My father is coming to town for the very first time and many childhood images are arriving also…

It is very easy to blame our parents for influencing our lives for better or for worse. I am not the exception. Their decisions affected my life in many different ways.

The divorce of my parents brought a lot of changes to my sister and me early on in life. She was 4 and I was 10 years old. One of the many challenges we faced was to live with neither Mom nor Dad; we ended up living at my grandmother’s house – my mother’s mother.

Like many families, it was dysfunctional. My grandfather was an alcoholic and, of course, my uncles, my aunt and alike were experiencing resentment, hatred, and a lot of mixed feelings and behaviors.

My family became my five uncles and one aunt. So I grew up basically surrounded by 5 males and 1 female figure (not counting my grandparents).

When I look back in time, I could list all the experiences and things that went” wrong” or “bad”— experiences by not having Mom and Dad by my side when I needed them the most. However, somehow I refuse to look into those dark areas, either to protect my inner child or because it is not worthy at this point of my life to get into drama or resentments. Instead, I prefer to use some of the experiences as stepping stones and to see the bright side of not having Mom and Dad close by.

The fact that I was surrounded by males early on in my life gave me the confidence as the adult woman that I am today to feel comfortable around men. It also gave me the opportunity to learn dancing very well. I was their dancing partner – I had to practice with all of them. Nowadays I am very proud of my social dancing skills.

I learned to stand up and fight for my beliefs. They were very protective “dads” to me. They were usually checking up on me, as to whom, where, when and why I was doing, going, choosing or deciding things for myself. If you would ask them, they would say, “Yes, a very rebellious girl”. So, I grew up to be independent and responsible for my own choices.

I could blame my parents for not being there when I needed them the most, but I choose not to. I honor, respect and love them because deep in my heart, I know they did the best they could with what they knew at that time. After all, parenting comes with no manual.