Healing Core Wounds from Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families: A Soul Recovery Journey to Forgiveness

In this episode of Recover Your Soul, I open up about the journey of healing core wounds from growing up in an alcoholic and dysfunctional family system, reflecting on a heartfelt conversation with my son as he steps into fatherhood. Through my own experiences, I explore how the pain and patterns of the past shape our beliefs, behaviors, and sense of safety, and how Soul Recovery, gratitude, and forgiveness have transformed my life and my family's healing. I share how breaking generational cycles of addiction, releasing blame and resentment, and embracing self-compassion have allowed me to find peace and acceptance. This episode is about choosing to see the past as a teacher, not a burden, and allowing gratitude to be the catalyst for forgiveness. 

To support you on your journey, I have also published a Guided Meditation on Gratitude and Forgiveness designed to help you release pain, embrace love, and cultivate deep healing to the Recover Your Soul podcast. You can use the meditation right after listening or as a standalone practice to reconnect with gratitude and forgiveness.

Join me IN PERSON on April 13th in Sacramento California for an all day retreat to deepen your Soul Recovery Process. Learn more on the website! 

Join Rev. Rachel for an upcoming Soul Recovery workshop or retreat—an opportunity to deepen your healing, release old patterns, and reconnect with your true self. Learn more and register at https://www.recoveryoursoul.net/inperson

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Recover Your Soul
• 7:01 The Birth of My Grandson and Family Reflections
• 16:31 Understanding Core Wounds in Ourselves and Our Children
• 32:25 The Importance of Compassion and Boundaries

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:02

Talking about and processing the past isn't easy, but it is an essential part of the shadow work that can be done, that can heal what those core wounds are. We all have some level of core wounds. In a recent conversation with my son, who just had his first baby around his core wounds when he was growing up was a really important reflection for both of us and our family. That is healing from being an alcoholic system when they were raised and now that we are all healing, we are all really doing our soul recovery work. There is an element of the ability to be able to reflect on those old pains and learn and grow from them and use forgiveness from the soul recovery perspective to use the ability to see and have gratitude for your life as it is today and through that gratitude, through that spiritual self, to be able to process those wounds and to forgive and to let them go, to truly transform how you're showing up and to allow the past to teach you something and not be a core wound anymore. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:12

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism. After having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction, I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to the Recover your Soul community and podcast. I'm Rev Rachel. This is a place where we are indeed learning how to be okay when the world around us feels heavy or intense and other people's emotions or other people's addictive choices. We are learning how to step out of codependency, how to step out of people pleasing, how to let go of other people's lives and turn the attention to ourselves and choose a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life for ourselves. And it isn't easy. It isn't easy and it is complex, but it is about us being on our own soul's journey of healing and awareness and awakening, and it's actually a pretty wild ride, but it's worth the ride.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:41

If you've listened to the episodes over the last couple weeks, you know that I'm in Sacramento, california, right now. My son and his girlfriend just had their baby boy my first grandson and the last episode was as we were anticipating his arrival. The context of all is well, I am well and trusting that, regardless of how things play out, that we can actually be in the process of trusting and knowing that we're supported and loved through all of it. And it is their story to tell and not necessarily my story. But I know a lot of people have been waiting and I didn't post anything big on social media because we're waiting for them to do their post officially and it's their baby and not my baby. But he was born. It was a little bit rougher entry than what we had anticipated and everything is fine and well and baby is good, mama is good and it's been an interesting journey for me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:38

So what we talk about in soul recovery is that there's so much stuff going on around us, but we're always coming back to our own experience so that we can grow, so that we can heal, so that we can see aspects of ourselves that need to be given attention, so that we can be our strength of who we actually are in situations and that we can be present for people where they are, in their situations. The request from Alex and Lexi had been that the grandparents weren't in the hospital or, you know, in the room of delivery or any of those things, and so they wanted to be able to do it for themselves, that that was important to them and that was a really beautiful boundary that they had a request that they had, and you know boundary that they had a request that they had, and you know it's interesting how much we want to have what we want right, and luckily for me, I didn't actually have too much preference around it. My preference and my desire was that they get exactly what they want and that they're present for their new life, that they're creating their time together the way that they wanted it. But when she went in for her induction at six o'clock on a Friday night, you certainly weren't thinking that it was going to be this huge ordeal, and so, as Alex was relaying everything that was happening, you know you're, you're somewhere else, you're not right there, able to be present with it, and so I really recognized a lot in myself around utilizing my soul recovery tools and just staying grounded and not falling into fear and sending out light and love and and being supportive over text message and just being whatever I could to help them through the process and in the end he was indeed delivered, but he had to go to the NICU and so then you know you're in that situation where you want to go see the baby but you can't go see the baby, and we know that all is well and so that offering support from even just you know two miles away which I'm glad that I was close I really felt so grounded in my ability to really provide the support for my son that I wanted to, because part of what we're learning in soul recovery is we're learning to have compassion and love for the people in our lives, especially our grown children, to take responsibility for their lives and not to show up and try to fix or save or you know all the things that we want to do because it is complicated, it is hard and luckily it wasn't like a life or death or that we're really scared or you know things.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:21

