It Turns Out My Inner Child Does Not Make The Best Parenting Choices
The unfolding that happens when confronting the bigness
“All of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed.” I have been repeating words in my mind repeatedly throughout the last few weeks in my parenting journey.
I was always aware of the fact that there would be seasons where everything I thought I knew would be thrown out the window, and what I would be left with was a heap of newness and a wondering of where to go next.
In this season, it appears to have happened. My knowing has vanished, and all that has remained is a stunned face and an invitation into the deeper parts that live inside as I try and remain curious about this new path in motherhood in which I am finding myself.
My son is a deep feeler. A beautifully lived trait that provides me with his soft eyes, the embrace of a hug when love becomes too big to hold on his own, and a laugh that can pick up a joke from another room. His little voice will say things like, “This is a beautiful day,” or “I just want this hug to last forever.” He is the first one to point out the new daffodils that are popping up all over our garden or to yell out when the hummingbirds have returned. He wants to free all of the flies that get trapped in our house because the thought of them not being with their family brings him deep sadness. He notices when I am feeling sad or exhausted and often will place his hands over my forehead and rest them there for a moment until the softness of a smile forms on my face — and really, how could it not with such genuine love.
His spirit melts my heart most days, but being someone who can touch the most sensitive parts of life, I am also learning on an embodied level that the harder parts can feel that much harder.
“All of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed.”
His emotions and their physical expressions have been intensifying alongside my own attempt to metabolize them. When asked about parenting or how things are going, my initial response comes with a held breath and hesitation. "It has been hard," I say, "So far, more challenging than any other phase."
I say this with hesitation because it isn’t him who is becoming more challenging. Yes, there is more intensity and complexity in his little body, but facing it and knowing how to respond in the moment is what has been becoming more challenging. It’s a "me thing," I say with wide eyes and a forced smile.
His feelings appear to just be getting bigger and more pronounced. They are, however, acting as a mirror. A mirror of all the ways in which my disorganized insides become enlivened when the intensity feels too big — while at the same time, all I want to do is stay calm and present and say the right thing.
“All of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed.”
Navigating these waves of emotions while trying to stay curious enough can feel like an obstacle course full of mountains to climb, mud to move through, and water to tread.
The art of co-regulation, I am coming to realize, is unfolding in a new way — for it was not a skill that was practiced in my own young body. In my home, growing up, there was nowhere to co-regulate. Trauma, mental illness, and addiction kept that strategy far away. So I turned to other strategies, those of leaving my body, of anger, of protest, or of complete flooding and eventual shutdown. I had to figure out how to navigate my own confused and quite loud inner landscape, so I did it in a way that left the real emotions unknown and untended.
“All of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed.”
I use the word art when I talk about co-regulation because I profoundly feel that it is one. The dance of experiencing intensity while at the same time trying to figure out what is yours or your child’s — and then responding in an attuned and synchronized way all require self-knowing and expression, creativity, the ability to take on other perspectives, a lot of deep practice, and permission to begin again when it doesn’t quite turn out the way you were hoping.
This dance is intricate. The layers of my own history that become illuminated when my son is struggling have a way of digging up a narrative that emotions are too much and are too overwhelming to me. The quick inherited response is to shut down the feeling and quickly. When danced in this way, the messiness ends up telling my son that his emotions are not allowed.
Something, I have vowed to undo.
Yet, I somehow keep finding myself trapped in the past while trying to crawl my way to the present. The present is where I am an adult equipped with choice, autonomy, knowledge, and skills. Yet the crawl is still a hard one. Some days, I feel capacity enough for the journey, and others, I do not even know where my feet are.
“All of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed, all of his feelings are welcomed.”
My devotion to try and undo this learned response has been bringing me to my depths. Having to make space to actually sit with the stored grief and what my younger self had to manage alone has brought me to my knees in a way I was never expecting. The truth is, I thought (how funny) that I mended and soothed this part already. Little did I know how quickly in these moments of newness, of intensity, and of flooding I would be brought back to the beautiful cracks in me. The cracks that are asking for more love, more tenderness, and more soothing.
In some moments filled with the bigness, I feel as though I am collecting wisdom, and in others, I feel like I am staring into space, wishing for something to appear and tell me what to do.
Parenting is experimental, and I am learning how to do it along the way. I am also learning how to notice the activation in me. The activation makes more sense when I think about it as a disorganized little child in me who doesn’t know what to do. A little child who is learning how to actually tend and care for the bigness of emotions or whatever my son is experiencing — because the truth is, he doesn’t know either most of the time.
The attunement I am also learning doesn’t mean I have to logically make sense of it. It just means I have to notice the rise in his little body and heart and show up without telling him it is not okay. There is something about not having to fully know what is happening that feels freeing to me, and often, trying to figure it all out is where I get trapped.
Motherhood is a deep practice.
A practice of showing up for your children and also for yourself.
I am learning to forgive myself when I become trapped.
I am learning to smile and say, “Well, that didn’t go as I wanted.”
I am learning to trust the unwavering love I have for him.
I am learning how to practice devotion to breaking intergenerational cycles.
I am learning to invite in all of my son’s ranges of emotions — while practicing telling myself, “They are safe.'"
“All of our feelings are welcomed, all of our feelings are welcomed, all of our feelings are welcomed.”
I am so honored to have an essay featured in
. This essay is very close to my heart and touches on the parts of my pregnancy journey in which old wounds came creeping in and were called to be seen and tended to. It also speaks to the dance of innate wisdom and the bigger system at large into which mothers are born.You can read along here: Breaking the Not-So-Silenced Silence.
The second essay I wrote that was published a few weeks ago was a piece about my experience of childbirth. It touches on what happened, what didn’t get to happen, and all of the feelings of grief and anger that came along. In addition, I speak to the ways in which I felt I had to hide part of my experience and, inevitably, what happens when we try to severe off important aspects of our stories.
You can read along here: Sectioned Off From My Sea.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for speaking too the ongoing work of healing. Children certainly do unearth new layers of ourselves, the little child inside of us. It is a dance to attend to both.
As always, a beautiful contribution. Thank you for sharing.