I Vow to Honor Your Experience, I Vow to Honor My Experience

So I am in a less sunny place this morning.  It is so hard to have training in psychotherapy because I can play out those cliche notions of therapist parents - analyzing every broken eye contact or pulling away to mean "poor attachment status" and what that means about me.  "I must suck as a parent or be too wounded to do it well." My oldest son continues to wrestle inside with his own feelings which I am getting are complicated and hard.  His little brother is very cute with curly q hair and everyone fawns over him, including me.  At the same time, my oldest is wanting to do stuff on his own, has started preschool with more time away from us and then who knows what else that I have no clue about.  The bottom line is that his behavior feels at times just plain mean, aggressive and defiant.  Last night I had two friends over for dinner.  One brought her son and she was so patient with him.  He is an only child and is the opposite of mine in terms of how he moves through his hard feelings - he is more internal as he processes and wants to stay close to home and mom expressing through his hard time feeling comfortable taking off and exploring.  He is a very sweet kid.  And so I caught myself comparing.

Bottom line, I felt like I wasn't on my kid's side.  I really hate when I do this.  I judge my own emotional exasperation and I seem to find, once I spin to this place lacking any warmth or empathy for my kid - all I can think of is wanting his behavior to stop, wanting he and I to be magically connected because surely we are disconnected and wanting  to look good in front of my friends.  Yowza.  After the kids went to bed last night I noticed I wanted to "check out" in front of the TV and not process any of this but inside I was carrying a lot of uncomfortable feelings and instead of making space for them I just wanted to avoid them.  Finally at 11pm I felt a bubble in my chest - like I need to burp this emotional energy out - not soothe it perse but express it and I knew if I got too heady, wordy it wouldn't be the same.

I got out my grease pencils and sat quietly, feeling my feet on the ground, my butt on the chair, breathing deeply through my body.  Then I breathed in compassion for myself and my son and just waited to see what would come.  What came and what continues to come this morning as this exercise is still alive in me, is that inside I really don't make a lot of space for my own experience...I shut down uncomfortable feelings saying things like "you're crazy to feel that way" "get over it" "what's wrong with you, chill out".  Hmmm, I wondered about how I was doing the exact same thing to my kid unconsciously.  I use a tone that communicates more than just overwhelm but one that says 'what is wrong with you'.  I tried to stay with compassion rather than shame.  This morning I am still vacillating from shame to compassion and back so thought writing would help me out of it. 

There are a whole slew of negative beliefs beneath this disregard for my experience and feelings: I am not love able, I am not good enough, I am crazy, I am too much and my child's bad behavior proves them all.  Fuck what a burden for my kids to carry around; having to make up for their mom's insecurities.  I did that for my mom - had to to stay in connection.  I have spent a lifetime trying to reclaim my experience and much is shifting but it still bites me in the ass especially with my kids. I don't want them to have to do this healing for me.  They can't anyway, I have to and  the price they pay for trying is losing connection to their experience and who they are so that they can stay in connection with me.  YUK for them and me.  So last night, I decide to draw my intention.  So much more right brained and body stuff shifts when I process through art or movement and then after I have an artifact that I can look at that actually helps bring those feelings and intentions to the fore whenever I need a reminder. 

I started off with just colors, black first, pressing hard.  These were strong emotions we all have, dark emotion and I pressed hard on the page to reclaim that "Yes you are entitled to these feelings.  Have them.  Own them!".  I wanted to hold and water and nurture the whole person who has all these experiences and then ground them into the earth; supported by the earth and as the earth.  I pressed hard with the pencils making a deep vow rooting deeply into the earth that I wanted to be in a place of deep deep spiritual vigil with my experience and with my kids'.  There was chaos around with the black streaks of jagged experience happening outside the tree that emerged but inside was the fruiting experience of self hood.  My guess is that I will need to meditate with a great deal of intention on this image - this image which is a vow to myself and my family to honor my experience and their experience rather than dishonor them in tone and broken connection.  Again, those negative beliefs I carry around are young parts of me that need so much of my own attention.  I have to honor them and hold them if I am to honor my family. So rather than swim in shame, I am vowing to deeply honor my experience and deeply honor my kids' and husband's experience in a daily practice, starting now.