can receive that because I mean that. But not only was I hurt by my father, I was hurt by my mother because I believed and I carried from age 25 to age 35 a lot of anger towards this woman for having hurt me by lying to me, by deceiving me. And for the first 25 years of my life telling me one man was my father when it was another. I was hurt.

Release your hurts

And when I sought answers I was not getting any answers. And maybe she was wise enough to know no matter what answer she gave me, I would be unsatisfied because I was hurt. But she had been hurting. I don't know everything my mother went through in her life that she didn't know how to deal with that. But I said, you know what? I love you. You created me, you gave me. This is another part of the personal development that I didn't share yet they send you, they gave you the greatest thing they could ever give you. They gave you life, so thank them and be in gratitude for your life and now that you're an adult, you can make choice and you could choose to forgive them. Release your hurts and become whole for whomever you need to be whole for. So why am I doing this on a parenting podcast? Why am I saying I don't know Jack about parenting? Because I know this.

I know if you're hurt and you have hurt towards your own parents and a lot of people do, the way to release that hurt is through forgiveness and when you can truly honestly thank them for giving you life, thank them for giving you certain experiences that you've had that make up you and only you and uniquely you, and that's your story that you could build and grow from. As long as you start taking ownership and stop blaming and playing, putting victim onto your parents or whomever has hurt you in your life and you truly forgive them, that's when you can grow and that's when you can blossom and that's when you can turn your hurt, your pain into growth, into other areas and stop living in the past. See hurt people, hurt people, but healed people, heal other people, and if you could find enough healing in your heart to forgive somebody, you're going to start healing the heart because a lot of those people who need forgiveness don't believe they deserve forgiveness, but we all deserve grace. We all deserve a second chance and sometimes a third and a fourth and fifth. 

We all deserve love and when we're hurting inside, it's really hard to give love, but the main reason we're hurting... Because we're not willing to forgive those who have heard us. I hope this makes a lot of sense. We'll see in the next episode of, I don't know Jack about parenting.