From Monster to Beautiful Soul — An Abuser Transformed
I’ve known some pretty cruel and disturbed people in my lifetime.
Maybe you were raised by abusive parents and became extremely skeptical that they would ever change.
You may have doubted whether they even had a soul.
I’m reminded of the story of two people viewing a pile of manure.
The one commented, “This stuff sure stinks.”
The other asked as he began to dig with his bare hands into the soft, smelly pile. “Where’s the pony?”
The following story is about how a friend of mine found his pony under the manure of his childhood abuse.
After years of hurt at the hands of his mother, he finally caught a glimpse of her untarnished soul (the pony).
The Monster on Steroids
She inflicted a lifetime of cruelty on him. In fact, she admitted to me that if child protective services had known about all the abuse she had inflicted on her child, she would be in prison today.
Whenever my friend would visit his mother, I would advise him to raise his “Shield up.”
He had to continually protect himself from her abuse.
As an exuberant, sensitive person she constantly tried to mute his voice. She forbade him from talking during family meals when he was in grade school.
Thus he was rendered invisible and left with lifetime scars like an imposter syndrome where he constantly avoided or negated his success.
Like most young children, he blamed himself for her cruelty.
He would fall on his knees at bedtime and pray, “Please help me to be good .”
In all my years as a psychologist, I’d never seen abuse this severe. He also told me that the song he most identified with was from the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar,” where Mary Magdalene cries out.
“I don’t know how to love him (her).”
But then, seventy years later, everything changed. She became a
Toothless Tiger
He discovered that his mother had dementia.
Over a long period of cognitive and physical decline, she could no longer identify my friend as her son. This was a blessing in disguise. All her memories of him as the “bad” son were erased.
Now he would sit at her bedside holding her hand and sing with her songs from her younger years like “Moon River.”
He even found it within himself to tell her that he loved her. She smiled beautifully and responded, “I love you back.”
The once vicious monster was now a toothless tiger.
What, apart from the dementia, happened to this hurtful parent?
Her true essence emerged as a
Beautiful Soul
My friend saw a part of his mother that he could hardly believe. It emerged like blue sky from behind dark storm clouds.
He saw the divine spark in her which was her soul. It penetrated her bratty behavior, her stream of cruel abuse, and a lifetime of put-downs.
And the nature of that god-infused self, uncontaminated by her ego and hurt inner child, was pure love.
Her past toxic behaviors now could be more clearly seen as the damage done by her own cruel parents. In the quiet of her dementia, he could see her crusty self for what it really was.
The voice of her own wounds. It was just noise.
Often, at the end of a person’s life, we have an opportunity to see their true essence. No longer do we have to throw up defensive shields to protect ourselves. We can finally approach them in love, soul to soul.
However, not everyone is fortunate enough to experience the last days of an abusive parent as a time of reconciliation or resolution.
At the end of my father’s life, he changed his will to exclude me from any inheritance.
That’s another story. Suffice it to say that we remained alienated to his dying breath.
But here’s the plot twist. Here’s the pony under all that manure.
One thing that happens when we pass through the veil as explained by the Apostle Paul is
For now, we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known.
Because of the transformation we undergo after we die as my wife reminded me,
“Do you know that the one who abused and misunderstood you the most in this life is the one who loves and roots for you in the next”
And she would know.
A few weeks ago, her once-abusing mother came through the veil when Kris was in a trance-like state. Her mother gave her a massive download of love.
That’s the nature of life on the other side.
That’s the nature of the soul, pure, unconditional love.
