Question: Tell me, please, how to wisely help your parents financially. If it constantly goes with difficulties and scandals, is it good not to give if they do not ask, or not to give if it is misused and do not appreciate?
Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2023 Kazakhstan Conference.
Well, in questions like this, you are always walking this very delicate balance between helping people and enabling them not to change themselves. And what unfortunately happens with parents is that once they reach a certain age, it is as if they cross a threshold, and now they become very unwilling to change themselves. Perhaps they were already unwilling before they reached that age, but after a certain age, it is like they give up: “Oh, I cannot change my life. I cannot do anything about it. I just have to live the way I am living. There is nothing else I can do.”
Many children get into feeling an obligation towards their parents, and so, if they need help financially, they provide that help, even if the parents misuse the funds or use it as an excuse for not changing. And this is, of course, a very delicate individual balance, but certainly you do not want to look at your parents as if they are incapable of changing. You want to recognize that as long as somebody is in physical embodiment, their life is an opportunity for change.
Even at a very advanced age, a person can have just one insight that puts them on a different track so that when they come back in their next embodiment, they come back in a much better position than in the previous one, or that they otherwise would have done if they had not had that insight. Even up to the very end, it is possible that your parents could be helped, and it is partly your responsibility as an adult, especially as a spiritual person, to tune in, use your intuition, and say: “No, I will not continue to allow you to live this way because it is not responsible”.
And, you know, the unfortunate, you might say, “reality on earth is that when you are a child, your parents are supposed to parent you. But when your parents reach advanced age, unfortunately, often you have to parent your parents. And I understand fully that many people do not want to deal with this because you might still have children that you need to be a parent for, and it is just too much to have to be a parent for your parents as well.
But still, if you are in this situation where you have supported them financially, you feel obligated, you do not know how to deal with it, you have to look at this. You have to look at it in yourself, see what separate selves you have, especially look at: “Do I have a co-dependent relationship on my parents where I feel I cannot say no, I cannot withdraw, I cannot let them suffer the consequences of their own decisions when they will not listen to me?” It can be necessary to see that you have these selves and overcome them. And if you can overcome them in relation to your parents, you will also be free of them in relation to your children, and that can prevent many problems in relation to your children.
All I am saying here is that working on your psychology is always a win-win. You can never lose. And whatever situation you encounter with children, with family, it is always an opportunity to look at your own psychology.
Copyright © 2023 Kim Michaels