Most people have very specific memories of formative events throughout our lives. These memories are from our own perspective, based either on something that we remember happening, or something that we were told happened when we was young. These memories are the building blocks of who we become as people into adulthood. Sometimes, as we grow we learn alternate versions of events, and they don’t always mesh with our memories. This realization creates a lot of questions. Could it be that my memories are incorrect? Are we trying to create a glossier and more palatable version? Or could it be that the reality was somewhere in the middle?

Memory can be a tricky thing, it can create an alternate truth for us, to protect us from trauma, abuse, shame and grief. Our memory thinks it’s doing us a favor by protecting us from something painful, but it is also preventing us from healing and moving forward.

As adults, we gain a lot of insight into our upbringing, our life circumstances, and our parents as human beings, independent of us. The child version of ourselves can hold onto resentment, but Adult Us may be able to recognize struggle and sacrifice. Sometimes, all we can do is our best, especially in circumstances that would be challenging for anyone.

Sometimes, we gain perspective on aspects of our upbringing that as a child may have felt special or whimsical, and now as an adult she can see were harmful, neglectful, or indifferent to our wellbeing.

It can be transformative to learn something you’ve known to be an absolute truth your entire life, is in fact something very different. This is a paradigm that takes a long time to process. Memory magic.