Today, I am feeling the tenderist place in my heart. As I open to this exquisite place, my heart breaks open to an even deeper place with my daughter. Often, when I’m busy and trying so hard to ‘keep it together” as a mom, I notice that my heart closes. Even though I can still feel my love, for my daughter, I don’t feel I’m acting out of that love. It’s as if, in my need to be responsible and keep it together, I separate from my love. Often it feels like a deep chasm and I can’t find the bridge back to love. When this happens, I start to focus on the things my daughter’s not doing, more than our connection. It’s as if, I imagine if only I can get her to “do” all the things I need her to do, then I can open to love. I make our loving connection second on my priority list. I’ll move toward love, after everything is done! What a funny creature I am!
Today, notice when you are truly moving toward your child from a deep, open loving place. Then notice how you are moving toward them when you are running late, they won’t do what you want or your just overwhelmed by the day!
Lately, I’ve experience a lot of turbulence due to my circular thinking. When I perceive something from the external, thwarting my need to be seen and heard, I experience a lot of turbulent stirrings in my body which triggers many turbulent thoughts. My mind goes round and round trying to make sense of it all. This happens almost daily with my daughter. She is moving more and more into her own world. When I reach out and she doesn’t appear to be interested in connecting, I jump on my version of a hamster wheel and off my thoughts go.
When our children are experiencing intense emotional states they can often trigger us and before we know it our anchor of calm and connection has been ripped out of the ocean. When this happens we begin riding the same intense wave as our child and in our panic look to them to help us. We try our hardest to get them to STOP expressing their intense feelings through punishment, consequencing and control and yet they are in the middle of an intense wave and can’t be the anchor we need in that moment. They need our anchor to hold strong so they can experience the wave and know that it is just a feeling and if they ride it they will come out the other side. If we hold our strong anchor of love and support they will even learn to ride the waves with joy, for surfing can be fun when you know how.
Being a single parent, I get overwhelmed with all the things my daughter leaves around the house. I am always picking up something that shouldn’t be there. One of my biggest irritants are those long clear, tube popcicle wrappers. Of course, I buy boxes of them in the summer and leave them in the freezer for all the neighborhood kids. They love them and yet I get a little crazy when I find those wrappers all over my house.
What we focus on is what we will see. When I find myself focusing on all the things my daughter is doing that I judge as negative, I often find even more. When I’m tired and down on myself, I can walk in the house and within 2 minutes see everything that she hasn’t put away or hasn’t done to help out. Even if she walks in with a huge smile on her face, I am energetically focusing on all that she hasn’t done. What a downer!
Usually when I work with a family that has a struggling teen, I begin the work with the parents struggle. So often we want to “fix” our teen because we think they are the problem. We assume since they have brought so much discomfort to us, and the family, that if only we could have them “fixed” then everything will go back to normal.
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