It just this is a standard practice. You know he's up there making sure that he gets everything that he needs and it didn't look like what we had all hoped and dreamed and envisioned that it would look like. And yet, at the same time I was feeling the truth of what I had shared in last week's episode, which is all is well to really be in that place where you stand in the grounded center. And over the last couple of days I've been pulling Oracle cards because you know how much I love Oracle cards and I have this one deck and I pulled a variety of times, shuffling, shuffling, shuffling, always pull three cards, and every time I pulled one of the three cards was flexibility, which I thought was really interesting, and what it said was that, in flexibility, it's about staying grounded, that your roots are in the earth, that you're solid in your foundation of strength and faith and that you can allow the storm and all of the wildness that's going on around you to happen and you just sway with it, you allow it to happen but you stay in your grounded center. And that that is being flexible, to not get caught up in fear, to not be rigid, to not try to force or control, right To just allow.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:42

And I thought it was such a beautiful, beautiful message from the universe that resonates so much with what I think and feel and believe, and so it was really reflecting that back to me, that that is the truth and so, as I've been here, I've been a support person, but I haven't actually gotten to spend that much time seeing my grandbaby because he's been in the NICU. It's very limited amount of visitors and how many, you know there's a lot of moving parts, but he's now with his mom and dad in the room and they're getting used to everything all together and they're doing it. You know, they're doing this process, and one of the things that I wanted to reflect on and talk about today in this episode that's really coming up for me is, you know, when you have grandchildren and I know many of the people that listen to this podcast are in a similar age range to me, lots of people who are younger, some people who are older, but what the demographics show me in my analytics is that you know we're in this mostly 35 or 40 on up, but a lot of people that are similar to me in mid 50s, when you have a child, who has a child. You just moved up a station and I was laughing at the pictures of me holding this new little grandbaby with my salt and pepper hair and my wrinkles in my eyes, and you know the thing that's happening under the chin. I don't know if you have one of those things that's happening under the chin. It's a little interesting. But you know, you really look and you're like, yeah, look at that, like we're moving up a station.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:19

And it allowed me to really reflect on what it feels like for Alex to be where I was, you know, 28 years ago when I was having my first child. As I was in the hospital with him last night and just really having some time together, he was reflecting on what it was like for him to be a child and that for him to be a child and that for him, these pieces of what he wants to be as a dad and how he wants to relate to his son. And in our conversation around that he brought up some of the memories that he had from when he was little. You know I'm always cautious. You know I share so so so much of what our lives were and at the same time, I'm always trying to be really cautious of what other people's experiences were, what other people in my family's experiences were, because we talk a lot about the fact that what I want to share with you is what it felt like to me, because everybody has their own feel and look of what it is and it's really important that they're all held in what that was for them. But the conversation was around what it was like to be raised in an alcoholic home and I've been really thinking about that and I'm glad that I'm recording this podcast now here, just you know, a couple days before it'll air. Now here, just you know, a couple days before it'll air Because this is what's happening right now for me in my life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:53

And Alex was really vulnerably sharing as a little kid what it was like to be an alcoholic home with parents who you didn't know what you were going to get, and that some of the reactivity that came came from us not really being able to regulate that, to react instead of respond. He shared some very painful memories of interactions with his dad and I feel very grateful that I have this ability now to to be present in a way that is a beautiful marriage of a mom for him and Rev Rachel. That soul recovery has given me so many tools and so many abilities to see from a perception that's bigger, broader, more aware, more awake and, at the same time, to really recognize this incredible gift that he was giving of sharing how he felt and that I could take myself out of it enough to just reflect for him, in the same way that I do when I'm doing coaching for you, that I'm I'm here to support and reflect for you. I'm here to really feel and witness your experience, and I hope that he could feel those experiences that he was sharing, because they were not ones that I'd ever heard before. There were things I didn't know like. He's 28 years old and he's sharing these experiences of what it felt like to him and I could see so clearly, more than ever, how those experiences created his belief systems and his patterns and his defense mechanisms that have been part of how he reflects out in the world.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:38

