In this post, I will share my own personal experiences of Love-Hurts and Will-Hurts as a mother and a daughter;
I’ll talk about how our culture creates Love-Hurts and Will-Hurts and the impact that is having on the Earth;
and I’ll offer what I think we can do to help ourselves heal from Love-Hurts and Will-Hurts;
so we can return to our deep interconnectedness (Love) and sacred power (Will).
MY OWN EXPERIENCES OF LOVE-HURTS AND WILL-HURTS AND HOW IT AFFECTS MY PARENTING:
My 18 year old daughter and 13 year old son have been staying at their second home for the last week; having fun with the wider family there, whilst I’ve been focussing on editing my book.
As I contemplate their return, and this new year, I was thinking about what I would like to change, and the key thing that showed up was our evenings spent on screens.
This is also what I experienced as a teen – although, back in those days, it was my Mum and Dad and I each in separate rooms, watching TV. Nowadays, my daughter and son and I are close by and on the Internet!
So there’s more connection and more choice, but still not enough connection for what I would love.
As I listened in to my willingness this morning, I asked myself, “Am I willing for us to have evenings off screens, all connecting and doing things together?”
And unsurprisingly, the answer was, “no.” When I enquired further into why I wasn’t willing, with my daughter I got to,“If I connect with her then, I’m scared that I’ll then feel the loss of her leaving,”
and with my son, “If I connect with him then, I’m scared that I will feel powerless.”
Now these are clearly not about the present and my relationships with my children; they are coming from my past experiences with my Mum and Dad, so I connected in with the younger parts of me.
It’s baby me and 8 year old me, who were separated from my Mum (in the incubator as a baby, living with my Dad at 8,) who felt loss and grief.
And it’s younger parts of me, who experienced power-over from my Dad, who felt powerless and outraged.
Those feelings are showing up in my relationships with my children.
In connecting compassionately to the younger parts of me, and to myself now and what I really want with my lovelies, I find my willingness to offer lots of connection to them in the evenings, even though the little parts of me might feel grief and powerlessness and outrage; as I have my Inner Loving Mother listening lovingly to the feelings of loss, and my Inner Loving Father supporting me in having choice and agency.
HOW THE DOMINATION/COLONISED CULTURE ROUTINELY CREATES LOVE-HURTS AND WILL-HURTS IN BABIES AND CHILDREN
The culture that many of us reading this have grown up in has systems in place that routinely create Love-Hurts and Will-Hurts in babies and children.
LOVE-HURTS
The modern birthing system still, in many places in the world, separates mothers and babies after birth. Many parenting paradigms encourage parents to have their babies sleep away from them as early as possible. Modern culture creates a lot of contraptions that create physical distance from babies and parents. Very early schooling becomes increasingly the norm.
These are ways that the culture creates separation and disconnection.
We can also see this in the way we treat other-than-human beings in the domination culture. We only need to look at how we treat domesticated cows, separating them from their babies so that we can have their milk, to see that this culture of the creation of Love-Hurts seeps into so many elements of our culture.
Most of in the domination culture us also experienced these kinds of Love-Hurts. I’ve been particularly passionate about understanding them because of my own experience of being in an incubator for my first 5 weeks, and seeing the huge impact that’s had on my life.
THE HEALING OF LOVE-HURTS AND THE MEETING OF LOVE-NEEDS
The wonderful thing is, that the more we understand these cultural Love-Hurts, the more we can free ourselves from them and re-establish connection with our babies and children and teens as a core pillar of parenting.
And the more we understand Love-Needs and Love-Hurts, the more we can help ourselves and our children heal, through the feeling and expression of grief and sadness.
For our babies and children, that is listening lovingly to their tears, as they express and release experiences of loss and separation.
And for ourselves, that is asking others, or our Inner Loving Mother, to listen to our experiences of loss and separation, so that our needs for compassion and connection are met, and our hurts get to be expressed and released and heard.
We can help ourselves create a more loving inner dialogue, and we can increasingly honour our needs for connection, whether that’s connection with our own feelings and intuition, connection with other humans, and connection with other-than-humans and Mother Earth.
