Mothering the Soul

I was listening to a series of stories from a woman yesterday which gave me deep pause. I truly love and resonate with her and I know this wasnt intentioned negatively, but something she said (which i will be talking to her about) really showed me a point of distortion in the conscious parenting community.

She was giving an example of a client call she was on with a woman who had 5 and 1.5 year old sons. She preceded to say that this mama was a conscious and present mama, breastfed the boys, still co-sleeps with both, and they are both home with her 24/7 instead of being in any institutions and that is why during their whole 1.5 hour session on zoom she, essentially, didn’t hear a pero out of either boy. They just played and entertained themselves/each other, and it is because they have such a present mama that they don’t need to pull for her attention.

Panic flooded my system as i read this because i know in my bones that my boy would not ever be that quiet or ‘un-bothersome’ (i use that word quoted and really loosely because i have a real issue with any commentary that suggests a child needs to be un-bothersome.) My mind started to reel and spiral about how I must be ruining my kid and I went through scenarios about how I must not be present or available enough.

But that is just the mind.

I mother physiologically aligned, and biologically aligned. Our son was consciously conceived, consciously gestated and nurtured, and birthed from that space even though our journey on paper of birth could look ‘traumatizing’.

I know to orient to repair when it is needed, and i do. From day one i mothered in this way.

And, he is a truly demanding and active little boy. He is loud. He jumps and climbs and runs and pulls and throws. He will master one skill and is already ready for the next meaning he has always needed to be watched because he tries things that aren’t fully in his skill set yet. He wants to be involved and to see everything mama and daddy are doing. And none of this is a problem or a sign of negative attachment style or that something , somewhere, went wrong.

My husband and i actually make a very intentional effort not to make his being a problem- we correct others who ever make commentary about how lively and active he is. We are aware that, especially with boys, these behaviours in larger society, as they age, can be made into problems.

And so after the panic that flooded my system past, I landed in what i know.

And what i know is that we do not mother and father our children in order to be ‘good boys and girls’.

I understand why some might see a quiet, independent child as a marker of successful parenting. But for me, success is not measured by calmness; it’s measured by how fully my child can express their spirit and explore the world with confidence and capability.

We don’t even parent in order for them to be perfectly regulated all the time.

The way i understand and orient my parenting is one, of course, for safety. We are there to know better and adjust them and the environment for safety.

Other than that my intention is for my son to remain spiritually intact and to shepherd his soul further into his body and his expression in the world and then to be able to navigate the world from that spot. And to always remember that he is of God and a powerful creator.

To be clear i do believe when we parent physiologically it impacts our children. I do believe there is certain circumstances that cause children to be more dysregulated in an inorganic way, as opposed to the experience of them simply learning to bring their full essence into the world while simultaneously figuring out how to be in the world with that reality, which is sometimes high sensation and challenging. Normal.

Like most things in real life, there is an important and subtle nuance to understand and read.

And there is each soul with their own essence and also their own lessons to be had here and as parents we hold our children through that, the way frankly we also need to hold ourselves if we did not get this type of holding ourselves, which most of us did not.

I know as i go deeper into my parenting journey and birth more children with their own ways of being i will have more embodied knowing to share on this topic, but this felt really alive for me to share.

I want to hear your thoughts and experiences of this, on a macro spiritual level, what is your understanding of the role of us parents ?

A.

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