Hi Reader,
"No, Stela, NO." I heard my husband say to me. It shook me out of my momentary comma. The habituated comma that would have made me pick up my son angrily because he wasn't obeying me fast enough.
This was the moment of choice: do I let my husband be right, OR do I stop and recalibrate?
I chose to stop, because, despite how much I wanted to punch my husband in the face, I knew deep within that he had a point: this is NOT how I want to parent my son.
But in that moment, it was the most difficult thing I could do. There was an aspect of me that would much rather fight. And every loud voice was telling me I should, coupled with aaaaall the reasons why.
The internal turmoil caused me profound distress.
The deep shame that bubbled up was almost unbearable. How could I do this to my son? Me, a certified CODE Model Coach, behaving this awfully. I couldn't believe it.
Yet it had happened.
And like everything in life, the shame was layered. The shame of having already done it. The shame of having to face the truth of head on. The shame of taking full ownership of it. The shame of being unable to take it back.
I had to face it to integrate it.
Because the alternative, causing a fight at 5 in the morning defending the indefensible through how-dare-you's and who's-right, I dropped to the floor and stayed there until I understood, processed and integrated what was actually happening.
It turns out, my intense internal response in that moment had nothing to do with what happened that morning.
The trigger was far deeper, far more painful than my son not immediately doing as he was told.
My desire to control the situation came from modeled behaviour.
My level of patience mirrored that of how I was handled as a child.
So the intense shame response that followed had more to do with what lived in my body from my past than my present moment.
Perhaps you've had moments like these in parenting.
Mothering has a particular way of bringing such things to the surface; whether you're a mother or someone who is responsible for children's well-being, you know the feeling.
The surfacing of old fears, old beliefs, old experiences. Aspects of ourselves and our wounding we thought we'd dealt with long ago.
Not so.
Because parenting is the most intimate act you will ever engage in your whole life. And it's a two-way street. Your child's behaviour reflects back to you your internal state. That's why changing how you relate to your child begins with changing how you relate to yourself.
That morning taught me something deeply valuable: change doesn't happen because we decide to become more conscious. It happens when we are willing to pause long enough to see what is actually happening beneath our reactions.
And yet, most of us rarely give ourselves the time or space to do that. We habitually react. We guiltily move on with our day. We promise ourselves we'll do better next time. Only to find ourselves repeating same-old year after year.
If we don't pause long enough to notice what is really asking for our attention, we risk living the same old way.
I created this ten day writing experience, What Mothering Brings to the Surface, as an invitation for us to pause and reconsider our moment.
You will receive one reflection from me each morning. One question for you to ponder. Thirty minutes of stream of consciousness writing honestly about yourself.
We begin June 20th. $27. Included with your Inner Ecosystem membership.
P.S. If 30 minutes sounds like a lot, consider that you've been carrying this for 30 years. What's the cost of continuing to carry it?
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