Looking into Our Own Eyes

The leader of my weekly therapy consult group is a woman that swims in the ocean of metaphor, myth and the preverbal. She has a very simple way about her, authentic, deeply wise, but light and playful at the same time. I hear that Dr. Seuss book where the bird is looking for his mother piping up inside me when I hang with her just because I like her so much. The little bird goes around to different animals; dog, cat, fish and says "Are you my mother?" Oh sweet mother transference.

Anywho... She confirmed an experience me and my clients who are parents are experiencing in having a child. My oldest son has my eyes, hands down. At times, when I look in his eyes, I can literally feel the youngster in me. For some of us who haven't done the 16 years worth of therapy as I have, meeting the infant and toddler self can be joyous and also terrifying. For me, I am flooded with empathy for how different my experiences were at his age. I may, at times, project too much on to my kid and as a result, overly coddle or set poor boundaries. But here I am, face to face with my young self. It really has been breathtaking for me.

Revisiting our young self, we get the opportunity to confront pre verbal memories, in spite of all our best attempts at shoving them into the unconscious and we get to remember those first bumpy attempts at self hood and the victories and defeats we experienced at  the hands of our very human parents. We adapted accordingly and some of those adaptations drove us further away from our lived experience and authenticity and some of those helped us deepen into our authenticity. For me, parenting is helping me reclaim even more of my authentic lived moment to moment experience that got shoved into unconscious land. I love truth. I love me!