Hello!

Have you read The Velveteen Rabbit? 

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
 

Practicing Aware Parenting for nearly 15 years has helped me become more real.

Why? Well, when I started, I was very fixed and formal about it.

I listened to a lot of my daughter’s feelings, but I also had judgments about people who weren’t practicing Aware Parenting.

And if she was repressing her feelings, I’d judge myself.

I’d tell her a lot how she “needed to cry,” which in retrospect wasn’t very helpful for her.

15 years on, I’m a lot more fluid with parenting, and I’ve learnt about unconditional love – for myself, for my children, and for all other parents.

I’ll give you an example.

My son (10) has a very wobbly tooth.

He came home from his Dad’s on Sunday night, and within 5 minutes, he was sobbing in my arms about his wobbly tooth.

I was so touched to be able to hold him as he sobbed.

I held in mind that although it was uncomfortable, and strange, and that there was a loss happening of his childhood self, that it was also probably giving him an opportunity to express other feelings from the past too – such as the loss of his Dad when he left 6 years ago.

The next day he was still feeling very vulnerable and his tooth was still there.

For several hours, he lay on the couch whilst I told him how much I loved him, and gazed into his eyes as he shared how he felt. There were tears at times. I found it so moving.

I was so touched about how he was staying in this vulnerable, in-between place, with the tooth still there but nearly gone.

And then the next day, yesterday, things were very different. He wanted to be on a screen lots, “to distract myself,” he said.

And although I wasn’t happy about how long he was on there, I also embraced the part of him that wanted to distract himself from the physical and emotional pain.

I’ve learnt to embrace all the parts of ourselves – the parts that feel pain fully, the parts that dip in and out of pain, and the parts of us that don’t want to feel pain.
 

And on those three days, I noticed the parallel with how I was being with my feelings.

On the Sunday, I had had a huge cry – sobbing and sobbing – after watching a video on FB about a teacher who was also a Dad of a disabled child.

On Monday, paradoxically, I had another big cry (I started my period and feelings always flow way more easily for me then), all about how my children both have feelings still from when their Dad left.

I was remembering how they both used to talk in Classical NVC all the time, how much they loved each other because they had very few accumulated feelings, and how open they both were, and I mourned how different things became, and what got lost.

And yesterday, I could clearly feel some feelings that felt really scary and that I wanted to avoid. I got in to ordering and tidying up, washing winter duvet covers, and enjoying my favourite clothes company on Instagram!
 

Nowadays I find that my children respond much more to my emotional state than what I am trying to “do” to them.

If I’m connected with myself, they find it easy to connect with me.

If I’m regularly crying, they find it easy to cry with me.

It’s not what I do to them, it’s how I am with myself and thus them that makes the most difference.
 

And although there is a part of me who would still love to have children who had very few accumulated feelings, I wouldn’t want to go back to the person I was then.

Through having hard times myself as a mother, and times when I haven’t been able to listen to my children’s feelings, or have done things that I never thought I would, I now can find a place in me to have unconditional love for any mother, whatever she is doing and has done.

And although I will keep on wanting to help my children heal from the losses they’ve experienced, I think it’s probably much more helpful for them to have a mother who is more real and more compassionate, than one who does things by the book and judges herself and others who aren’t.
 

How about you? Do you notice that when you get in to something new, you tend to do it by the book, and as you get to integrate the core knowledge and understandings, that you practice in a more fluid, but paradoxically more deep way?
 

I notice that myself with Nonviolent Communication too. I’ve been learning it for 14 years, and for the first few years, I spoke Classical NVC. 

But the paradox was that my speaking it Classically, and my children too, meant that I actually felt MORE disconnected from people. I wanted everyone to speak it!

Once my ex-husband left, and my children started watching more screens, they stopped speaking Classical NVC and over time, that rubbed off on me too.

And yet, although I don’t speak it classically, I think that I embody the core principles more.

I’m much more compassionate with myself, my children, and others.

Perhaps that’s how I am becoming more real!
 

I’d love to hear your story of becoming more real!
 

And that fits with my journey with attachment play too!

I haven’t been doing much attachment play recently with my lovelies, and I’m so glad to be doing another live round of the course, starting on the 20th of November, because I know that will inspire me to do more.

If you’re reading this after that time, the course is Evergreen, so you can start any time you want! 

CLICK HERE or on the image below to find out more!