YOU BOND BY SHARING YOUR PAIN

When I arrived in Italy in 1999, my father was 51 and was a pensioner. The age of retirement was around 60 then. Nobody told me why.

When I arrived in Italy in 1999, my father and my mother slept in separate bedrooms. I shared room with my mother until I was 16. Nobody told me why.

I noticed that my dad took a lot of medication. Nobody told me why.

I overheard one time that he was ill and I asked "Is anything wrong with his heart?". My mother responded by throwing a plastic container at me.

Nobody ever told me anything but somehow I was expected to know that things were not right. How?

One of the reasons why my father and I have been able to build a relationship is because now we share our pains without the fear of being judged and ridiculed.

Something that my mother did so well. She lived to humiliate us over anything.

Imagine berating your child after he or she just got heartbroken, or lost a friend or went through shit at school. Why are you acting like you never went through any of that?

I often joke with my friends that whenever my father calls me, it is to complain of one pain or the other. And that he seems to be developing a new one every day. 🤣 But thank God he does. Because there was a time I was not allowed to know any of this. And he probably thought that the reason why I didn't care about his health was because I didn't care about him. If only he knew that the one time I enquired, I was met with an object thrown with brute force against my head.

People don't bond over the happy things in life. It's the sad ones that create those moments of sincerity and vulnerability among the parties involved.

So, please, if you are parent, do not be afraid to be vulnerable with your child. It won't cause them to disrespect you. Instead it will make you more relatable and approachable. And he or she will feel more human too.

The best relationships between parents and children I have seen so far are the ones where the parents share the pain and disappointment they experienced when they were young.

"I was once like you".

No other words can teach your children that life evolves, that things get better and that one day they will get to the point where they can talk about it, just like you did.

"I was once like you."
"This happened to me too."

Those words would have been of great comfort to me as a teenager. Luckily, I still grew up to learn of their importance.