Self-Parenting and the Role of the Significant Other

by Charity, Mary, Laura, and Allegra

This is how we approach this issue; we speak only for our own system and are not passing judgment on any other systems or how they operate.

Both of our parents are deceased now. Neither of them was an abuser, though their parenting, especially from our mother, failed to meet our needs in a number of ways.

Our relationship with our father was generally positive, though it was really only Allegra who bonded with him to any degree. She was the one who helped take care of him for the last few years of his life, and she was also the one who would remind the rest of us to value the time that we had with him before he passed last year.

Our relationship with our mother had may ups and downs and was strained at times. She sincerely desired not to repeat her own mother's mistakes, and in some ways she did succeed. She didn't abuse us, yet she didn't have the skills to nurture us, since she herself wasn't nurtured. This led Charity and some of the others to carry a great deal of resentment toward her for what she was unable to give to us.

Our resentment toward our mother has had a profound impact on our life. It's at the core of Charity's pain and the basis for our inability to deal with the outside world. We had a terrible sense of self that made us a target for our peers and others, which in turn compounded our pain.

At around age 10 we realized a couple of things. One was that we had to take responsibility for our well-being, because nobody else would. We had to be the one to heal our emotional wounds. The other thing we realized is that we didn't want to get married or have children. Charity kept wishing for both as a way to redeem ourselves, even though she was repeating our mother's mistake by doing so.

It wasn't until our mid-thirties, when we realized that we were multiple, that she began to accept that it was best for us to remain single and child-free. Taking care of ourselves and our healing process takes the majority of our time and effort, and it would be unfair to a spouse and children to subject them to the limitations posed by our own needs.

So, no SO for us. Even with friends, our system has had an iron-clad rule that nobody on the outside is permitted to "parent" us. We've been in too many relationships where we gave our power to other people, and we will no longer allow this to happen.

Nurturing ourselves is very, very difficult at times, especially for our bigs. We have no difficulty nurturing our littles and our middles/tweens, and we can provide encouragement and emotional support to our teens. It's hard not to see nurturing as "parenting" or some other form power-based relationship, though. Who nurtures the bigs? And if they don't feel nurtured, how can they truly do a good job of nurturing the younger folks?

We don't know the answer, but we keep trying. And by not having the complication of a spouse or outside children, we can break the cycle.