Entries Tagged 'Mother-Daughter Emotional Osmosis' ↓

I was honored to have been asked to speak at Whole Life Center for Spiritual Living about the subject of Conscious Motherhood on Mother’s Day, 2013. Rev. Cheri very flatteringly introduced me as the most powerful conscious mother she knows. *blush* & *bow* Below is a synopsis of my talk. (Please insert laughter where appropriate.)

5 Rules of Conscious Motherhood

I currently hold the title “The Best Mother in the World,” and “The Meanest Mother in the World,” this is determined by whether I’m asking one of my children to clean up dog poop. I am equally proud of both titles.

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to get good at anything. This is why babies bounce.

I was lucky to have been raised by a professional Mother, who was raised by a professional Mother. Their Mothering has informed my Mothering. I was privileged to have grown up in a religion and culture which observes that the Godhead is both feminine and masculine. In other words, God has a wife, Heavenly Mother. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, at its best, reveres Motherhood as the highest and holiest calling of the human experience. Motherhood, the nurturing, raising and teaching of children, is sacred and the most like-God activity that humans can participate in. I have carried this identity into my own Motherhood. It has been core to my own experience of Mothering. It is a role that I take seriously and I have always tried to Mother as consciously as possible.

A Mother is the most Powerful, Authentically Powerful, Being in the Whole Universe, next to God. I can grow an entire human in an organ the size of my fist in only nine months. We create humans—just as God does. Men, what can you do?

The 5 Rules of Conscious Mothering

1. Be Authentic: You, specifically, were chosen to Mother your children, because they need YOU. It was not random. It is not a mistake. It is not by coincidence. YOU were chosen by them and by God. Out of all the women in the world who live and have lived you, and only you, are able to provide the experience, the example, the lessons, the exact right Mothering to these specific children. These children did not come to you to be raised by some crazy cultural idea of the “Perfect Mother.” They were not born to be reared by SuperMom. They needed—and wanted—who you really are. Be your Authentic Self when mothering because you are the Perfect Mother for your children.  
2. Have Fun! If you’re not having any fun, you’re doing it wrong. When there is an opportunity to jump in a dirty lake—jump! If you’re asked to have a dance off in front of the picture window—Dance! Motherhood is supposed to be an experience of joy. Children bring with them a sense of play that many of us lose in adulthood. Mothering is experiencing the world anew, through new eyes. Have Fun!
3. Clean Up Your “Stuff”: negative generational cycles end when you clean up your own stuff. Clean up your resentments, angers and hurts. Clean up the cycles of crap that have been polluting your family tree so you don’t pass it down to your children. You know what experiences you don’t want your children to experience. Seek healing, visit healers, invest in Coaching, do whatever you have to do to break the cycles and let your stuff go. What is cleaned up inside you does not get passed down to your children. Live the kind of life you want them to live and they will follow you.
4. Teach Choice & Hold Them Accountable: Your job is not to prevent all bad things from happening to your children. Your job is not to protect them from life. Your job is to help them learn how to navigate life—the good and the bad, the easy and the hard. Your job is to teach them how to live, how to be alive. The Universe operates on choices. We choose what we believe and we manifest that through choices we make. Allow your children the crucial activity of making choices while you’re still there to direct them. Don’t bail them out. Hold them accountable, because the Universe will. Allow them to make choices that you know aren’t the best choices. If your son is about to jump out of a treehouse, let him. If he breaks an arm it’s not the end of the world, but a good lesson in Natural Law. Making good choices takes practice. Let them practice.
5. Teach Them Who They Are: Teach your children who they are, not what to do. Children are holy, sacred and powerful beings made up of God-Stuff. They are great and powerful Souls having a human experience. Having this knowing about who they are will carry them through whatever they face in life.

Keep Calm & Mother On! 

Tracee Sioux is a Law of Attraction Coach and the Creator of  Authentic Power Living & The Girl Revolution. She can be reached at traceesioux@gmail.com.

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Abort mission!

Abort mission!

Before it’s too late!

