Author: Amanda

A Model Parent – A Model Child

Juicing Boy

Modelling as a parental guideline came to me relatively late. I appreciated that my children would mimic my behaviours and attitude, but I didn’t really get to grips with the true beauty of this wisdom until I read both The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff and Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn.  Up until the theory clicked into place, I had felt that my role as parent was to be instructive and directive, in all the best possible ways of course!

I now realise that I no longer have to consciously instruct or teach my children, I just need to open up my space to them and let them observe. Just as a lioness does not draw pictures of Zebra on the ground, if I let my cubs potter around after me, they pick up lessons innately and intuitively.  This photo of my son hit this home to me just this week. He is 2 years old and everyday since January he has watched me create our morning juices, this week he took over! On his very tippy-toes, unable to see over the rim of the vegetable holder, he feels with his fingers as he pops in the veg and carefully plunges away.

I still instruct way too much, especially to my elder child as she is verbal and it is so easy to ‘over communicate’ – “do it like this”, “try it this way” etc; but I am gently being shown that the less ‘lessons’ I try to convey, the easier the learning. Our children are born to assimilate, observe and recreate our movements, actions, emotions, reactions and every little quirk of habit we have. We are their teachers and the best way to teach is in action.

So each day I try to remember that when I just want to get the washing up finished quickly I am doing my children no favours, if I can let them stand and splash and even break and bend, they are really learning. They are not only learning key skills like dexterity and perception but they are receiving this wisdom with their natural curiosity and joy. These lessons don’t jar in the way that verbal discussion can (‘stop talking mama’) they are simply life breathing, life moving forward, life growing.

 

An Ordinary Mother

I am an ordinary mother.

I used to believe that I would be an extraordinary mother; a mother full of vibrancy, joie de vivre, laughter, lightness, inspiration, calm, reason and dripping with endless love.

The love part is definitely true, but even that can sometimes seem a little hidden. However, this is not a blog about being self-deprecating, or humble, more the realisation that I am simply doing the best I can as each dawn arises.

I am tired, so far I have been breastfeeding for close to five years, I treasure it, love it, value it and also I am tired. My children are young and my youngest is yet to find his words, so I am filled with the urgent need to be constantly aware of his surrounding so that I can interpret his signs and wishes for acknowledgements. I cook ‘real food’ which takes time, thought and preparation. I want to pay attention to everyone’s needs and requests and demonstrations of hops & jumps and drawings and I can’t. I want to sit with each one and listen deeply to each of their thoughts and offer my silent consideration and energy and I don’t. I do laundry and cook and drive and change nappies and juggle and juggle and there are moments where I am present and connecting and all loving and there are plenty of moments when I am not.

I aspire and I work towards simplifying and achieving greater space between ‘things’. In those spaces I wish to be ‘that’ mother. I want my children to feel heard and honoured and I have to work hard for them to really know that because life can easily be so busy and bustling and fast; it could all too easily pass me by.

And I also must accept that I am simply an ordinary mother, just doing the very best that I can as each dawn arises…

Arms of Support

I can be a bit of a chameleon, I’m sure it brings many positives aspects to my life, but it also often leads me to ‘betray’ myself.  The deeply subconscious need to fit in and be accepted means that unknowingly I mimic accents and intonations of speech. I am automatically asked ‘where are you from’ on a first meeting because my voice is so full of these global interactions my own accent is hard to place. It seems, I have absorbed and retained a little piece of almost everyone I’ve met!

I have belatedly acknowledged this part of myself and become more curious and reflective about it, and it has allowed me to witness how else this chameleonic tendency plays out in my life.

Whilst recently spending time with friends who parent in some quite polar ways to me, I recognised how their choices and energy pulled me away from where I wanted to be as a parent. I had noticed it in myself before, in a beautiful way, how I knew that I appreciated my own mothering abilities and efforts when I was in a circle of friends who were aspiring to similar aims of parenting, but I had yet to really note that I could be pulled in the opposite direction too.

What I gleaned from this was how integral our arms of support are as vulnerable new mothers. When we are in the midst of the mothering fog and we are drooping with tiredness and fretful with confused intentions, we need to be held and loved by those who can support and nurture our nascent desires to be the type of mother we want, however that looks.

In these recent days, when I felt myself to be shorter, less patient and with higher than necessary expectations of my little ones, I recognised that the circle I was standing in felt alien to me. I felt fear of judgements and I batted off criticisms of my children’s behaviour and it led me to tension and stress, too much of which ended up in my children’s fields. It led me back down that path of mother’s guilt…. the shoulds, the angsts, the regrets.