That's the nine step soul recovery processes that you see that what happened to you when you were little, what your parents did, whether they were aware of it or not, most of what happens when we're children isn't somebody trying to harm us, but it does create wounds. It creates these core wounds within us and then we set up a belief system that we then go out in the world and reflect back. We want validation for what this belief system is, and so often those belief systems come out of a place of safety, of not feeling safe, and he was sharing that he didn't feel safe. Well, that is part of being raised in an alcoholic home, and I know for many of you, you too were raised in a situation where you didn't have safety either, because somebody was an addict in your life. Well, it was both Rich and I, and we each presented our addiction in our own ways. Rich had more anger, I had more checkout and indifference, and all of that created a situation that wasn't ideal.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:54

So here we have this, this beautiful young man who's looking at his newborn baby and saying I never want to create that same situation for for my baby and and as I was reflecting around it and we did, you know, a lot of talking last night, but it's also there's a lot more to process, but it's not mine to process for him, unless he asks right. So this is another thing that we've been learning, and teaching is he's sharing with me something, and I want to give him what I've learned, but I also need to let him be in the experience that he's having, because this is his experience to have. These are his feelings that he's reflecting, and it's his healing to choose, and I want to support and love him and give him as much encouragement as I can and much reflection as I can. But I had to watch that part of me that wants to go in and save it, that wants to fix it, that wants to keep him from that hurt. And then I came back home and I had this intense sadness around my participation in that that I hadn't saved him from those interactions that I had participated in ways by not seeing or not maybe being in denial of what was really going on or thinking that I could counteract sort of the wounding that he was feeling from his dad in ways that I was doing.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:30

And I felt a lot of shame around my part and I sat with that and I thought a lot about how that comes in the soul recovery process, that we are here to have these very complex human experiences so that we can grow and so that we can learn. And forgiveness is such a huge piece of this experience of soul recovery. But I'm always sharing that. It's never to diminish how you felt and I really talked about that a lot last night with Alex that you know he kept saying, yeah, but that was a long time ago and I don't.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:18

You know I don't really actually like talking about how it felt back then and I was saying you, you've got to be able to share what that is, because those parts within you they want to be able to be heard, and I'm feeling the part of me that is so sad that my child you know I'm looking at this grown man holding a baby and my baby, I didn't keep him safe and a lot of my old feelings and my own pain came up around the past, and the past has so many layers to it and I think that it's always important to recognize the value of looking at these parts of our lives from a wholeness, from a loving, from a compassionate place, because I could see the part of me that wanted to go and get angry again or blame rich, or be mad at my younger self even, or feel like I failed. You know I have people that work with me, that still have that part in your soul that says if I had done something different, then my child wouldn't have these issues or these problems. Well, I can definitely look at my kids and say if we had done something different, then a lot of this stuff wouldn't have happened, but it's very important not to blame ourselves and to understand that we don't know what the larger picture is. We don't know why it has to be so messy and crunchy, but we do. You know it has to be messy and crunchy.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:07

And while Rich was here in town and we were just having a quick interaction with Alex, while we were dropping something off at the hospital, alex was reflecting that he, you know, hadn't partaken in anything for the whole time they'd been in the hospital for almost a week and he said I think I'm going to keep that up. And Rich looked at him and said I'd highly recommend it because our lives would be totally different if your mom and I had not chosen to be alcoholics. And that is the truest statement that we can say. But you can't go back and change what was. It already is.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:45

And so this work that we're doing in soul recovery is this unfolding, it's this revealing and allowing ourselves to actually feel the feelings and then to use forgiveness from the perspective that says it was hurtful, but we're not blaming, we're not going to attach someone as the villain. We're going to try to see a level of compassion. Hurt people, hurt people. We're all responding from the best that we had from our upbringing, best that we had from our upbringing, from our defendedness and whatever choices I made in my raising of my kids that was not the best choices wasn't because I'm a bad person or I had mal intent. It was because that was the only tool that I had in the toolbox Right. And I look at Rich and I think you know for him, these were the only tools that he had in the toolbox right. And I look at Rich and I think you know for him, these were the only tools that he had in his wounded toolbox. And we're one step out and both of my kids, who are 26 and 28 years old, they have so many more tools in their toolbox at this age than I did when I was their age.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:00