Quick! Stop laughing at your toddler girls’ sassy comments.

Stop being amused when she half-rudely, but oh-so-cutely, spouts off.

You’re not raising an empowered woman. It was all a ruse.

You’re digging your own “differentiation” grave.

You think you’re preparing her to be a strong, empowered woman who isn’t afraid to speak up. Which is awesome, when she still believes in your goodness, kindness and love unquestioningly. When this is directed at things you hate too.

It’s a trick!

What you’re really doing is making your own life hell, by giving her permission to “speak her mind” which translates to “dump her crappy attitude all over you.” Rumor has it this could go on for most of adolescence and into early adulthood.

YOU!

Yes, YOU!

In psychology they call it “differentiation.” When the daughter lashes out irrationally, unreasonably and often cruelly at her . . . MOTHER! They say it’s healthy for her to enforce boundaries “I am Me,” and “You are You!” and I motherloving HATE you! Or at least I hold you responsible for all of my crappy, difficult-to-handle feelings. And my hobby is to speak to you as if you’ve caused every problem ever invented and I want you to fix it immediately.

No, dad won’t be the brunt of this.

No, the sexist misogynists won’t bear the burden.

No, the media and marketing that sexualizes her won’t get the lashing.

MOM shoulders differentiation alone. With no way out, no response soothing enough.

It’s not constant, like something you can predict. It’s random. You’ll be doing every-day stuff like say, cutting an orange for her school snack.

Sudden explosion!

I hate oranges!

What? You’ve been eating oranges for 11 years, and you’ve always liked them.

I hate oranges and I’ve always hated oranges! YOU DON’T KNOW ME! 

And then you understand, how your mother turned into a raving, psychotic, screaming, insane woman. It was you. And you weren’t even a bad daughter. Just a daughter who suddenly felt she had the right to “speak her mind” and turned it directly on your mother. Is this payback? you wonder. My own bad-daughter karma?

What fresh hell is this? How can I turn it around? You ask yourself. You ask the more experienced mothers, how do I make this stop? 

Then they give you that knowing look, one of pity and resignation. The same look, now that you think about it, as the one they gave you when you described Marriage Shock, Baby Shock and Divorce Shock. It’s yet another secret of femininity, closely guarded and protected.

I never would have spoken to my parents the way my daughter speaks to me, some might tell you.

What’s different? you’ll ask.

Well, I would have been terrified. They would have been the tar out of me, they’ll say.

Maybe I should have beat her. Why didn’t I beat her? Why was I so stupid as to not believe in spanking? you’ll wonder aloud.

Always projected as good mother/bad mother. That happens in their house, I have a great relationship with my daughter, you imagine the other mother’s thinking. You know they are thinking it, because you thought it too. Back when sassy and opinionated was cute. Especially, the ones with little three and four year olds, the ones who are trying so hard to do it “right” and who believe they aren’t making the same mistakes you did, so their daughters will never turn on them.

Last year I was the perfect mother! It’s not fair! I did all the right things! you cry to yourself. Attempting to convince who? you wonder. Not your daughter, that’s for sure.

Abort Mission Empower Your Daughters!

Quick!

You’re the target! You just don’t know it yet!

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I don’t want my child to ever feel . . .

. . . bullied.

. .  . unloved.

. . . like they have to ______.

. . . ugly.

. . . not good enough to ______. 

. . . left out. 

. . . sexualized. 

. . . objectified. 

. . . scared.

. . . bad about his/her body.

. . . _________. 

Fill in that blank with whatever you don’t want your child to ever feel. You know that thing that you are willing to start foundations over and blog about and go to the principal over. You know that thing that makes your guts hurt when you contemplate the idea of them feeling that. Most likely, it’s that thing that you felt and didn’t want to feel, and then blamed your parents for not “making” you feel something different.

Okay, so here’s what you do to ensure that your kid never feels that:

. . . sorry.

Take a deep breath and accept that this—preventing your child from experiencing feelings and having experiences—is not your job. It’s not even in your power, whether you believe it to be your job or not.