I yearned for my home, my circle of mothers who I have uncovered and discovered in my community, who inspire me and teach me, guide me and love me, welcome me and trust me; all of the traits that I wish to offer to my children.

Denise Linn recently quoted on her facebook page:

‘When you’re in the middle of changing and transforming, it’s not uncommon for those who are closest to you to feel threatened, or to judge you,… or even to try to stop you from changing.

Love them anyway.

(And it’s okay to love them from a far distance!)’

Those last words in brackets are hugely important to me, that permission to leave a healthy distance with those who cannot, for whatever reason, sit with their arms of support around me whilst I change and grow into my role of Mother.

 

Intuition or Fear?

In my mid twenties I started to reclaim my intuition. I knew I had lost it somewhere along the line, but where & how was a mystery. What I did discover very quickly was that up until that point I had mistakenly confused my fear messages as intuitive ones. On the more obvious scale I can see that when I am confronted with a scenario that is unknown and scary, I have the opportunity to convince myself that those feelings inside are my intuition telling me to steer clear or I can recognise them as feelings of fear, the next choice to push on through or find safety.

More deeply, our intuition has multiple levels and subtleties and so many of them have been dismissed, suppressed, ridiculed and forcibly removed from us that making decisions about our natural needs can be overwhelming.

It was when I became a parent that the light bulb switched on and I started to understand how so many of us are left with dulled versions of our inner guide. Our move away from nature-led parenting to societal-defined parenting is causing our intuition to haemorrhage.

From the very first moments, when we start to choose our birth plans, we can begin to implement supporting the next generation to live and be guided by their instincts. Allowing our children to enter the world when they are ready, not when we deem them to be, like reconsidering how necessary inductions are (is being two weeks ‘overdue’ a necessary reason to induce? Or can babies be born on a wide scale of gestation periods?); choosing to allow our babies to feed on demand rather than on a prescribed schedule, allowing them to stay in touch with their instinctive calls of hunger, what they feel like, how they can sate themselves and call for response.

Sleep! My midwife counselled me to ‘never wake a sleeping baby’ and I live pretty religiously by that for this very reason; to respect my children’s natural and individual rhythms. That is not exclusive of having regular and sympathetic household rhythms, it does not mean being beholden to each child without flexibility, but more about listening to where their needs are and finding a place that can comfortably hold theirs and yours. Both my children have ended up being morning sleepers, tired by late morning and then happy to have a long stretch in the afternoon, whilst many mother’s I know have kids that do the afternoon nap and are ready to sleep again just a few short hours later. Every child is different, every child is attuned to their own natural needs unless told or trained otherwise by their guides… us… the parents.

And the list goes on: our language can strongly override another’s intuitive response. A child’s agility and balance may make them perfect climbers, but constant cautioning with ‘watch out’, ‘careful’, ‘that’s not safe’ etc makes them listen to fear instead of their own natural caution. It’s not easy, I am still on a massive learning curve myself with this principle, however it does make the utmost sense to me. I am still relearning my hunger messages as I, more often than not, finish my plate of food irrespective of whether I actually need it all. I don’t respect my tired signals enough and ‘push on through’ far too much, however, I am becoming more conscious about it than I used to and learning to reconnect with that deep, beautiful voice inside of me.

For ourselves and for our children, this world needs us all to get back in touch with that inner wisdom that answers the call of nature and guides us skilfully through life.  So next time you are ‘teaching’ yourself or your child something, whether it be cooking, sleeping, loving or playing, check-in with that true inner spirit and follow its lead.

Nature – My Philosophy of Parenting

The big ‘thing’ about parenting is that we’re not really supposed to talk about it too much. Start sharing your own experience and one mother will think they’re doing it all wrong, the other thinks you’re being judgemental! We seem to have permission to moan about how tiring it is and how tough it can feel, but we can’t engage in any real discussion without treading on very thin and treacherous ice.  Well, at least, that’s how it feels to me.

And I feel so sad about that because all of us are carrying such beautiful nuggets of wisdom; we are all having these amazing, unique experiences that have the promise to impart gifts of love, healing, knowledge, surrender, joy to ourselves and each other. Too often, hidden behind our fear of doing it wrong and burdened with the overwhelm of advice, we retreat and stop listening to each other.

