Friends! I wrote this piece around my 50th birthday. Published in my book, Spiritual Graffiti, and in various online locations, I often planned to record it one day. I suppose I wasn’t ready, yet. Recently, it felt right. I was missing my parents, and wanting to again imagine the apologies that I had once needed. When I wrote it, I was primarily thinking of my father, but I can hear my mother here, too. It is rare that a neglectful or abusive parent does the kind of work required to write a letter like this. Yet I like to believe that they would write it, if only they had been liberated from their ancestral conditioning and accumulated trauma. If you listen to it, try to imagine your parent(s) speaking their heart to you, too. Somewhere below the surface, they loved you deeply. I am sure of it.
Treasure yourself, Jeff
Apologies to the Battered Child