Take another deep breath and accept that your phenomenal parental powers do not extend into one sacred place—your child’s feelings.

Instead, we can  . . .

. . . listen to their feelings.

. . . validate their feelings.

. . . suggest that their feelings are not the only available feeling-choice they could be making.

. . . help them process and navigate their feelings.

. . . attempt to give them tools to handle their feelings.

. . . hold them responsible for their behavior in the midst of their feelings, thereby helping them to learn to have power over their feelings.

. . . model being in control of and handling our own feelings in the face of whatever it is we’re experiencing.

It might suck to be this powerless over our children, who we love so much. It may hurt to watch them hurt. It may feels like there is something we should be able to do. But, our powers are limited.

Every person, whether two or 90 has to govern their own internal experience. It’s part of being human.

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I remember when my dad would say, Who ever told you life was going to be fair? and it would piss. me. off.

It’s not fair! 

Fair. Life should be fair. Right?

My children now say/whine/scream, It’s not fair! 

And I tell them, when are you going to learn that I don’t care about fair? At All. EVER! 

Having experienced a whole bunch of angst, anger, fear and righteous outrage because all kinds of things in life are unfair, I find that myself and other people who seek whateverrighteousthingtheyconsider “fair,” are chronically disappointed. Thus, often miserable.

Essentially we’re born to unfairness. I was born in America in 1973, as opposed to wartorn Afganistan in 2009. I’ve had some really great love affairs, and some fairly violent ones. I was born a woman in a patriarchal culture. What has any of that to do with you?

Since deciding that I don’t give a crap about “fair,” and decided to spend my energy on being happy, well, I’ve been happy.

The problem with fair is that you’re consistently, habitually noticing what someone else has — and what you don’t. It’s impossible to come from a place of gratitude about what you do have if you’re incessantly obsessed about what you lack.

When my children screech about fairness I haven’t the slightest bit of sympathy. Happy people have given up the quest, I try to tell them. (No, they don’t believe me yet.)

Accept your life the way your life is, accept your body the way your body is, accept the facts of your past the way that it is. If there are parts of your “story” that you find unfulfilling, unpleasant or wish would improve—change them.

Real power doesn’t come from “fairness.” Real power comes from knowing that you are a powerful spiritual being and that your path is yours and yours alone. Do with it what you will. It’s not meant to look like someone else’s path. And the quest for fair won’t take you skipping down your own, it will make you drag your feet with drooped shoulders of defeat, or have you dashing about screeching and pumping your fists at the Gods.

To skip, you have to dump the quest for “fair,” and learn to love what IS.

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On Monday we got a divorce. While waiting, my minutes-away-from-being-not-my-husband and I sat peacefully and amicably on the back row and watched one father talk about “reunification” therapy (not allowed to see his kids without third-party supervision), and the judge ordering a bailiff to accompany another couple to the hall (because they tend to lose their shit and it gets physical). We peacefully agreed that 1) yes, the marriage is irretrievably broken, 2) yes, we still loved our children and wanted to serve them not destroy them and 3) we had come to an agreement that we felt was “fair and equitable,” (or at least something we can live with) as far as assets, debt and parenting time were concerned.

The Climax

It was all quite anti-climactic. Part of me felt there should be a Festivus Airing of the Grievances, a form of symbolic closure, a washing of the hands, a formal cutting of the spiritual bonds. Or at least lunch afterwards, “Hey, we’ve been married for 12 years, I forgive you everything and we’re still co-parenting for.ev.er. so everybody be cool, K?” But, I just went to pee and then called him later to ask whether we had time to go to the pool before he picked up Zack.

We “celebrated” by having dates with our children. Ainsley and I had a Mother-Daughter Date and Zack and my now-ex had a Father-Son Date. We went to Claire’s, a crappy Chinese take-out place, and a dollar movie. They went golfing.

