This is a long and emotional one, so if you want to read it, you might want to sit down and make yourself comfortable for a bit! (-;

I love my parents dearly (my Dad died nearly 9 years ago now), and I am so incredibly grateful to both of them for SO many things….

AND they didn’t know about listening to feelings when I was a child.

When I was two years old, I wouldn’t stop crying.

They tried everything they could to stop me, and they couldn’t stop the crying, so they put me in their van in the garage for the night. 

(It had beds in it because it was all kitted out for camping, and the garage was part of the house, so I was in a bed and I was kind of in a part of the house).

But still, I was left there overnight.

I remember when my daughter was young and I used to tell my Dad about the importance of listening to crying, and he would tell me that story, and how it stopped me from crying after that.

I’ve done a LOT of healing around that experience.

And I have deep compassion for my parents. 

They thought that crying was something to be stopped.

They did everything that they could to stop me.

They didn’t know that in all that crying I was doing, I was trying to heal.

I was trying to heal from all the daily experiences every two year old has.

However much we aim to give our children choices, meet their needs, and protect them from things like overwhelm and frustration, all children experience uncomfortable feelings at times.

I believe that I was probably also crying to try to heal from my experience of being in an incubator for the first 5 weeks of my life.

If you’ve studied developmental psychology, you’ll probably be very familiar with how it would feel for a baby to be in an incubator, with very little affectionate touch, having things done to her body and feeling terrified, alone, confused and powerless.

 

Fast forward quite a lot of years, and these experiences still affect me now at times.

Going on a plane, for example, helps me feel those feelings of terror that I felt both in the incubator and in the garage overnight.

Our psyche is constantly trying to heal from past painful experiences.

A plane is very similar to being in a van or an incubator and not being able to get out.

And those feelings are still coming up and being healed, all these years later.

 

My passion and life purpose comes from wanting to help parents understand the feelings of babies and children.

The last several days, every time I go out, I see a baby crying and parents, in the most loving of ways, trying to do everything that they can to stop the crying – patting, rocking, jiggling, walking, or putting them in a stroller with a cover over them.

And because I believe that the universe is in constant conversation with us, I hear three things:

 

1. I need to do more Inner Loving Presence Processes, where I say to my Inner Loving Crew, “Please STOP trying to stop me from crying. I’m not hungry. Stop trying to feed me or distract me or rock me. And please DON’T leave me. I’ve got feelings that I NEED to express, and I need you to be with me and listen to me. Please listen.”

 

2. I need to listen to more crying from my own inner baby.

 

3. I’m being called to share more about the needs of babies and children to have their feelings heard, as well as their needs met.

 

 

My own pain and the impact of those early experiences have been a driving force in how I contribute in the world.

I want to protect babies and children from having the experiences I had.

I long to help parents understand that when their baby or child keeps on crying for apparently no reason, there IS a reason.

If I can help parents understand that babies have real feelings, right from in the womb, then that brings me joy and fulfilment.

If I can share information with parents who resonate, and then then understand that their babies have real feelings, that need to be expressed and heard in order for healing to happen, then I feel grateful.

I want to help more parents understand that babies and children have real feelings that need to be heard.

I want to help more people know in their hearts that feelings are beautiful things, to be loved and listened to, rather than judged or belittled.

I want to help more human beings experience less terror and more joyful connection.

I want to help more people understand how the psyche works: that whenever we are experiencing really intense feelings that seem out of proportion to the present situation, it’s because we are feeling the feelings from the original situation – so that we can heal them this time.

 

 

I want to help co-create a world where no baby is left alone to cry.

I want to help co-create a world where every child is treated with compassion and love.

I want to help create a world where punishments, shame and judgment only live in history books.

I want to help co-create a world where every child’s gifts are valued, where ideas of “bad” and “stupid” and “not clever enough” are never heard by any child (or teen or adult).

I want to help co-create a world where every human being is treated with love and respect and compassion and unconditional love for every part of herself and himself.

