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Summary of Question:	Lessons In Life And From God
Category:	Gurbani
Date Posted:	Friday, 1/09/2004 12:54 PM MST

First of all I would like to thank all the moderators for putting in the time and the efforts to help so many of us. I find tremendous amount of guidance on this forum.

My question is as follows:
(I'm sorry for the story-telling but it seemed necessary)
Since, I was a very young girl I've been part of what seemed to me as very unfortunate circumstaces in my family. I had a sad childhood and that's according to me.Though I was shown a lot of love by my parents, what I could not help but notice was a lack of love b/w my parents and especially of my father towards my mom. It created the problems that I felt very insecure throughout my life and also felt as if God has been unfair towards my mother. She has a very strong faith in Waheguru and has tried her best to be content in what God has given her in her 30 yrs of marriage to him. Whenever I have brought up anything to her(which is something I started only recently), she tells me to focus on the positive but I'm not able to do that and feel badly for poiting out the negativities in our lives to her.
My dad dotes on me(i'm the only girl) and my mother has always, since I remember has suffered a lot from him(only emotionally) and she always asked me to talk to my dad to make him understand and care more for the whole family.
(My parents had an arranged marriage and his mother was very dominating).
I remember my mom telling that she only continued to live because of me so it made me feel the pressure unconsciously to counsel them both and to be PERFECT MYSELF. That's the background.
The truth is that I never was:( because life was never perfect b/w them, I never could turn to either of my parents for anything I needed help with that teenagers normally do.I really thought they couldn't help me or deal with anymore problems. My dad tends to always blame my mom and my mom, God she always seemed so fragile and to some extent leaning on me w/o realizing.
I am not writing to just gain sympathy but to get some advice. I understand that whatever happened is in the past and I want to move forward and deal with my issues in the present time.
The problem is that I grew up being a dreamer, imagining myself in a different world than I was, and it gave me some joy. I guess it was my defence mechanism. And so, I am still doing that and the result is that I have let myself down by not facing the problems that I encounter especially in school and am not able to do as well as I wanted. I have done a lot of soul-searching and sometimes I blame my parents and get very angry with them but that negativity doesn't help. I understand that someone else in my shoes might have acted differently but I don't want to continue living the lessons I learned all my childhood of putting others before me. I learned from her to put out a happy face despite everything and by doing that for so long myself, i find myself at a point where in reality i am not happy at all and to the world life couldn't be more perfect for me. I just want to take better control of my life for my own sake and so I can live the life I want for myself. I want to start living in the present and be at peace w/ my parents situation and focus on my life and be more motivated to study harder, but somehow I am unable to muster it. I do believe in Waheguru so I have turned to you for advice. I just want to learn to start putting myself before everyone else and my well-being first so I can be a better person and reach my full potential. This time I want to learn my lesson from God. What would He say I can do?
Thanks for your advice.

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It is good that you are not blaming your parents, and that you want to take responsibility for yourself and your life. Those are really good first steps. It is also important that you realize and practice that you cannot fix your parents. The most important thing is for you to fix yourself. I don't know if you have counseling available where you live, but that might help you a lot. you are going to need some coaching in how to take charge of your own life. Do you live at home? You might need to move into your own place, so you can really feel self-sufficient. You really need someone who can help you go step by step. Do you have someone you can talk to? It is much more than a one time encounter with one of us on SikhNet. You can email me if you like. Let them know at SikhNet. GTKK