Secretly we all wish we could win the lottery. Hold your horses before you say ermmm me, no way, I just want a stable career a steady income a partner children a big house a garden but the lottery no I don’t care for that. Okay, so, the lottery here is not just about striking it rich in currency. I am talking about striking the pot of gold nectar honey and more in just getting that clean break, that wholeness, that inner peace and calm. The secret switch that will take away the reactivity in you, that switch that will stop you from getting swayed in the pool of emotions that come flooding when you are triggered, that switch that you can flick to tell your boss to fudge off! The magic switch.
The arrival of a child into your life is a big big winning. It is your key to winning that universal lottery which for some of us might actualise even a pot luck of monetary abundance and all else that your heart desires. But how can this be? Am I suggesting that the sleepless nights, the dirty diapers, and poop vending machine clean ups, not to mention the holy tantrums and managing to salvage your aunts ashes in a much priced urn that caught your toddlers eye, might be the best thing that happened? Holy crap how is that even possible?
Many of us might have experienced sudden life transitions that have compelled us to sort our shit out. This could be a realisation of some sort of pattern that you have. It could be a need to connect to a bigger being. A lot is left to be experienced even for the most seasoned humans amongst us.
When I conceived my whole life literally changed. Everything changed overnight. My sham of a marriage that I didn’t even want to enter finally broke off. My life had taken new meaning. I felt this primal instinct within to fight for my child and to protect the growing foetus.
I was in India visiting my spiritual guru’s tomb on His death anniversary. It was in fact that very day, that I had the epiphany and divine message that I was with child. No tests taken by that time just a pure feeling and a knowingness that I was indeed pregnant. I went back to my hotel room got a pregnancy test and voila there it was that extra line confirming I was about to enter an era of wholeness through a lot of work. Except I didn’t see it like that back then and neither do a lot of us. We are entranced by the sudden rush of joyous celebration of holding in our womb this beautiful cell about to sprout into an extension of us.
My ex husband and I had always had problems right from the day we met in fact. Friends had “warned” me off him but I simply had to get back in that cycle of abuse – after all it was the pattern embedded in my brain as being the way relationships are supposed to me – love and danger coexist, that’s the norm. I had just stepped into my mothers shoes, and married my father. As much as I love my father, not because I am his daughter, but because I really do love him now post recovery, he was no saint. His insecurities turned him into a beast and my mother in turn became a horrible witch to me. And both my parents had love for my brother and me except maybe not so much when they were triggered. And all because they too knew only this way of being themselves as was modelled for them when they were infants. I doubt they would have the mind sight or insight shall we say to even figure that out.
Well, we don’t though do we? I mean, yes we name shame blame outwards when we are triggered but won’t look into the root of the trigger as something that might not even be the present. A situation that happens in the present might trigger an emotion or a reaction to the past. Does that make sense? I will explain further later on.
For now back to this child. Within two days of returning home, when my ex husband was late to get me from the airport, entering my home that reeked of dead carcass and to being told “baby I am sorry I accidentally killed all the birds I forgot to feed them”, to still not holding any job and much more, I finally had the courage to let him go. I knew that if he stayed, my growing baby would not survive the stress. In the next two weeks I also managed to move into a new beautiful home surrounded by meadows and green pastures with cows grazing during the warmer days.
Packing all my dogs tortoises remaining birds fish and rabbits I drove to the house of endings and beginnings. A new chapter in my life.
During the pregnancy a woman beckons with hormonal changes. These are not the only changes. We go through doctors appointments anxiety about the health of the baby a new diet and much more. Your entire focus changes. We embrace these and some women may not. It all depends on the state of our psyche.
When your baby arrives, the responsibility it brings is really one that you cannot learn or read about. It is one that is lived in real time. To have your breasts out most of the time to nourish this little babe, to ensure you are not dieting or trying to lose weight so that your body can hold onto essential nutrients for your baby, and to have your whole day structured around this bundle is a huge huge change.
Change creates a level of stress. That level of stress will trigger a response in you that can potentially also take you back into your own past as a baby. Suddenly at 4am you might find yourself getting anxious when just one more diaper change becomes too much.
This stress can become chronic and to some extent all parents are living in stress mode. But what is crucial here is not so much the stress as much as the way you cope. Some of us might lose the plot. We might yell scream. Others send their kids to nursery at the very earliest, some
Mamas will give up breastfeeding, others will stare at their baby crying. I know a student who once shared a story with me. She said she got so wound up when her baby cried she just left him outside in the garden and let him cry. Another lady left her toddler who didn’t listen to her in the backyard crying also.
Right, so here’s what can happen if you allow it. Create space in yourself so that you can manage your response to your child. Park that thought. On the other hand, ask yourself whether you are happy with the way that you are dealing with your child. If not, set out how would like an ideal day to be. Okay, so assuming you are not happy, find the root to those reactions that you have in that not so pretty moments of parenting.
When you can get to the root you will almost always find that your child has merely activated a past memory inside of you and you have reacted being triggered and not responded as a conscious fully present parent.
In my time as a mama so far, there is not a single moment that has vouched for raised voices a stern look or any misfeasance on my part in how I might have read my child. The child is almost never deserving of how we react to them. After all we are not equals so we cannot expect them to behave as such. Our responses must be age and developmentally appropriate without labels as good bad ugly or naughty. We don’t call them names. We neither encourage or discourage. We simply model model model.
Our whole modelling can only come from a place of wholeness within us as the parent; and that happens when we unlock our own wounds, give them the attention they need, console and comfort them, and finally integrate these with a coherent narrative of life past. For me, that happens on a daily basis, I create space for myself within to do a check in on any moment o was triggered and identify what it took me back to. As you parent, it becomes more apparent and visible how deeply life may have wounded you because your react automatically.
These automatic reactions that you desperately want to control come from implicit memory that started when you were conceived. It’s a memory that is not in your awareness. It’s what sets your amygdala to set an alarm for danger when there is none.
Our children are no danger to us yet our stress responses can be harsher and disproportionate to what the situation calls for. The wounded parts of us continue to create a state of either being too hard or too soft. We either want it a particular way or breakdown with overwhelm.
Parenting is all about you taking care of your inner self and proceeding from a place of wholeness. Spirited parenting will bring that feeling of having won the universal lottery.
Don’t wait, cash in on your universal lottery now. Start clearing the cobwebs that hinder your soul to fully express itself in love joy abundance and wholeness.
Sending you spirit kisses and a wish for your hearts to sparkle in love