There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.
Interpretation
Children must eventually challenge their perceptions of their parents to develop their own identities.
This quote by Jeanette Winterson highlights the inevitable journey of children as they grow up and start to question the ideals and narratives created by their parents. It emphasizes that believing in an idealized version of one's parents can hinder personal development and the ability to create one's own life story, urging a process of disillusionment and self-discovery.
In practice
During a parenting workshop, to illustrate the importance of developing one's identity, one might quote this.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.
There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.
The great thing about all my siblings is we all agree we had a horrendous childhood. It's not like it doesn't affect us now; it affects us every day, in everything we do.
Before I married, I had three theories about raising children and no children. Now, I have three children and no theories.
What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.
We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
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