Reunited
Did you watch Couples Therapy last night? I just had a chance to watch and my eyes were glued to DMX and the reunion with his mother. Its been a very long time since they’ve sat in the same room and had a chance to talk. I don’t know about you but I was in tears. In a previous episode, he shared his thoughts on his absent mother. Take a look at the video and we’ll talk after…
Get More: Couples Therapy
Good-Bye
When DMX was 7, his mother dropped him off at a center and never looked back. Apparently he was cutting up in school and the judge told her to pack a bag otherwise they were going to put him where they wanted to put him. She didn’t have a chance to say good-bye. They told her not to look back because looking back would make it even harder for him. She left him there and cried all the way home.
I Love You
She says they should’ve talked and she also said she had no idea how he felt. She had no idea he was hurt so badly. How could she not know he was hurt so badly? That was very shocking to me. In that moment of tears and hugs, he finally heard those three words; I love you that he’s been longing to hear since childhood.
Felt the Weight
As I think about DMX, I think about President Obama who didn’t have his father in his life. In an interview with Parade magazine last year, he says, my father left my family when I was 2 years old, and I knew him mainly from the letters he wrote and the stories my family told. And while I was lucky to have two wonderful grandparents who poured everything they had into helping my mother raise my sister and me, I still felt the weight of his absence throughout my childhood.
Negative to Positive
Like DMX, President Obama felt the weight of an absent parent. Instead of letting that weight weigh him down, he chose to turn that negative into a positive. He went on to say, in many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence—both in my life and in the lives of others. He chose to see the good in the bad. He chose to turn the bad into good. There’s good in everything however, sometimes we need a magnifying glass to see it.
Take Responsibility
While I’m not comparing DMX to the President, and while I can definitely empathize with him, I believe at a certain point, we as adults have to take responsibility for our lives and how we respond to what’s happened in our childhood. To suggest that you treat your wife worse than crap because your mother never told you I love you is simultaneously understandable and no longer acceptable.
Make You Better
All of us have experienced some sort of childhood trauma that shapes who we become and how we show up in the world. How will you respond to your childhood trauma? Will you let it ruin you or will you let it make you a better person? At the end of the day, the choice is yours.
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. Epictetus
Something to think about…
P.S. I’ll be watching next week to see if this reunion has any effect on his relationship with his long suffering wife.
P.P.S Tell your kids and show your kids I love you often and mean it otherwise you just might end up with another DMX on your hands and you don’t want that do you?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
i read dmx’s memoir many years ago and he is a tortured soul. he’s been through alot and his wife knows that. there’s more than what’s on this reality show which btw i dont watch. i think his wife should hang in there, regardless of all that’s being shown. dmx knows what he needs to do, but he doesnt have the courage to do it.
{ 1 trackback }