I want to share a comment from my youngest daughter’s Facebook page:
“I don't really want to feel like a normal human anymore, I'd rather exist in this feeling of being my own human”
When I read those words I realized she is finally coming to terms with what really is important. Being you, no matter what that looks like to others. At 23 she has struggled with many things. I have been frightened often that life would be too much for her and that no matter what wisdom I tried to impart to her it would fall shy of what she needed. Being a mother has been rewarding, heartbreaking and terrifying all at the same time.
My daughters have different fathers and as I grew and learned, the quality of the messages they got became simpler and more succinct. Their personalities are very different, yet I see the influence of my devotion to growth in them. My words have often been received as preachy and insensitive or not received at all, yet they often let me know what things in the past have had a positive influence on them. It once was heartbreaking to watch my children in pain, yet what I understand today is that the pain of growing and learning is what shaped the beautiful life I currently experience. That pain is what has always prompted me to move toward something new. How many times have I wanted it to end…the feeling, the event, and life as I was experiencing it, yet at the last moment leaped - not into the abyss, but into something much better? How the heck do we begin to prepare someone else for the journey that is so uniquely theirs?
We are ready for the lessons only when we are made ready by our inability to endure the place we are right now. Whether that manifests as something physical or not is never the real indicator. The emotion and interpretation that got us there drives our need. We never “arrive” at any place and stay there for long without being moved again by our need to be fully engaged in something better – something more. It seems my real value as a mother and a spiritual teacher has been to make safe space for others to figure it out on their own. To provide them with enough safety to explore what is real and true for them – without judgement. There is nothing that I can tell anyone that will make it real for them unless they are in agreement with my interpretation of their lives. All the information I will ever possess about another person is minuscule, and to me it is arrogant to tell anyone what they must do to have the life they are meant to experience. The data is just not available to me and never will be for anyone but myself – and at that I still guess and stumble. It is the way of us humans.
I suspect that my daughter’s statement about being her own human is a surrender of sorts to the world around her that seemed to demand so much of her. Her words were light and filled with positive energy where she has been challenged so many times in the past. We all try to fit into the space that our knowledge and experience to this point gives us access to. Her brave determination to keep reaching for answers, to find her way, and to make a way for herself without giving up, are inspiring to many who watch her. I taught my daughters by my own actions, that no matter what, you get up and you keep trudging forward and that somewhere over the horizon is something better. What prompts us to get up and start walking is unpredictable and magical all at the same time.
My daughter’s comments inspired me to pull myself out of my own frozen state today. What looked to me like laziness and fear in my own life has been transformed into a new perspective and a renewed commitment to promises I have made to myself. We are exactly who we are, doing what we are meant to do, being who we are meant to be at any given moment. I don’t have to have anyone else’s approval to exist, make copious amounts of money to feel like a success, nor be any more or less that I am, to be ok with me. Thank you sweet Hannah for teaching me today.
What is your pain trying to tell you today? Stop fighting it and make friends with it. Write it down. Own it. Thank the pain for all that it is teaching you. It may only mean a small change is needed to move out of it into something more empowering.
I think you will find once you acknowledge that there is purpose and valuable information in that tough place that makes you wobble…you will begin to find your balance.
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