New Parts, Old Parts & Evolving Roles

Within the practice of IFS we become aware of the concepts of ‘no bad parts’; all parts are welcome’; and ‘no parts are ever removed, they just may adjust their roles’.

It’s that last statement that has held my attention of late. My wonderful fellow IFS partner in crime and study has recently had a new baby and I have observed as her mother-part emerged. For me I am currently watching my own mother as she prepares to leave this world and through all this, I myself can feel a confused part within. This part has been skirting around the big issue for a while. I feel that somewhere in the background, I have been aware of her presence but never quite paid full attention to it. I only know that now, as she has started to show up more, that I recognise her.

The part I refer to is the part of me that has been a daughter for 66 years. As I reflect on this part, I can see her across my timeline as the adored first child. The much loved first girl born into a world of boys and uncles and the indulged grand-daughter of gentle kind grandparents who loved to take me to the pub to show-off their special treasure.

Rest assured; it didn’t stay that way for long. This part has had a chequered journey across the spectrum of daughter space. This part was a loud and curious young child, a rebellious teenager and an adventurous young adult who decided to live in a different hemisphere just because she could. The dynamic between the mother and the daughter was often tense and testing. This daughter long held a deep anger towards her mother for both perceived and real slights and behaviours. It led to an estrangement and a lot of years of not speaking, resentment and blaming between them.

This daughter-part has popped up on many occasions throughout my life, but never more so than when I had my own children. It accompanied my own new mother part and continually whispered in my ear: “make sure you do it differently”. Every now and then, she would come to the fore to remind me that I was sounding or behaving just like my own mother and she would encourage me to work at finding a different way.

Two years ago, after an absence of 8 years, I made a trip home to Ireland. Although I protested loudly that it was to see my sister, in truth it wasn’t. I really wanted to see my mother, and so I did. I saw my mother. My daughter-part still held many deep hurts and while she really wanted to feel the love of her mother and let it all go, she just couldn’t. Every now and then things would come up, then the blended daughter would emerge and I would find myself observing an angry teenager again, upset at the unfairness of it all.

However, it was clear to the daughter-part that this was not the whole story and that time was running out. Bless her, this daughter part came forward and together we have unpacked, explored, revisited, reframed and worked through so much archived hurt and sadness. I wonder if there is such a thing as a daughter wound, and if that is the case then that is what we actually worked through?

Each subsequent trip back to Ireland over the next few years became easier. Not because of anything my mother was doing but because of the daughter-part being able to take a different perspective on things. The time spent in IFS study, therapy and work brought a new relationship between this hurt daughter-part and ‘self’. It made such a difference to her to review the timeline with ‘self’ rather than alone.

Somewhere in the past two years, my daughter-part came back home to me. The anger left and she was able to see things through a new perspective. She no longer felt isolated, hard done by or on the fringes of her internal family. She was able to open up and share what her true fears and needs were, finding a way to see the many forms in which love comes and is shared.

Right now, as I write this, I can feel her tears behind my eyes because she knows her time of being a daughter is coming to a close. She is sad about this and unsure how it will be. But she takes comfort that she is not on her own anymore.

Some of her questions are around the process of losing someone. Others are about losing her specific and familiar place as a daughter in the world. She is curious about whether she will now be an orphan. Can you really be an orphan at 66? But mostly, she wonders what will her role be if she is no longer a daughter? There already is a mother-part and they are managing fine. She feels at a bit of a loose end, wondering what her impending role might be.

Having sat and considered this dilemma for a while now, she has arrived at what seems to be a very reasonable solution. She needs some time to work through the reality of a generation shift. For as her mother leaves her own mortality and the decreasing years ahead of her are highlighted, she needs some time to rest and reflect across her timeline. It has taken a long time to get here and she wants to allow enough time and space for that to be acknowledged, which led her to her solution.

Once she has found her centre again, she would like to be a memory-keeper. She would like to share and pass on what she learned from her mother. It was one simple thing that despite everything - the clashing, fighting, moving thousands of miles away - the love her mother had for her daughter endured across time, across space and across everything.

As a daughter, I know my mother always loved me. I also know there were many times she may not have liked me and that was very justifiable. But my mother always, always loved me and in my heart, I always knew that to be the truth.

The other day my own daughter, faced with some of life’s general challenges, reminded me how badly I had failed in my efforts to not be like my own mother with her. In a somewhat teary phone call, she said: ‘You know mum, I know it sounds strange, but no matter what happens in my life I know that you always love me, and somehow that helps’.

Needless to say, I was so moved by this that I gave her the $500 and resolved the challenges.

Sheila