I want to help create a world where no child feels the terror of living in a war-torn area, because adults know how to deal with their own painful feelings without wanting to hurt others.

I will do everything I can to help co-create this world.

 

 

This passion, stemming from my own experiences as a baby and a child, have driven my own professional life for the last 30 years.

This passion is what brings me to my iMac every day, to write a meme or a newsletter, to create a course, to do a session, to run a group.

And yes, I do it to make a living too.

But way back when my Dad was alive and I was married, my parents helped out a lot financially.

It meant I had no need to work for money for several years.

And I still did a lot to contribute to parents.

I ran a free yahoo group (yes it was a long time ago), and I spent hours every day responding to people on that group.

I ran free workshops.

I spent hours and hours writing free articles.

And if I was in the situation again where I was being given money and no longer needed to ‘make a living’, then I would STILL do what I do.

Because I want to contribute, and make a difference.

I want to help parents so that they aren’t in the situation my parents were in – they loved me so much, but they had no idea why I was crying.

They didn’t understand the healing power of crying.

They didn’t know how to trust my own healing process and simply to be with me as I cried and I cried.

They didn’t have the emotional resources to listen to their own feelings or deal with their own pain so that they could be with my own.

If I write an article, and one parent then listens to their baby’s feelings rather than leaves them alone to cry, then that is like receiving a tonne of gold. 

That is priceless for me, and I will get up day after day after day, writing, sharing memes (even if all my FB friends are fed up with it!) because I want to help as many babies and children (who then become adults) be free from feelings such as terror and grief and other feelings that they didn’t get to express and have heard in loving arms and with loving hearts.

If I write an article to help parents understand that they never need to resort to punishments, shaming, time out, distraction, harshness, or judgment to their child, and even one parent listens, then that article is worthwhile.

And of course I want to reach more than one person.

My emotional pain has helped me want to help others.

 

It drives me.

And I’ve come so far.

You’ve probably heard my story.

I used to be a terrified little girl, afraid to talk when I was at school or university.

I was more full of shame and guilt and self-judgment and harsh inner dialogue than anyone else I know.

And now I don’t do any of that to myself any more.

I don’t tell myself I should, and I’m not willing to judge myself or blame myself or punish myself.

My inner dialogue is unconditionally loving of all of my feelings, needs and actions.

And that little girl who couldn’t speak – I now run workshops, do FB lives, talks, sessions.

(And yes, I still get scared if I go to a party and I don’t know anyone.)

I’m still terrified when I go on a plane.

But I can be with my sadness, my fear, my loneliness, my grief and all the tender places in me.

I can be with my frustration and my rage.

And I’m getting more and more comfortable to be with my terror.

And I have unconditional compassion for anyone in any of those feelings.

And the more comfortable I am with all my uncomfortable and painful feelings, the more free I am to feel ALL of my feelings.

I’m also way more comfortable with joy and exuberance and bliss and excitement and passion.

 

We live in a culture that is still largely very uncomfortable with many feelings.

We live in a culture that focuses on avoiding painful feelings.

We live in a culture that creates painful feelings – by teaching children that they can be “naughty” or “bad”, that they can “misbehave”; which teaches systems where children are often graded and categorised for their maths and english skills rather than celebrated for their own unique gifts.

We live in a culture that creates painful feelings by disempowering mothers during pregnancy and birth, leading to birth trauma for mothers and babies that often isn’t understood and thus isn’t healed from.

We live in a culture that separates babies from their parents and small children from their parents, thus creating pain, and doesn’t understand how separation pain can he healed.

We live in a culture that punishes, shames and judges, and then sells us stuff to avoid the pain that comes from believing that there is something wrong with us, that there is something lacking in us, that we need something to fill us up or make us whole or worthy.

We live in a culture that has forgotten how to help us know our birthright – of whole human beings, who are never lacking in anything, who are never bad or lacking or wrong or not good enough.