I didn’t know what to expect as far as feelings went, I checked in with my own and realized I felt relief. Twelve years is a long time to struggle with one person over the same shit. Too long. Just long enough to feel no more sadness. I’ve grieved plenty over the loss of the “happy family” fantasy during the separation. The worst grief being during the actual marriage. But, I am so grateful that I won’t go to bed feeling desperately unloved, unappreciated and unheard by him anymore.

In Flow

The next day I felt this sense of being “in flow.” Carolyn Myss, a mystic spiritual writer and intuitive, says the very worst thing we can do to our soul is to betray ourselves. Being married to him for so many years, after I knew it wasn’t the right thing for us, but staying out of fear and guilt and wanting it to work anyway, was so out-of-alignment with being in integrity with my own soul. Then suddenly, I was divorced. The feeling of spiritual alignment felt so new and so ancient all at once. I wanted to swim in it. It wasn’t thrilling, or exciting—it was peaceful. Like I had stopped struggling for air, stopped fighting, stopped suffocating and finally just went limp in surrender to my soul, my spirit.

Hey kids, you don’t think it’s your fault, do you?

Then, I checked in with my kids, having heard that children always feel that they “caused” the divorce by supposed divorce experts, I felt I should address that. To both children I posed the question, “Do you feel like Mommy and Daddy got a divorce because of you or because of something you did?” as sensitively as I could.

Zack was all, “What are you talking about?”
I was all, “Well, you know it’s not your fault, right?”
Zack was like, “Yeah, who’s it it? Yours and Dad’s?!”
I was like, “Yes, exactly.”
Then I was all, “How are you feeling about it?’”
Zack, “Fine.”
End of conversation.

Ainsley was like, “Of course I know it wasn’t my fault! Seriously?!” as if it was the most absurd thing she’s ever heard, which, of course, it is. The connotation was, “You’re not blaming your lame marriage on me!”

She reacted similarly when found out that her and her brother’s “statistics” had gone down, someone had divulged that her odds of great grades and going to college and having healthy, loving relationships had gone down while her odds of drug use, teen pregnancy, eating disorders and having shitty abusive relationships had gone up— the instant her parents didn’t want to be married anymore.

“Just because you guys get divorced doesn’t mean me and Zack are going to be less smart at school or not as good of kids,” she declared indignantly.

To which I agreed.

Get a Happy Divorce

The summer we lived in Kings Court, a sleazy cheap motel with a pool and slide, as we giddily broke free of East Texas and launched our new lives in Colorado, my sister-wife Jenny, I and our gaggle of children, frequently walked passed a sign that said, “Get a Happy Divorce.”

I think I got as happy a divorce as anyone possibly can. As we were walking one day right after her dad and I separated I told Ainsley:

“You’ve got it pretty great, you know. Both of your parents want to spend as much time with you as possible. You have two parents who love you deeply; who care about your grades; care about who you hang out with; care about what you watch on TV and what kinds of foods you eat; care about your spiritual, emotional and physical health; and care about your future. You have lots of relatives who love you too.

Your parents aren’t screaming or throwing things or calling each other names. Neither of us are in trouble with the law, no one cheated or had an affair, no one did anything unforgivable with the money, and no one is on a reality show.”

She agreed, she’s got it pretty great.

What more can any kid really ask for from life? Lots of kids from married families don’t have it this good.

And then, we went about our lives. They hung out with dad on his days while I went to classes and meditation circles, they played with their friends, I got a little work done and meditated every morning, I hit the gym pretty hard and made vows about cutting out that bowl of popcorn at night, I completely lost my shit about messes in the garage and the storage room and vowed that they were grounded until everything is back in order. In other words, life kept chugging along, like it does. For him. For me. For our kids. Life moves forward.

Prophetic Dreams of Fun

Last night I had a dream that I was carrying superheavy objects (watermelons), pointlessly, from place to place, while my not-husband had a good time with the kids. I was also doing someone else’s work for them, for no reason at all (no, really I actually am). In other words, I was carrying burdens that could be put down now. All the while, there were 999 invitations waiting for my response on Match.com. This afternoon Ainsley said, “You should really go on a date soon.”

How would you interpret that?

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