However, I believe that once we understand our own philosophy, the one that works alongside the beat of our heart; that makes sense; sates the endless questioning, then we have the potential to listen to everyone and simply cherry pick the wisdom that suits our choices.  We can then hear each other without fear of judgement and sit quietly welcoming those nuggets and letting the rest flow past.

For me it was truly crystallised when I finally (3 years after becoming a parent) read ‘The Continuum Concept‘ by Jean Liedloff. As with any book that I have read, it is not ‘the answer’ but it put into words where I knew I was already heading and validated my instincts that I had been struggling to follow.  Most importantly it gave me an internal place to check my choices against… let me extrapolate.

Firstly, in very simple terms Jean Leidloff studied ‘stone-age’ tribes in South America, i.e. those that have had very little interaction with modern society and are still living in self-contained pockets of the Amazon. What she found most striking was that the babies and young children seemed to be so much calmer, happier and more contented than westernised children. She offers a wealth of advice and explanation in her book, which I do recommend reading, including secure attachment, on demand breastfeeding, cosleeping, but fundamentally she brings it back to Nature, animal instincts.

Nature. That is my philosophy. I really believe in the perfection of nature, I look around in awe at how things grow and propagate, how creatures forage, nurture and survive. I look at myself and how a child grew inside my belly from the smallest of specks to the most perfect of creatures. I am blown away by nature and, in my opinion, nature rocks.

So when I question – would this be right for my baby/child? I take a moment to consider how it might look in an unadulterated environment deep in the Amazon, how other mammals behave and what nature might have intended. When I read that mammals feed their young till they’re a 3rd of their adult size, I no longer worried about the stigma of feeding a 4 year old; when I consider how to treat my children’s sickness, I remind myself how brilliant the body is at handling ailments and I allow it to flow rather than suppress; when I wonder how best to ‘discipline’ my littles, I consider the tribes respect for their children; when I set boundaries, I think about whether it is important for their natural development or simply to ease my day.

Now it is no longer a question of how do I raise my children, but how do I support myself, and them, in honouring the natural way.

The Healing Gift of CoSleeping

During my first pregnancy, I read a lovely book called Baby Bliss by Dr Harvey Karp which was full of gentle natural soothing tips for newborns and, detailing the 4th Trimester Theory, why our little ones need such strong attachment in those early months. I clearly remember discussing it with my midwife afterwards and saying that although it all made lots of natural sense, the cosleeping might be a bit too far for me.

There were many reasons for this, largely fear about hurting my baby, but also a big emotional message about how unhealthy this would be for my relationship and perhaps long term for my child – could it be emotionally damaging for a child to cosleep? So my little girl arrived and although those early days did include lots of snuggles in bed, I was gently moving her into the Moses basket next to the bed and after 8 months into a cot in a separate room. I never sleep trained her and I breast fed on-demand, so our nights were busy and disrupted as I had to rise frequently to feed and resettle her, exhausting for both of us.

A few months of this until I moved her into a toddler bed in order that I could feed her lying down, followed by installing a mattress by her bed to continue my night on, for she would invariably wake up to 5 times a night until all her teeth came through at 2 yrs and 4months. I thought I was cosleeping at this point, but I was still resistant to actually having her on the mattress with me, thinking that at some point she must learn to sleep alone….

By now, I was pregnant with my son and I had learned enough to know that this time we would be cosleeping from the start. I sold the cot, I sold the Moses basket, I was not going to be waking up in the night to move anywhere except to roll over and feed him. Within two days of his birth I had both my daughter and son sleeping on either side of me and the puzzle pieces started to fall into place.

What I noticed with my newborn son was how often, from the earliest of days, he would reach for me, find me and return to sleep. Yes he needed his nightly feeds and he had no hesitation grabbing me and nuzzling me for those, but more that that he frequently checked that I was there. And my heart broke a little as I realised how often my daughter would have done that, how often her little hand would have rustled around to find me and be left wanting, wondering, worrying.

I cannot take back those early years of her sleep experience but my son has helped teach me how healing sharing our sleep can be. From the moment that clarity came, that understanding that security and attachment comes in sleep as well as wakefulness, I began to reparent my daughter. She went from sleeping curled up in her own space on the other side of the bed, from being alone, to where she sleeps now, curved into my spine. I know now that she feels connected at night as well as day and I know one day, when she is ready, she will want her space again for all the best reasons and she will sleep independently. I know now that when I’ve had a tough mummy day, when my patience has been stunted and I’ve been grouchy and snappy, that we heal together whilst we sleep. That those hours in the darkest time of rest, re-set us, remind us of our deepest soul connection, they provide the space of forgiveness without the need for words or thought.  My heart heals when I lie between my gifts from the Universe, when I listen to their soft breaths and feel their fingers reach for those reassuring touches. All of the questions around cosleeping, the pragmatic questions on logistics and comfort and ethics become totally meaningless and I remember how our ancestors have co-slept for thousands of years.