WILL-HURTS
The way that children have been treated until very recently has been seeped in the domination culture, where parents have power over children in the form of the lack of honouring of choice, autonomy and agency, and the use of coercion, force, threats, ‘should’ and punishment.
Although authoritarian parenting is becoming less and less common, the lack of respect for children’s needs for agency, autonomy and choice is still embedded in the domination paradigm many of us still live in.
The more old-fashioned schooling systems, for example, didn’t respect these needs, and still use power-over, coercion, ’should’ and punishment to ‘make’ children do things.
As parents, most of these Will-Hurts show up when we feel powerless or full of rage, and feel tempted to use power-over our children. Most of us would have thousands of experiences of not having our choice and autonomy honoured, our “no” not heard, and our resulting feelings of powerlessness, frustration and outrage not being listened to.
THE HEALING OF WILL-HURTS AND THE MEETING OF WILL-NEEDS
Yet again, we can be part of the creation of a new paradigm by honouring our baby and child’s needs for agency, autonomy and choice wherever possible, and by listening to their feelings of powerlessness, frustration and outrage that result from their Will-Needs not being met, including listening compassionately to their tantrums.
For ourselves, that includes having inner and/or outer loving support to listen to our Will-Hurts – our experiences that led to frustration, powerlessness and outrage. We can also increasingly do our own inner decolonising, by releasing internal coercion and punishment and guilt and replacing it with compassion and willingness.
CREATING CHANGE
I wouldn’t underestimate the power of doing our own Love and Will work, both in ourselves (through being more self-compassionate and claiming our willingness and Neo No), and also in our parenting.
Supporting children to have their Love-Needs of connection, closeness and compassion met,
and their Will-Needs of agency, autonomy and choice met.
And listening lovingly to their Love-Hurts through crying.
and their Will-Hurts through raging and tantrums,
We help create a change in the paradigm.
SEEING THE EFFECT OF LOVE-HURTS AND WILL-HURTS IN THE WIDER WORLD
We only need to look around us to see the profound damage created by Love-Hurts and Will-Hurts.
We see so many politicians and corporate folk so deeply disconnected from the earth, from animals, from humans that look and speak differently to themselves, and from their own hearts and feelings.
We see these same politicians and corporate people embedded in systems of domination, power-over, force, and violence, which reflect their own inner disowned feelings of powerlessness.
RECONNECTING TO OUR NATIVE LOVINGNESS AND WILLINGNESS
We see all over the world, people who do feel deeply connected with Gaia, with each other and with animals. The people looking after burnt koalas and kangaroos, speaking out on racism and indigenous rights, standing up for compassion for all peoples, whatever their religion. Our true nature is Love, and the more we know that, feel that, and live from that, the more of a Love Field we create.
We also see so many people standing up for power-with; saying a big Neo No to water being sold off, war deforestation, and the loss of millions of species. People standing up and speaking what they are no longer willing for. People supporting the rights of others for choice and autonomy, including the rights of other-than humans. Our true nature is Will, and the more we know that, feel that, and live from that, the more of a Will Field we create.
Wherever level we work on around Love and Will, we make a difference.
That might be being more compassionate with ourselves, or spending time cuddling our child.
It might be being with our grief and loss, or listening to our child’s tears.
That might be spending time in the garden, and leaving water out for the birds.
It might be saying, “no” to that party when we’re really tired, or honouring our child’s “no.”
It might be hearing our outrage in response to what we see in the world, or listening to our child’s tantrums.
It might be going to a march against fracking or saying a “no” to buying things we don’t need.
The domination culture of separation and power-over is having a fundamentally destructive impact on so many beings.
Every thing we do or be to come home to our true nature as Love and our sacred power as Will, we are making a difference in creating the new paradigm.
Thank you so much for all that you are being and doing to help us all return to interconnectedness and sacred power.
xoxox
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
If you want to deepen your own groundedness in Lovingness and Willingness, and also mentor others in this, the Marion Method Mentoring Training starts on 20/1/20.
I also still have one place left for 1-1 mentoring, if you’re wanting loving support in all these ways.
Message me for more details about either of these.