You Can’t Choose Your Family, Can You?

Over the past 7 years Chris and I have studied with some of the greatest teachers in many different schools of thought. One of these teachers, Richard Higgins is co-author of the book The Human Pin Code. Richard believes that before you are born you make a Soul Contract with Source, depending on your belief system that is your God. It is said that this Soul Contract is for you to incarnate to earth in order to achieve, grow and learn certain lessons while you are here. These are often lessons that you refused to learn in past lives, and on some occasions new lessons.

Not one to embrace every belief I am presented with, I certainly don’t pooh, pooh anyone else’s beliefs either and there are some occasions when I wonder if despite all my recriminations that I didn’t choose the family I was born in to? Maybe I did, maybe there were lessons that needed to be learned, and if that is the case I know I have learned them.

My first few years were relatively uneventful. Unknown to me when I was a little baby I spent quite a bit of time with my mother’s sister, who was my Godmother too. After my mother’s death in 2013 I asked my aunt why I felt I had a closer bond to her than I felt intuitively with my mother. It was then that she told me that my mother would swap me on weekends for my older cousin as she was easier to look after. We were stationed in Singapore for a few years returning to England when I was around 3 or 4 years old. It was then that parents’ marriage began to unravel. My father was posted to Italy and my mother stayed behind partying on the base. During this time I experienced sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of the many male visitors to our home, forming a long lasting paradigm and belief around sexual desires and

During these times children were not encouraged to speak out about their experiences. I had no one to talk to. ChildLine the emergency service for children had not yet been created. I had no early understanding of where my Dad was at this time, except that he was away for work. Suddenly I found myself foisted on to my grandparents, abandoned without either parent, with no knowledge of my parent’s actual separation and pending divorce. This came to light shortly before my 8^th birthday when my mother returned with my “new daddy” and a very pregnant belly.

Here after began the cognitive phase of what should have been my childhood, and I became an adult very quickly under these circumstances. My childlike days were gone. Significant emotional events such as these form paradigms in your subconscious mind and whenever similar events or feelings arise in your future, your subconscious mind defaults to these paradigms and beliefs and so the cycle repeats itself.

You can’t choose your family. Is what most people think, say and believe. How sure are we of this? Could it be so much more than we are aware of right now, could it be a soul contract with them as your teachers? Are they the precious agents of change in your life put there to grow you (if of course you allow their lessons to be learned and not merely spurned)? Who knows? What I do know though is that there are always lessons to be learned and the quicker the better. Mine were a long time in the learning and I know now that my family, every last one of them, were and still are my greatest teachers.

I hope this You can’t Choose Your Family article has challenged the paradigm or belief that you don’t choose your family. This is often used as a careless, throw-away passing statement, that being “Well you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family!” Heard that said a few times in your life? Maybe, just maybe, there’s so much more to family and why they’re part of your life, than meets the eye…

Question:

What if your family is/are/were your greatest teachers?

Exercise:

1. Write down the name of 4 family members who bother you incredibly and 4 family members who you love spending time with.
2. Next to each of the 8 names you’ve chosen, write down what you most dislike about them as well as what you like most about them.
3. Are you surprised to discover that in those who you intensely dislike, you’re now able to see positive, and, in those who you like, you’re now able to see the negative?
4. What’s this telling you about yourself and your negative and positive traits as perceived by others and the feeling-driven behaviours they exhibit toward you?
5. Carefully examine all your answers and ask these questions of each person [Name]:
   1. What is it that I need to learn from [Name]?
   2. Have I truly learned this lesson from [Name]?
   3. What am I doing differently now given this lesson from [Name]?
   4. Can I now see the good in the lesson I am supposed to learn from [Name]?
   5. Given all the above, am I able to express sincere gratitude toward [Name] for the lesson taught to me?
   6. If your answer to question 5e) above is no, what are the other life lessons you haven’t learned, lessons which are surfacing in your thoughts right now?

My profound lesson:

My mother has proven to be my greatest teacher. Only now, a few years after her death, am I able to honour and respect this truth without it being cannibalised by fierce, hurtful, clear-thought impeding emotions. More importantly, I am so grateful to her for everything I learned at her hand as had it not been for this, I would not have been able to grow to the point I am at today, where my abject misery back then is my powerful ministry now, where, should you find resonance with my writings, my raw pain can now become your great gain.

To your success with love,

Suzanne.