I have a few different things that I’d like to share with you …..
One of them is a P.S. from my last week’s newsletter. (If you didn’t read it, you can do so here.)
The friend and I that had “tried” to get our children to play together, got together ourselves a couple of days afterwards, to talk about what had gone on for each of us. It had been a very painful experience for her, and it had taken her into seeing some core beliefs she held and which no longer served her. Yet, as we talked, I realised that, all through that painful experience, and talking about it afterwards, our connection was strong and secure. There was not one iota of blame or judgment from either of us towards each other, ourselves, or our children. We both hold a similar model of radical self-responsibility and a willingness to search deeply inside ourselves and to keep evolving. And I realised that, without blame of any form, deep emotional safety comes. We both had the sense that we would look back and see what had happened as a defining moment, a time of making an important change, which for me, was about really being willing to listen to myself and speak from that place. Perhaps, knowing each other’s take on radical self-responsibility, we had allowed ourselves to have that experience together.
It led me to ponder on what that would be like for a parent and a child. It is certainly something I aspire to with my children; to avoid ever blaming them or judging them. To take responsibility for my feelings, for my responses, and to be compassionate and understanding towards them. Yet I was given the impetus… what would happen if I step even more into simply being not willing to ever blame them, not even in subtle ways, and to keep connected with them …. to create that kind of emotional safety for them…
And I believe that we have been seeing the repercussions of that this week.
On Friday, my daughter, Lana (now 11) and I had our first mother-daughter evening, whilst my son, Sunny (6) went to be with his dad on a dad-and-son evening. Lana and I had planned our evening; we had special food, put on a nourishing face mask, massaged our feet, and watched a movie together. We chose a DVD about a girl who had been sent away from her mother to live with a foster family; and she didn’t speak. During the movie, through her loving relationship with her new pet bunny, and her willingness to learn how to care for it, she found her voice. Lana and I snuggled up on our beanbags. I cried watching the last half an hour of the movie. She cried a bit too. It seemed so apt for both of us – about intimacy and loss and speaking our voices. I have seen in the last year how she is shying away from intimacy, and I see myself being called to find new ways of inviting her to be close. That night certainly seemed to plant a seed; and we are planning to have such an evening once a month, near the full moon.
The next day, she and I looked after the twins, who are their “half-siblings”; only we don’t call them that in our blended family, we call them “siblings”; and I am the twins’ “sibling mother” and Ruth, their mum, is Lana and Sunny’s “sibling mother”. So, Lana and I looked after the twins (16 months old) for the morning, and we had such a lovely time together, following their lead, giving them our full attention, giving them what I call “Present Time.” And as they got sleepy, we listened to their feelings so that they could release their tension before falling sleep. And interspersed with this were laughter games to release other types of feelings. As I was holding Luca as he fell asleep in the bed, with Lana holding Alice in her arms beside us, I felt such deep love for Luca and Alice. I was so moved to feel such love for them, love which I thought I would only feel for my own children.
This week, Aletha Solter’s new book, Attachment Play, arrived on my doorstep. It comes out officially on March the 1st, but I got a copy early because Aletha used a photo of Sunny and I for the front cover. I have been loving reading it. It’s full of theory and practice, with plenty of examples, about the different types of attachment play and how they create secure attachment, as well as helping children release feelings that otherwise cause behaviour challenges.
And on Saturday, after we got home from looking after the twins, and I was spending time with Sunny and Lana, I finally got something. It has been an obvious thing, and I’ve known it for so long in my head, but yesterday, my heart got it.
Since Lana and Sunny’s dad left, a couple of years ago, I have really wanted to go with an optimistic spin on everything that had happened. I didn’t want to believe the model that separation was necessarily traumatic for children; I wanted to trust that in the changes that had happened, all our lives would be enriched. And it is true in that they have been enriched in many ways. Having a blended family has brought us all many gifts. And although of course I had listened out for pain from my children, yesterday I really got, whilst reading Aletha’s piece on power-reversal games, how powerless, or without choice, Sunny in particular might have felt when Michael left. He was 4 at the time. And perhaps Lana, too, might have had some of those feelings of powerlessness.