We sleep, we sleep well, we sleep with love.

 

Slinking into my Cave

My last post was full of that energy of resolution and gusto, a new year, a new start. And I mean it. This year is going to be a year of reclaiming myself and my spiritual journey. But already I have been to a deeply dark place, a place of untold loneliness and also of emotional shutdown; I have been visiting my cave.

I’m still in it. I am peeking out at the sun that has arrived, the spring is coming and the crocuses and daffodils have brought colour to the landscape that was wet and windy. But I’m still in my cave and it’s cosy in here, it’s not very comfortable but it feels safe at least.

I came in here after a raging argument with someone I love, weeks ago, I came in because I did not want to deal with who I became in that moment, I came in to hide from myself and anyone else that might reflect myself back to me. Outwardly, I can see that I am quite jolly and light, surprisingly so, I like that I have got a little better at not being so absorbed with the darkness of my cave that I have forgotten all spirit and love, and yet I know I am still here, sitting, waiting, hoping that something will change things for me, because I don’t want to change them myself.

I know that I am here, even if I allow myself to forget, because in the moments when people ask ‘how are you?’ I am flummoxed. I have no answer to give. I am not fine, I am not ok, nor am I good or happy or joyful or vibrant, sad or despondent; I am wordless. I would like to reply with a shrug and a humph and sometimes I do. Most often I say I am fine… don’t we all?

I have slunk into my cave. The Spring is drawing me out…

When There Is No One Else to Blame…

There have been moments on my journey thus far that have sung to me, where the clarity and connection with spirit have been keen and beautiful. In those moments, I have seen so clearly how I am solely responsible for my interactions, relationships and life dynamics, I have been deeply grateful for all that has been shown to me, no matter how it has manifested, as a soulful message of understanding and love.

And in the other moments, I’ll often find someone else to blame…

My husband is a divine example of this. Before I met him, I was in a strong centred place, my life was very very simple, living on little, loving a lot. Perhaps I was a little serious, a little intense (maybe I still am), so the Universe brought me my husband full of crazy energy, laughter, party, love and beneath the surface some sadness, some anger, some unmet needs. All the things that in my ‘centeredness’ I wasn’t looking at, a new journey had begun.

Throw in our beautiful children & some energetic fatigue and this path has had some rocky moments, some major challenges and some new spiritual branches to explore. But I haven’t really wanted to explore them, I have been holding onto the ‘me’ from before I met him, the ‘me’ that was doing OK all by myself. So what is the catalyst for the rocky moments? My husband of course, someone else to blame.

And he was a great scapegoat. With little introspection and self development under his belt, he had few tools to argue his corner and he wasn’t experienced at holding up the mirror to my reflection. Then he went and owned his world, he jumped both feet, headlong, passionately and soulfully into healing his heart and he returned to me, a great warrior. Now when I am angry or raging, or sad or lonely, I can no longer label him the creator of my woes, for he stands, head held high and shoulders proud holding that mirror of truth in front of my eyes. He reminds me of my soul contracts, he lights the path of my knowing and blocks the way to the cave of blame. And boy do I try to get past him into that cave. It is familiar and easy and dark and unquestioning and I want to sit in it, with all my fatigue and sadness, and blame somebody else for my feelings.

But now there is no one else to blame…

My gift, my husband, will no longer be accountable for my pain, he has handed it back to me with resolute strength and I accept it, hesitantly, cautiously and a little wearily. It is time to step back into the saddle of my spiritual quest; 2014, this New Year, is an auspicious beginning and I pledge to own my heart again.

 

(With grateful thanks to www.mkp.org.uk and www.transitionseurope.com for supporting the journey of my family)

Why Feminism Must Die

A couple of months ago, I wrote about birth and how woman have the untapped potential to transform our current birthing experiences into ones of profundity. In this context, I blithely stated that it was time to move beyond feminism and reconnect with our mother energy. What struck me most about the responses I received was that the beauty of birth that I had focused on and laid out before them was largely ignored due to the ire created by that comment.

