Aware Parenting has helped me transform.
When I came across Aware Parenting, I was pregnant with my now-13-year-old daughter.r.
I had already spent the previous decade in weekly therapy; with 5 of those years training as a Psychosynthesis Psychotherapist.
And although I healed so much, learnt so much, and had such a beautiful background having done all that I did, Aware Parenting took my own self-development in places that all the therapy, training, process groups could not do.
Through actually seeing how my daughter healed through crying in arms, it gave me an incredibly tangible and clear path to see the healing process in myself.
I could see that all those years that I had got stuck in thinking unhelpful thoughts (like, “I am so wounded”) wasn’t healing.
Watching my daughter go through all the stages of crying in my arms actually helped me see the clearness and directness of healing through emotional release.
And watching her acquire control patterns helped me see the actual genesis of how control patterns come into place, and helped me look back and see how my own control patterns had started in ways that many years of therapy had not.
Helping her move out of those control patterns and in to connection and release helped me also play with my own control patterns. I shifted old and obvious control patterns, and more and more could see when even quite subtle ones arose.
For example, whenever I am driving, if I start to twirl my hair, I stop myself and enquire into what I am feeling right in the moment. I have usually just started thinking about that has connected me with uncomfortable feelings.
I love how tangible, real, present and simple, all of Aware Parenting theories and practices are.
And I talk to my children about these arisings. We all know about our control patterns.
A few weeks ago and we got into a joking conversation about everyone in our extended family’s control patterns. (We were obviously releasing some uncomfortable feelings about them!) As we spoke about each person’s control patterns, I loved how aware they are of other people’s feelings and when feelings are arising in someone else.
Yesterday we were chatting with a lovely old farmer and his toddler grandson. The toddler was sitting in the back of the car, feeling a bit upset. He said, “is he bellyaching?”, and later said the same thing of his cows, who had had their babies taken away from them. At that moment I could see the difference in emotional understanding between my children and this man. His emotional vocabulary was “bellyaching” and my children, from a very young age, have known when feelings are arising in themselves and in other people, and have a vocabulary for that. There is no judgment of the farmer, but simply a gratitude for what my children have.
I also remember the games my daughter used to play a lot when she was three. We had Aletha Solter come to stay with us, as she was doing workshops around Australia and I was one of the organisers. And of course, I was passionate about Aware Parenting and talked about it a lot. Lana would say things like, “Let’s pretend you are a parent and I am Aletha Solter and I will tell you about how crying is helpful.”
Until I became a parent, I didn’t really understand the difference between a feeling and a thought; the difference between “sadness” and “betrayed” for example.
Nor did I understand how incredibly healing laughter and play are. I do now!
Aware Parenting has helped me come out of my head and become a real person.
As a mother, I cannot hide from my own unexpressed feelings and my own unhealed parts when I am with my children. They are like beacons, shining out everything that needs to have a light shone on it.
It has taught me the utmost importance of valuing my needs and expressing them. I’ve seen in clear and such tangible terms, over the years, what happens if I don’t value them!
And most of all, it has taught me true compassion and great humility. Before I was a mother, I could think that I was at some particular state of development. As a mother, there is no hiding from the truth of where I am.
I see how, so many times, I don’t live up to my values, and I have learnt to hold myself in deep compassion at those times, whereas before being a mother, I would have judged myself or spent hours or days thinking about why or how.
Now I now that I cannot afford to spend time judging myself as it takes me away from connection with my children, which always worsens whatever challenge is going on.
For me, Aware Parenting is one of the most transformative paths of self-development.
I wonder how you have found it, if you have been practising Aware Parenting? I’d love to hear what you have learnt along the way.