A friend shared that she is very curious about "the new kids coming in", interestingly her daughter once shared with her, after looking at this photo of my children, that "these kids are so beautiful, why are they so hard on their mom?":
The reason is alluded to here: Longer Intro Story | You Have A Life Plan (yourlifeplan.ca) which does not include that my father was literally born at gun point, in a field, during the war between Japan and Vietnam. My paternal grandmother birthed my dad herself alone (other than the soldier who had her at gun point, while he wrestled in himself, whether he had it in him to kill a mother birthing her first child) and cut the umbilical cord with a broken bottle. Their lives were spared, but my father's birth was not registered until 2 months later. My paternal grandmother proceeded to have 2 more children in the next 4 years and then take her life. My paternal grandfather then married a woman with a daughter slightly older than my dad and proceeded to have 7 more children with this woman. My father was always the head of the family, even though he was not the eldest, and he never had a mother, because he was not one of the blood children of the person I knew as my paternal (step) grandmother. My father lost everything because he could not resolve this issue.
My mother was born with a benign tumor in her brain that prevents her from recognizing faces. This creates a huge amount of fear and anxiety, to have to navigate life, not really being able to recognize anyone (not even your own children), unless you put the pieces together (as she can see parts but not the whole) and then hazard your best guess. My parents clearly were not well equipped to parent, nor were their parents. My maternal aunt used to say: "our parents should never have had children, they only did so because they thought that was what they were supposed to do". They were only children themselves, and they went on to have 4 kids, both sons died from addiction and suicide. And many of my father's siblings escaped Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, in ways you can only imagine hearing about in epic films.
So, the nervous systems I passed down to my children are definitely vulnerable, and I am not even counting my husband's contribution to the equation.
His mother a possible rape victim of his uncle, his maternal grandmother setting fire to a closet when his maternal grandfather left her. His paternal grandmother grieving the loss of multiple children when his father was a child, his paternal grandfather dying young. and then his own postnatal story (his mom being rushed back to hospital to be admitted without him for days right after he was born), and then his parents splitting up when he was 8yrs old.
My kids' parents have rough edges. I have been blessed to have been working on myself for a long time, and to have never allowed things to get as bad as my parents did, because of the things I experienced and witnessed. I am just noticing now, things in my husband, that are mine to hold space for, so he can heal, he deserves that, given all he has done for me. We (mainstream) think either that we can fix our partners to be what we want, or that we shouldn't have to parent them, we have our own kids to parent. But the truth is, if we know how to hold space for healing, then we have the opportunity to do so for the people we love.
I want to share some quotes from a podcast with the female author of Big Baffling Behaviors and her female mentor (who was healed by a man, it matters to me, to know that it is not only one gender that can hold space for healing, the burden and glory can be held by both):
Practitioners need to trust their clients more than their clients need to trust their practitioner.
Like weight training, every rupture repair makes the relationship stronger.
All the
Healing occurs when there is non-judgemental presence without agenda.
Protocol-driven approaches are not really being with the person. We need to trust our client's inner wisdom and grant them the dignity and respect. Then something inside them begins to change. It takes time, because all that neuro circuitry is not set up yet.
Therapists (and parents) need to work on their own issues on their own time, to create room in their nervous system, to hold space for the intensity of their clients (or children), with curiosity for what is going on inside of them, based on how what they do makes us feel.
What we feel about somebody on the inside is the loudest voice in the room, no matter what we are doing or saying on the outside. The incongruence between what we are saying and how we are feeling is poisoned for the child, because they can’t figure out what is happening, and this is probably what has been going on for them for a long time.
Behavior we don't like is communication that there is deep upset in the child, we need to try to understand what the behaviour is trying to communicate.
Staying in loving presence is an invitation to their nervous system, to come into connection with us, in a place of peace. Doing so communicates, nervous system to nervous system, that "you are OK, just the way you are, but we need to stop this behavior right now".
Steve Porges states "Connection is a biological imperative. Safety is the treatment". We can safely stop destructive behavior and communicate to the child that "they are OK, I am with you, all of you gets to be here, and it gets to come back next week too". Because there is so much shame in how these kids feel, we have to hold space through what is going on for them and what is getting touched inside of us.
Being regulated allows us to welcome the intensity of others into our lives for maybe just a few more seconds.
"Bring me with you" - Social baseline theory states that when we have internalized someone that we trust and we bring them to mind we automatically calm our amygdala, which automatically slows everything down inside, and provides a state of trust for others. The more we trust someone the more this is true. Doing so may bring a sense of warmth to our heart brain, a feeling that we are not alone, and this prevents a difficult event from embedding as a long-term trauma, what makes trauma happen is our feeling of being alone with an event.
We intermingle, we can hear one person inside of what another person says, soon we can’t tell the difference, that’s true community. It’s the way we want to live with each other and it’s the most natural way to be. Our culture tries to pull us away from all that, into self-reliance and self-regulation, all left-brained, its not the way we were meant to be.
It feels good to have all of what we have to offer be received, many of us did not get this as children, thank you.
It saddens me that people live with conditions that can be healed. But it is because they live with these conditions that we can understand how to heal children who suffer in a similar way, and for that I am so grateful.
This is another great episode: "I HATE YOU! and other big feelings", to help us understand that how a person makes us feel, with the things that they say or how they behave, gives us clues about how bad they feel on the inside. This is their attempt to communicate this to us, in the best way that they know how. We need not listen to the words, but to the intensity beneath, and how all of this makes us feel.
I'd say: my kids are as beautiful as they are, because this is what was needed to pull someone out of what I have been through to see this beautiful child, who needs us to change. To understand why these kids are so different, look into:
The programing is breaking down, human fertility is shutting down, the only souls that can come in now are those who were evolved enough in previous incarnations not to allow their physical body to be disturbed for 72hrs after physical death (no autopsy, no cremation, no organ donation). You can see how social shaming and wanting to blame (not to mention covid) contributed to the washing away of many souls.
Comments