So I have reflected on it, was it too flippant? Careless? Whilst mulling it over, I have also happened upon some articles asking about feminism today, demanding that it be put back into central focus especially as a force against misogyny. And then today it came to me, my statement wasn’t blithe, in fact it didn’t say enough. Feminism must die…

Newton’s Cradle is one of my favourite analogies (do you remember that classic 80’s desk toy?) – the balls hanging in a line, release one end and the outer balls ping back and forth in diminishing strength until they reach balance and peace again. To me, it symbolises the necessary polarities that we swing to before we eventually soften and rock gently back into alignment. And feminism is once such polarity. It was necessary, I do not intend to take away from what it has brought to society, to women, to life, but it is not a balanced perspective.

On a personal level, societal level or global level, I believe we are made up from a number of different elements (just like those balls representing different parts of us). In loose terminology I can see that we hold within us ‘warrior’ energy, ‘lover’ energy, ‘mother/father’ energy’, ‘king/queen’ energy, ‘elder/crone’ energy…. and there are more, but it gives an idea. On our personal life journeys we may explore how they play out in ourselves, are they in balance? Is one hiding the other? The ideal…. that they all have their time and their voice; that we are able to express each energy as it is needed with care and attention.

And Feminism brought forth our female warrior; we have stood our ground, shouted from the rooftops and battled in the boardroom, the classroom, the cafe and the football pitch. And yes, as others previously commented, all is not ‘won’ yet, but I don’t think it will be if we just offer our warrior. Again, bringing the example back to the small scale, if I meet individuals who are excessively in one of their energy centres, be it overly aggressive, saccharine, shy, even funny, I feel uncomfortable. I find it hard to connect, because I know that some part of them is hidden and that doesn’t feel safe. This is where feminism is at now, women don’t trust women, men don’t trust women, we are deeply, woundingly disconnected from each other.

So I, as a woman, asking for equality, honour, respect, integrity, would like to offer myself not as a feminist but as a human being. I would like to face my sisters without fear of judgement, without needing to compete, but for support and solidarity; I would like to face my brothers and honour their masculinity and welcome it back into the world, whilst I offer my femininity to them; to realign that beautiful balance of nature, that ying and yang, that give and take. Misogyny would not exist then, not when we face each other with open hearts and open souls.

I am hugely grateful for the warriors that have brought us here, including those inside each of us and now we can let them rest for a moment. Let the others within speak.

Feminism must die a peaceful death whilst we rejoice in all it has proffered and let there be space for a new age to be born.

 

Unforgiven

I messed up.

In fact I’ve messed up loads and loads of time with loads and loads of different people. I didn’t have a great sense of ‘self’ in my younger years, I knew who I thought I ought to be, but I didn’t really understand and certainly did not accept who I am.

So much of my journey therefore has been about peeling back the layers of expectation and false belief to find Me and on the way I have shed friends, just as I have shed layers.

Mostly, they were discarded because they knew the ‘me’ I was trying to dispel, the one who was so deeply unhappy and the one who, even I, couldn’t quite fathom. So often parts of them represented where I felt I should be and I wasn’t; whether that was career status, relationship security or simply a sense of contentedness in a life that to me felt like an extreme, stomach churning, fairground ride. However, in these moments of leaving, I hadn’t figured any of this out, I just knew I was suffocating in the life I was living and I needed to change things and some of those things included friends who’d been around the block with me. The type of friends who’d pulled me away from drunken shambolic decisions, the friends who answered the phone at 2am, the ones who I really really laughed with. I know that I needed to make the choice that I did, I know I needed separation to seek clarity, because within the friendships was also a lifestyle that was slowly killing me; but I didn’t do it kindly and I didn’t do it fairly.

In the film ‘when a man loves a woman’… Meg Ryan walks her sobering steps away from alcoholism and those cleansing moments of naming her shame, of apologising for her mistakes, rest with me. I have apologised to my past friends, but I feel unforgiven. I dream of them so often, there is something in my psyche that is uneasy and agitated. I cannot force anyone to forgive my past misdemeanours and for my part the recollection of how these break-ups finally occurred is so hazy that it is sometimes hard to offer the complete apology, but I do know that I need to find peace. These dreams need to stop; I need to forgive myself too for hurting those that cared for me.

Therein lies my answer, the mirror never lies, I am unforgiven because I have not forgiven myself. I would like them to release me, but instead the work is with me. To say that as a friend, I am ‘good enough’, not great, not terrible, not always at the end of the phone, sometimes with wise words, with irritation, with love, with joy and with sadness. I am.