Few people going through a messy divorce in mid-life would blame their own parents for their predicament. Neither would a business owner betrayed by a trusted partner normally think in those terms. A person who loses his job every five years would also not say that his grandfather was to blame.

Yet there may be some justification for people making just such an accusation, even about the most loving and dedicated parents, step parents or grandparents. Because, the fact is, much of what happens to people in their adult life has a connection to unhealed childhood wounds inflicted by their parents.

Such woundings run the gamut from the most terrible forms of physical and sexual abuse, to a parent showing a very subtle preference for a sibling. From walking out of a child's life and never contacting him or her again, to making a careless remark or joke that simply hits home. Some of what came to mean so much to a child in his or her later life might have been nothing more than a seemingly innocuous remark. Yet it hurt and it became a limitation.

Children don't have the emotional skills to deal with pain of this kind, so it tends to get buried. However, the human being's innate urge to heal any wound, be it of a physical, emotional or spiritual nature, will always look for opportunities to bring that pain to the surface for healing. That's why the wound will naturally be acted out in later life many times over. The wound will show up as a pattern in one's life in which one creates a series of events or situations that have qualities about them reminiscent of the event that caused the original wounding.

Once any one of these situations is recognized for what it truly is -- an opportunity to heal -- then this is when Radical Forgiveness is called for. For over a decade I have been helping people forgive all sorts of situations in their lives using Radical Forgiveness. But seldom is it that their presenting situation does not connect back to an original childhood wound and the beliefs the child formed as a result of it. Examples are: I'll never be any good; I'm not enough; I am unlovable; I have to be perfect to be loved; I'll always be second, and so on.

That's why I have created the 21-Day Program for Forgiving Your Parents. It's called "Breaking Free." As an internet-based program, it has global reach and is already helping thousands of people all around the world break free from the pain of their childhood and liberate themselves from the kind of negative "I am" beliefs that go with it. Once people have healed their early childhood wounds, their need to create situations that mirror them disappears. They are free to live their lives with their energy invested in the now, not the past. They have literally broken free. This program can be seen and explained at the web site, www.forgiveparents.com.

Copyright 2008 Colin Tipping