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Content points for a farewell letter,

if one of the parents has died:

Please note: Not all the points listed are valid for everyone. A selection is necessary!

Many elements of this farewell letter are also suitable

for a farewell to the parents or one of the parents

in the sense of a release of the parents from their caring and responsible parental role

by an adult son or an adult daughter.

Link to share: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-abschiedsbrief-an-eltern.htm

 1 What do I know about the fate of my parents?

- Strokes of fate in the parents' childhood

- Burdens, disappointments, excessive demands in their life history:
Injustices, humiliations, conflicts

- What gave them particular pleasure, what connected them with the world, with nature, with other people?

- Which places, which activities, which things were particularly important to them?

- What were their talents, their hobbies, where did the energy of their love flow?

- What was painful about their fate, what did they suffer from?

2. What did I get from my parents - what am I grateful for?

- physically (my body, physical abilities, ...)

- mentally (mental abilities, ...)

- emotional (emotional, character, spiritual, artistic abilities, ...)

- materially (financially, gifts, support, manual help, inheritance, ...) 

3. Were there any injuries, burdens, excessive demands for me?

- Injuries
(humiliation, devaluation, beatings, mockery, rejection, being put down, disadvantages, intimidation, ...)

- Neglect
(being left alone, absence of parents, other interests, apathy, being abandoned in difficult situations, too little comfort and encouragement, not being noticed)

- Over-demands
(replacing an absent father, comforting and supporting a parent, keeping the parents' marriage together, they got married because of me or stayed together because of me, blaming me, I always had a job in the familiy, a task, no time to find myself and discover my own world, ...)

- Over-demanding of myself
(as a child I felt my parents' suffering, wanted to redeem them, make them happy, always be good, always fulfill their will, never make my parents sad, never make them feel insecure, I renounced my own phases of defiance, always paid attention to my parents' well-being, overlooked myself, foregone my own ego development, ...)

4. What am I still suffering from? 

5. What have I learned - even through suffering and stress?

- What I have achieved in my life.

- How I know to protect myself.

- How I have learned to treat myself well.

- How I form relationships with my current family and my friends
(What I pay particular attention to, what I try to avoid, what is good for me, what is valuable to me, what is not good for me, when I say NO, ...).

6 I respect my mother and father as mediators (of God) for my existence!

- I take my life from them.
They get an appropriate good place in my heart and symbolically (picture) in my home.

- I know that I do not have the right to judge their lives.

- I already understand some of their life story better, but I don't have to (and can't) understand everything to respect them.

- I also try to learn from what was stressful and bad in my parents' lives.

- I know that I have the right to be my own person,
to live my own life, to make my own decisions and to make my own mistakes.

- I know that I am not only a child of my parents, but a child of God and, via the path of evolution, also a child of Mother Earth.

- I believe that God says YES to me and to the new things that my life and thinking have brought into this world; HE respects me in my originality and in my being different.

I respect my parents as the gateway through which I was able to enter this world.

The following statements are important at the end of the letter:

1. I feel with you what you have experienced in terms of fate and know that I am connected to you.

2. I bow before you inwardly and respect your fate.

3. Please look upon me and my family members with love and accompany me/us with your blessing.

Manfred Hanglberger (www.hanglberger-manfred.de)

Link to share: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-abschiedsbrief-an-eltern.htm

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