You suddenly realize that you’ve hurt your child.
You cloak yourself in shame. The monkey mind chatters about how you’ve failed, that you’re a terrible parent.
You haven’t failed.
You’re awakening. Now it’s up to you to stay awake.
pain
R.I.P. love
Drama doesn’t fan passions, it kills love.
When every joint decision becomes a battle, you all lose. Bills, vacations, renovations, investments, bedtimes, discipline, meals. It gets too exhausting to put on the armor every time you have to reach an agreement.
Sooner or later, one of you surrenders, and the other claims victory. And the family suffers.
You can be the one to start the peace process. Practice separating your sense of self-worth from the decision to be made.
The cost of privacy is the loss of intimacy
Privacy always comes at a cost.
Privacy is keeping everything to ourselves. Drawing the curtains and hiding our struggles and bewilderment to the world.
Most of us keep parts of ourselves private even to ourselves–plunging them deep into our subconscious. Maybe we keep our feelings and thoughts private from our child. We might keep other parts private from our partner; veiling them to protect ourselves from the real or imagined possibility of further hurts. Or we keep our relationship struggles private from other couples or relatives, shared with no one beyond the confines of our homes.
It’s not surprising that many of us do it this way. We live in a mainstream culture that profits from the privatization of all life by individuating all beings. And that includes us too.
Privation is the act of depriving, of taking away something that is necessary for our comfort. It leads to a poverty of spirit.
When we chose privacy, we cut ourselves off, separate ourselves, disconnect. Some of what we loose are the blessings of intimacy and the health of our relationship to our child’s partner.
So what to do? Recognize the cost of privacy to our souls and our relationships, and celebrate our interdependence.
How? By turning away from privacy towards the personal, reintroducing ourselves, and our partnership, to community. Share the full breadth of our lives with people who have earned our trust. Expanding this circle of trust, then planting our child at the center of that circle.
Making room for anger
Our home needs to house our entire child, every part of her, even her anger.
Her screams, tantrums, rages need a large room of their own.
We create space for this out of our own familiarity with distress.
We teach her where to find peace again, by knowing how to find our own peace.
One of the old meanings for ‘anger’ is ‘grief’. Under the painful constriction of agony, there is a well of tears.
Once our child has spent all her anger, we hold her tears within the embrace of our own tears.
Our home needs to house all of us too.
Flood the troubled child with love
Any child gets troublesome when there’s a tear in their most cherished relationships.
She may be passive aggresive, anxious, manipulative, or fight with her sibling.
There may be nothing you can say to resolve her pain. But there may be something powerful you can do.
Flood your child with love.
When all else fails, take a time out. Announce that the two of you will spend an whole hour together, a full evening, an entire day together.
Let your child take the lead (and you decide on possible boundaries on money, safety, time). Then head out. And for the time you’re together, ditch your phone, scrap your plans, make a committment to be all in, playfully present.
Delight in your child, love her, pay attention, be curious, mend the broken bonds.