And so this desire to continue to lengthen our ability to heal the dynamics of addiction and dysfunction in our families is so powerful because it is happening. It is happening our waking up and having awareness within ourselves and my ability to hold space for my son and have him share these incredibly, incredibly vulnerable, vulnerable memories with me and not fix it, not diminish it, not push it away because it felt hard for me to hear it and allow him to have that process so that he can actually have these awarenesses, so that he can make different choices, so that maybe, maybe he'll choose more sobriety in his life for different reasons than we didn't choose. Sobriety and forgiveness is such a powerful tool from the soul recovery perspective. It's and I've said this before, it's my main reflection of this is really around Course in Miracles and some other spiritual teachings. That is not about holding on to grievance. It's about releasing the grievance, because when we release that resentment and that grievance and that attack, it doesn't mean that what happened didn't happen.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:23

What it means is that you're going to allow it to be part of a larger storyline. You're not going to hold on to the wounded, pain victim piece. You're going to say, yes, this happened and this is why I set up this protection mechanism. This is why I didn't feel safe. Oh, I don't have a safety. I don't have safety in my life, for my upbringing. I have this level underneath everything that doesn't have safety. Well, it's for a very different reason than what my kids don't have safety for, and it's a very different reason for what you don't have safety for safety for, and it's a very different reason for what you don't have safety for. But isn't it interesting that most of us have a foundational underbelly that is lacking a level of safety.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:13

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet to learn more about the nine step soul recovery process. I hope that you'll join us the first Monday of every month for the free soul recovery support group on Zoom, where we learn more about soul recovery and connect with each other. If you'd like to work directly with me to move through the nine-step soul recovery process, I'm here for you. But you can also choose to work the steps on your own, with individual modules intended to support you to work at your own pace and on your own time. And if you want even more soul recovery, join us for the Recover your Soul bonus podcast for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, where I interview amazing people sharing soul recovery tips for us and also do spiritual book studies. You can also find daily inspiration on Facebook and Instagram and join our private Facebook community. Visit the website for more information, links and registration for everything.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:10

Back to the episode, and I believe so strongly that the spiritual journey is about giving you that safety within yourself through your connection to something even greater still To recognize that you can make it through difficult times and this is one of the things I was saying to Alex and Lexi is, you know, this birth didn't come the way that everybody had envisioned it, but they did it. They went through something very intense and they're doing it. You're doing it together and sometimes it's messy and sometimes it's beautiful, but they have this beautiful baby boy and they have this beautiful opportunity to see how strong they are, that they can actually make it through anything. That, if they can make it through this week and learning what to do with the brand new baby man, they can do through anything. But you have to stay in your strength. You have to come out of the place that wants to collapse, that wants to fall into those old, wounded places. And for Alex to be able to reflect and to see so clearly where some of this hurt and fear and non-safety comes from means that he can let it go so that he can create safety within himself, so that he can create safety for his son.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:26

And for me, what I find is the more that I do forgiveness work, the more gratitude that I have for my life, the more that I see the things that are working, the more that I have gratitude for my relationships, all of my relationships, and the part of me that can move into a place that you know. You've heard me say there were 10 or 15 very complicated years in my marriage and if I show up in my relationship with Rich today from those 10 or 15 years of difficult, complicated marriage, we're never going to make it, because they were hard. But I learned things about myself. I grew. He's growing. He is not the same person that was a reactive, alcoholic dad who loved his kids, who absolutely dearly and devotedly loved his children and did some things that weren't that great. I loved my children, I was devoted. I did things that weren't that great.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:35

But when we can use forgiveness for ourselves first and foremost and then forgiveness for the others in our life, we can open up to this concept that we're all just souls, each having our own unique experience, and it webs in with each other. And the more that we let go of the grievance and the more that we let go of the pain and the more that we let go of the blame, it untangles all of the emotions and you can be free yourself of what you're holding onto from the past that is keeping you from being your best person today, and the only person who can choose their own healing is the person who is in the experience. So for me, I have to put all my energy on me healing myself, me being true to myself, me doing my soul recovery work so that I can be grounded, so I can be flexible, so that I can have my roots in the earth and I can have safety within myself. And then I can radiate that out to others. And only Alex can choose his, his healing, his groundedness, his decision to make different choices and to release the pain that is within him. And only Rich can do it for him. And you realize how much we want to fix the other, but really it's to try to give ourselves our safety.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 29:09

