Parenting Ourselves While Parenting Our Kids

I am melancholy today.  It is that sweet kind, the kind that has your chest aching and your stomach in a tug of war with your throat...tears come and go at the corners of my eyes. I am sad because I have tasted what it is like to be held by a family.  I am sad because I am more powerfully aware that my experiences of family have left me profoundly longing and only now, this many years later, am I able to sit with myself and these feelings.  I spent years distracted, running around, keeping busy - you know the usual American thing - anesthetizing myself to whatever didn't feel GREAT inside. 


I really love my in laws.  They annoy me sometimes and I certainly don't think they are perfect but you know what, our relationship is so honest and direct and I have to say, after this third time having them in my house I feel a) really sure that they love me and b) really sure that even if they are judging me that they are aware that judgment is a product of the mind and they don't let their own judgements grab hold of them in a way that would interrupt our connection and c) we can fight and repair and there is always shared responsibility. I am never left holding the I am wrong bag.  In fact, my mother in law has taken responsibility for some pretty amazing things.


I am also sad because I reached out to another friend of mine on Friday, when I was having that really bad day.  She too visits the underworld and she too was woefully under nurtured and continues to be in her family and she is also a very powerful spiritual force and psychotherapist.  Turns out she was going through another dark patch herself.  I wanted to know what she was doing to get through it.  I asked her for some advice and here is what she said; (oh and it isn't lost on me that I have great friends!)

“…call up a picture of the mom you want. (…use the imagination.) can be anyone, real or in a book or on tv or a movie, or parts of various people. create what you need. get a full picture -- her image, her smell, her touch, her sound, her words. when you get a really good picture that you can see, hear, feel in your heart, sense in your body, tap 6-8 times (right [and then] left is 1) on your legs or arms (you can cross your arms across your chest so you have that extra holding, hug thing). you can go longer as long as the image stays in the positive.”

-From a therapist friend, EMDR, Installing Resources

Her words are so powerful.  These are techniques I learned several years ago and yet, there are days where I do find my old habit of turning away form the hurt one inside and leaving her to fend for herself has become so wired in that turning towards her is excrutiating.   The piece that she didn't mention was what we were doing over the wire.  We each needed eachother.  I felt held by her and I hope she felt held by me for I responded right away.  I realize I should call her again right now to check in.  She and I have often been support forces for one another when we need another to connect with in these spaces.  I speak to her less often than my two closest friends but I must say, I feel more understood by her.  There is a way we know what it feels like to not have a "home inside" like most people do that allows them to not have to think about or feel these hard longings and  all the ways we organize around them.

I continue to carry a lot of fear around that I fundamentally have this lack inside of me that  will ultimately hurt my kids.  I feel sad that this "lack" is what gets all my attention.  I think the whole Attachment Parenting movement freaks me out bc I just can't be an "attachment parent" and stay regulated in my nervous system - another fueller of my "lack".  My brother in law told my mother in law he felt we had damaged our children by sleep training them.  We may have and we considered it long and hard before sleep training them but I also realized, one of the things I needed to be a regulated and attuned care giver was sleep and waking up ever 90 minutes wasn't working for me and working so at roughly 8 months with both my sons they cried their eyes out as we stayed awake with them and taught them how to put themselves to sleep.  I am confident I will post on this in another post. Just found research from an attachment parenting site on how I have screwed up my kids forever.  ahhh....well...out breath....

That said, I am always looking for clues that I might still be a good parent despite my childhood.  Because there days when I feel like "hey man my kids kick ass, they are incredibly emotionally astute" and I catch myself doing something great!  I found my answer in Mark Brady's three parenting practices based on his training as a therapist and neuroscientist.  I should ask him about the sleep training piece;

3 Parenting Practices

1. Provide kids regular access to the working of our minds: or allow them to know us and our humanity, how we feel inside, where our yes's and no's are etc.

2. Collaboratively Communicate: meaning we are present with our kids in mind, body and spirit and receive their communication both the verbal and non verbal and fully take that communication in and respond to them quickly.  He said that lack of timely response is the great neurological despair.  

3. Heal ourselves: unpack our unconscious motivations that have us unwittingly moving out of connection to ourselves and our kids

So, I must say, after I read this I thought well I need some work @ number two but crap I kick ass on #1 and #3. In fact, as I was hanging out with my kids today and well we were just all in attunement - drifting in and out of connection together and then with ourselves- we just all had fun but it wasn't work and no one was neglected.  In fact, my fear of not being a good parent is the biggest piece of #3 I need to work on because the amount of time I dwell in my own fear actively has me disconnecting from my kids.  Isn't that ironic, my fear of parenting badly actually leads me to parent badly.  Sorry, loaded with judgement but another way to say it is that I could just have a good time and be in connection rather than working so hard at doing it well. And that my friend is more #3 stuff that I wish I had a "turn off" button for.    I believed I had to "do it well" rather than "trust my lived experience" from a very early age.  Sadly, doing "IT" well has nothing to do with connection and relating and definately not parenting.  

Hmmm....going to go sit for a bit before time to wake the kiddos up.  I need to hold the part of me that must " do it" rather than "be it".