We are always enough.

We are never doing anything wrong.

We  internalise the cultural beliefs that we grow up in.

The wonderful thing is that we can learn to change these.

We can keep our baby close, and listen to her feelings of loss and fear if she’s been separated from us.

We can listen to our own feelings of loss and fear if she’s been separated from us (and our own past feelings of separation).

We can listen to her feelings so that she can sleep and stay connected to her true aware presence.

And we can listen to our own feelings so that we can sleep and regain connection with our true aware presence.

We can listen to our child’s tears and tantrums, knowing that they are her natural healing and release mechanism.

If we didn’t listen to her feelings when she was a baby, we can still listen to those same feelings when she’s a child or a teenager.

It’s never too late to listen to our child’s feelings.

Those feelings are always there, waiting to be heard.

And we can listen to our own tears and frustration, helping ourselves heal too.

We can understand why our child does those things we find annoying, and respond in empathic and effective ways that mean we don’t need to resort to shame or punishment or harshness or judgment.

And we can be compassionate with ourselves at those times when we don’t respond in those ways – and remind ourselves that that is only because we were not responded to in the ways that we want to respond.

And we can help our children heal from the times when we didn’t understand their needs or their feelings, or when we responded in ways that were harsh.

We can listen to our child’s unique gifts, without ever telling her that she is less clever than someone else, or that she should be able to do something that she can’t.

We can follow her own unique life path, without shame or judgment or blame or comparison.

We can help her heal from experiences if she is judged, punished or shamed by others who don’t yet know how else to do things, or who have slipped in to a puddle of their own pain.

 

We CAN change.

We CAN grow.

We CAN help our children heal from past hurts.

We CAN help ourselves heal from past hurts.

We CAN help them stay connected to their own unique gifts.

We CAN share our own passions with others.

 

I see this path as such a beautiful one.

In order to share my passion for understanding babies, I’ve needed to keep healing and growing.

Giving sessions, running groups, writing articles, creating courses, doing webcasts; each and every step has been an opportunity for me to heal from past hurts and release old ways of thinking and self-judgment.

Coming out into the world with my passion for understanding babies and children has meant feeling and healing feelings from my birth, my first day at school and my first day of university.

Sharing my passion has helped me free myself from self-judgment, and to find true self-compassion.

Each step forward is an opportunity for profound self-healing.

And that is why I am creating the Respond Lovingly to your Calling Course.

Because I want to help others share their passions.

I want to help you do what you’re here to do.

I know how satisfying it is to make a difference, and I want to help others do that even more too.

 

 

I understand the extreme frustrations and challenges that come up as we’re following our passions (all things that come up to help us heal from those experiences of being judged, shamed, punished when we were ourselves or shared our gifts or did what we loved).

Sharing our gifts is a profound path of self-transformation.

I have found that Life keeps on bringing to me things that will help me heal from my original painful experiences.

Like all those months of not having enough internet for my webcasts, so that I could deeply explore my feelings of powerlessness as a baby and a child, until I’d done enough healing and was ready to claim my power.

Life wants us to heal.

Life will keep bringing us situations – both feelings from within, and apparently external situations, sickness, events, whatever it needs to do, to help us heal from the original painful situation.

Life will keep on bringing us situations so that we can become more and more who we really are – freed from self-judgment and self-shaming.

Whatever it is that you are afraid of happening when you share your gifts has actually already happened.

Sharing your gifts is a portal to help you heal from the experiences of being judged and shamed as a child, so that you get to the point where getting a harsh comment on social media will no longer feel terrifying.

You’ll have the opportunity to heal experiences of being judged or excluded, so that if someone doesn’t resonate with your work, you won’t feel deeply hurt.

The big painful reactions, the big deep fears, those are all from the past.

In moving forward to share our gifts, our soul is calling us forward, healing past hurts that need to be healed so that we can more and more be who we really are and share what we’re here to share and do what we’re here to do.