I remember the day clearly. My son was two and a half, and my daughter was seven. I had pictures of them on my website looking joyful and calm. I was full of happiness about how I was being as a mother.
I’d been practicing Aware Parenting since my daughter was a baby, and my children were like poster-children for Aware Parenting. They were happy, relaxed, and a joy to be with. They loved to learn, and we had interesting days full of beautiful activities. They ate super-healthy food. People would ask how they got on, and I would truthfully answer that 95% of the time, they were completely in love with each other. They played with each other for hours every day (my daughter did not go to school); she helped him do many things, chose his clothes for him each morning, read to him (even translating it into Nonviolent Communication in her mind before reading it out loud); they would cuddle up together as she did ~ you get the picture!
And then one day I received an email. It was one I’ll never forget. It started along the lines of, “You think you’ve got the perfect family, with all those pictures of your children on your website, well….” and what followed was deeply painful and shocking news to read.
And looking back now, I see how that correlated with a core belief that I’ve held, that if I had what I really wanted, I would lose it. And that if I was really great at something, people would reject me.
I see that since that day five years ago, my standard of practicing what I know about parenting to help children truly flourish was not at the level it had been. And my children are far from being poster children nowadays.
And yet now I see that on that day I stopped shining as a parent; I stopped being as competent as I could be, because that day my belief showed up in fact. Being competent as a mother and having the family life I wanted meant losing my family (my husband later left) – and being rejected. Fitting in and having some semblance of what I wanted meant not shining, not being very competent, and having problems like ‘normal’ people. So I chose that, painful though the choice was.
So, for quite some time I didn’t fully practice all I know about Aware Parenting, about Non-violent Communication, about Aligned Parenting. I practiced some of it, certainly, but I let core things slide… such as daily ‘Present Time’, for example. I wasn’t willing to be deeply competent as a parent.
I gave several Facilitating sessions a couple of years ago where others have come to similar insights – they hadn’t let themselves have what they really want, because their core belief meant having it taken away from them. They hadn’t let themselves be all that they could be, because they had believed that this meant being left all alone. It seems that many of us have carried around these heavy burden beliefs for some time.
I talked to my friend Chiara about what I realised, and she suggested I just have what I want anyway, even if it got taken away. I didn’t quite get the fullness of what she was meaning at the time.
We finished our call and I went and lay down on my bed, pondering on the if-I-have-what-I-really-want-it-will-get-taken-away-belief…. and then it hit me! At some level, all the things and relationships that we have DO leave in physical form – we will die, or our loved ones will die before us; all the material things we have will crumble into dust; we won’t be taking any of it when we leave our bodies to-go-who-knows-where…..
So, at a core level, it was true – having something, or someone, means losing it, or them.
But instead of avoiding having it or them, to avoid the pain of loss, I saw that that it is EXACTLY the reason to fully, wholly, in a big “yes-to-life” way – HAVE it or them, and to make the most of enjoying every minute of that, because I know that in this material sense, the having is only temporary.
In that moment, a fearful ‘avoidance-of-having’ became a joyful “I-am-SO-willing-to-have” sense… a body-sense of wanting to jump for joy and imbibe all that life has to offer me… to have what I want, to be the mum that I know I can be, to use the parenting practices that I know like the back of my hand, to have the beautiful and harmonious family life that I have been missing dearly.
Since that ‘a-ha’ moment, it’s like I’ve woken up after a long sleep; like in those fairy tales; it’s like I can really see my children clearly again. I’m once again practicing what I preach, and already things are looking different. I feel relieved! And I know that, like any new shift, I am going to need to keep on choosing this new choice, to have what I want exactly because I will one day lose it (my children will grow up and lead their own lives), even when the old, familiar, safe, way invites me back to the more well-worn path of being-less and having-less.
So, here’s my commitment and my choice – to have a deeply fulfilling, authentic, relationship with my children, where I keep on choosing connection and full aliveness rather than the easy staleness of habit and distraction.
I really get, from the inside, how knowing the theories and optimal practices of parenting isn’t enough. Our core beliefs about having the kind of family life that we long for are what really determine whether or not we put those practices into practice!
Do you let yourself shine? If not, what are you believing will happen to you if you do? And are you still willing to keep hold of this way of seeing things, or are you ready for something new?