I remembered how, when I was 9 and my mum went away to live in Australia for a year and a half, I only ate one type of food for that whole time. And how Sunny’s food choices have got more and more restrictive over the past couple of years. He has also been hitting Lana, and has recently started to hit other children. At home, I have been sticking very close when they are together, ready to move in with love and connection if things come up between them. And of course, every time he hits, it is because in that moment he is feeling powerless. She, as the much bigger one, won’t let him do something, or another child doesn’t believe him, and those feelings of powerlessness come up, but without the safety for them to turn into tears, they turn into hitting.
All this time, I have been “doing” the standard Aware Parenting practices – spending regular time giving him focussed attention and letting him choose, playing power-reversal games to help him release feelings of powerlessness, setting loving limits where I think he has pent-up frustration and sadness to express, and listening to his spontaneous feelings. And yet, I think there is some place in me that had been unwilling, up until that Friday night with Lana, to sense in to how they really might have felt when their dad left. In letting myself cry deeply about the little girl who was in deep pain about losing her mother, and who lost her voice, and who came to life in helping others, I could finally let myself listen to my children’s related feelings.
The final piece in this week’s puzzle came with a client. She helped me articulate that sometimes change simply requires a willingness to change, and practice until it becomes second nature.
As human beings, part of what makes us able to do so much is how things that were once challenging and new, become automatic. Learning to drive is the easiest metaphor for this. Remember learning to drive, how at first it required every single bit of our concentration and awareness – and desire and willingness to learn to drive – in order to get the car to do what we wanted? It took us being willing to learn, over and over and over again, past frustration and challenge, until gradually, gradually, it became second nature – automatic to us.
This is the same with so much of our lives. Sometimes, when we really are ready to shift into a new way of living, based on very different beliefs to those that we acquired in earlier years; sometimes all is required that we are willing to just get in that car, over and over again, to concentrate, to keep aware, and to keep choosing the new way. When we choose new beliefs, such as “having what we really want means beautiful things come to us”, or that “speaking our truth means that others are inspired to give their gifts”, or that “intimacy is our birthright and why we are here”… when we choose to live from these, at first it is like driving a new car. We need to keep our wits about us. Keep concentrating, keep aware, keep choosing to be willing to learn to be a driver, or a dream-haver, or a truth-speaker, or an intimate person….. until that, indeed, does become second nature to us.
Yesterday, as Sunny and I came into the kitchen, we came close to the fridge. I opened the door, and jumped, in pretend shock and fear, saying in a funny voice, “oh no, keep away…. there are vegetables in there.” Sunny started laughing. Lana, reading on the couch, looked up and smiled too. I opened the door again, and jumped again…. “there really are vegetables in there…” he laughed, she looked up again and smiled a big smile. I walked around the fridge, giving it a huge berth…. “No, really, keep away, there really are vegetables in there.” More laughter and smiles. I got out a carrot and told him it was dangerous. He got out a carrot and kept trying to stroke my arm with it. Each time he did, I jumped away, as if in fright, “No, no, don’t touch me with that carrot.” Lots more laughing, and Lana, still on the couch, kept smiling. (Before our evening together, she would have kept on reading). Next I cut up a carrot and a red pepper (capsicum for Aussies) and said that whatever he did, not to eat them.. that they were safe for adults, but very dangerous for kids to go near. I turned away, and he got a carrot and started eating it. I turned back, looking shocked, “No, no, don’t eat it!!!” More uproarious laughter. More eating of carrot. Well, you get the gist of it… this carried on, he laughed and laughed (releasing those feelings of powerlessness), meanwhile eating carrots and red pepper. Lana was warmly involved, and there was a lovely sense of connection between the three of us in the kitchen.
I have a sense of something new being born in our family…..
I appreciate you reading about my adventures …. and wonder if anything I write resonates with you…..
Sending you warmth and love in your adventures, wherever you are,
Marion