And so this morning, when I woke up and was really reflecting on all of this and wanted to share this with you, I wanted to do a guided meditation. I went on Insight Timer and I looked up forgiveness and I didn't really see anything. And I said I think I did a meditation on insight timer on forgiveness, and I did my meditation and I am so grateful for this meditation that spirit gave me. It's about gratitude and forgiveness and it's a process that starts with us feeling grateful, seeing the beauty that we do have in our lives, because what you think and feel and believe is what you experience. So if we can touch in with the gratitude and see what is working, what is beautiful, what is like the strength of who we are, it shines our light and it increases our energy and our ability to then hold space for that which is complicated and hard. And in that space where you're really open hearted, it can release and let go. We can use gratitude to be the catalyst for forgiveness, gratitude to be the catalyst for forgiveness.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 30:30

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to have that be a separate episode today. So this episode that you're listening to now will come first and then I'm going to have it set so that the gratitude and forgiveness meditation can come next. So if you have time right now, after this episode, to spend 20 minutes with yourself and do a gratitude and forgiveness practice, that's great. If you do not, then I would suggest and invite you to think about what is happening in your own life that might need some space around forgiveness, because I want to make sure I'm forgiving myself first and foremost, for my indiscretions, for my places where I faulted, for the places that I didn't see, everything that was happening or I couldn't see or I couldn't save at those times. And I also want to have forgiveness for all of my family members, my husband in particular, so that I'm not continuing to attach to the wounds and the pains that happened a long time ago, a long time ago, because I want to be present in my life today, in this moment, because this moment right now is the only moment that is here. It's the only thing that exists. If I'm living in the woundedness of my past, I'm going to be using old tools and patterns and beliefs that do not serve me, that are coming from pain and from fear. But if I can release those and practice forgiveness and be in gratitude, I can be here and grounded now to be able to hear and feel the complexity of all that has come before and see the strength and the growth that has come from it and what we've all learned and who we are. And then my favorite part that happened last night is Alex said you know, but I can really recognize that everything I've been through brought me to where I am right here today with the love of my life with my newborn baby in my arms. That's amazing.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 32:40

In each moment we choose. We choose how we are going to see it. We choose if we're going to be of the light. We choose if we're going to be in the healing. We choose if we're going to be the greatest that we can possibly be or whether we're going to be afraid and move into our old patterns and our belief systems. That will not bring us to our highest self and that's just our ego that is trying to keep us small and tight and closed because it has so much fear.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 33:13

But when we can open our hearts, when we can recognize that we're all faulted, I believe that there's nothing wrong with any of us. I believe that we are all whole. I do not believe that we are broken, but I think that our hearts can feel broken. I think that we can be in a place where we are lost. I think that we can be in a place where the fear surrounds us and keeps us closed, keeps our hearts closed, our eyes closed, our emotions closed. And the more that we do this work, the more we're actually opening up to our own experience, so that we can be clear about who we were meant to be and how we can use everything that came before as learning tools, awarenesses.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 34:03

And when I'm in my whole place, I look back and I think, my God, our family went through it. Holy shit, we went through so much. But when you see who we are today and all four of us showed up for Alex, all four of us were here with love and compassion and support for each other to celebrate this new life that's coming into our family and to celebrate my son, who is moving up the rung of the ladder into parenthood and into adulthood in a new way. And I want us all to be healthy and I want us all to be happy. But the only control I have is for myself to choose a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life, to shine my light, to have my most healed self show up in every moment, to be flexible. To be flexible. So look for that other meditation on gratitude and forgiveness in the episodes. It's also on Insight Timer. I have a lot of guided meditations on Insight Timer that are free and you can do Insight Timer for free. This process that we're working on in our own lives is for our own ability to truly stand and be in complexity of life in our most healed self, which often feels deeply, feels deeply the emotions, and to allow what is and then to move forward from there Until next time.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 35:51

Namaste, thank you for listening and I hope that that helps support your soul recovery process. Just a reminder that every Friday is the Recover your Soul bonus podcast. This podcast is for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, and not only do you get an incredible interview or book study that comes with being part of that community, but your subscribing helps support this podcast and the Recover your Soul community. If you want to listen to those bonus episodes but can't subscribe right now, do know that you can be a free Patreon member and have access for limited time to new episodes. Visit the website RecoverYourSoulnet or check out the show links below for coupons and information for upcoming events. I thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends and family. I thank you for giving it five stars, and the reviews that are left bring tears to my eyes. I am honored to be part of your life. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.