Latest / LIVING WITHOUT FEAR / 142. Living Without Fear - What No One Tells You About Your Parents | With Esther Buerki

Transcript

142. Living Without Fear - What No One Tells You About Your Parents | With Esther Buerki · LIVING WITHOUT FEAR

• 0:13
  Hello, my dear ones, and welcome or welcome back to this space.
• 0:19
  I'm Esther, speaking to you from Switzerland.
• 0:22
  And today I want to open a door that many of us keep closed for
• 0:29
  a very long time. Adore cold generational
• 0:34
  patterns, those invisible threats we inherit from our
• 0:40
  parents. Beliefs, reactions, emotional
• 0:44
  reflexes, ways of loving, ways of shutting down, ways of
• 0:52
  surviving. And I know so many of us have
• 0:57
  said at least once in our life, I will never become like my
• 1:03
  parents. I said it too, with fire, with
• 1:08
  conviction, with pain. And yet, here's the truth.
• 1:14
  No one teaches us early enough. Most of our parents said the
• 1:21
  exact same thing. And still, they repeated so much
• 1:27
  of what they once wanted to escape.
• 1:31
  Recently, I visited my father in his elderly home.
• 1:37
  He just turned 91, and every time I realized that his
• 1:45
  cognitive abilities are still there.
• 1:48
  I'm honestly amazed. I knew this visit would not be
• 1:55
  easy. I felt it in my body before I
• 1:59
  even arrived. He was low in energy, depressed,
• 2:06
  not really joyful to see me. We talked a little, we had lunch
• 2:12
  together, Then we went back to his room and sat down again.
• 2:20
  His arms were crossed tightly in front of his chest, a clear
• 2:26
  signal, closed, guarded, not available.
• 2:32
  I tried to gently open a deeper conversation about life, about
• 2:39
  faith, about death. I've always wondered how he
• 2:45
  thinks about religion now, about the church.
• 2:49
  He once introduced my brother and me too, and later left after
• 2:56
  years of going every single Sunday.
• 3:01
  But he didn't want to go there. So I changed topics again and
• 3:07
  again. And then something shifted
• 3:11
  inside me. I suddenly realized how stuck he
• 3:17
  must feel. And in that moment, it hit me
• 3:22
  like a quiet truth. I knew this feeling intimately.
• 3:29
  I've been there. Stuck in life, stuck in
• 3:34
  emotions, stuck in relationships, despite therapy,
• 3:40
  despite antidepressants, despite all the work.
• 3:46
  Certain times of the year were always hard for me.
• 3:50
  Christmas, birthdays, January, when everything piled up
• 3:56
  emotionally in our family and suddenly I saw my father.
• 4:02
  Not as my father, but as a man who believed he had done
• 4:08
  everything right to be happy and still ended up feeling empty now
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  living in one room, no deep conversations, most of his
• 4:23
  friends gone, former colleagues, teachers, intellectual equals
• 4:31
  already passed away. And then there was the
• 4:36
  disappointment, the silent heartbreak.
• 4:40
  My brother rarely calls, rarely visits, never says when he'll
• 4:47
  come again. I saw my father.
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  I felt my father, and something melted.
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  I hugged him, I told him I loved him.
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  And in that moment, a bond was created that I had never felt
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  before. For the first time, I saw his
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  wounded inner child. Not a man who always knew
• 5:18
  better, Not the authority, not the one I fought with for years.
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  Just a child stuck, afraid, emotionally frozen.
• 5:33
  Years ago. I couldn't even speak to him for
• 5:37
  months, sometimes for a year. If you've read my book Living
• 5:44
  Without Fear, there is an entire chapter about him, my father, my
• 5:50
  model. But this, this was new.
• 5:56
  It took me decades to truly understand him, and strangely,
• 6:02
  it happened at the very beginning of 2026.
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  I'm deeply grateful it happens now, because when he leaves this
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  world, one day, I know he will finally feel free, released at
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  peace. And I'm equally grateful for all
• 6:27
  the work I've done on myself because it allowed me to see
• 6:33
  without bitterness, without blame.
• 6:37
  It's taught me how to become my own friend, how to care for my
• 6:43
  inner child, that part of me that still hurts sometimes.
• 6:50
  And it taught me something even more important.
• 6:55
  I don't need to pass my unhealed pain onto my two sons.
• 7:02
  I don't need to act out my disappointments.
• 7:07
  I don't need to unconsciously ask them to heal.
• 7:11
  But I never healed. Instead, I go inward.
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  I listen. I hold myself.
• 7:21
  I give myself the love I craved so deeply as a child and
• 7:27
  couldn't receive because my parents emotional capacity was
• 7:34
  sometimes that of a 8 year old. And this, this is how
• 7:41
  generational patterns end. Not through blame, but through
• 7:47
  awareness, through compassion, through courage.
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  If this episode touches even 1 heart, then it has already
• 8:01
  fulfilled its purpose. Thank you for being here.
• 8:06
  Thank you for listening with an open heart.
• 8:10
  If you feel called to go deeper, Ioffer free one-on-one coaching
• 8:16
  sessions. You'll find the link in the show
• 8:20
  notes. And remember, new episodes are
• 8:24
  released every Thursday. Until then, be gentle with
• 8:30
  yourself. Healing is not loud.
• 8:34
  It's quiet and it starts within. I'm sending you so much love.