Musings on Mackenzie Phillips

I’ve been working with traumatized children for over 4 years, now, and I’ve always been astounded by one simple truth: traumatized children love their parents more than anything in the world.

There’s been a lot in the news recently about Mackenzie Phillips. The only writing about it that truly interested me was this blog post from the Huffington Post (thank you, husband, for sharing this with me!).

There are two major points worth highlighting:

1. It’s mentioned above, but worth repeating: the abused and neglected children I work with love their parents more than anyone in the world. It doesn’t matter how badly their parents hit them, yelled at them, or ignored them. They always love mom and dad. Always.
2. We can never truly sympathize with another person unless we have been through what they have (read this post on the difference between sympathy and empathy). And even if we have been through a similar experience, it’s not always possible to truly and deeply understand what another person feels and thinks. We are all unique in our temperament and our experiences.

The author, Alison Rose Levy, gives a nice description of why we will never be able to understand the choices Mackenzie Phillips made. I highly recommend you read this article.