Children break your heart...wide open!
It's normal for your heart to get broken over and over again as you grow up. Your innocent misunderstanding of the adult world means that adults will confuse you and your parents will let you down. Competition, fitting in and forming friendships are all natural processes in life that create community but also form cracks in your heart. School finishes, and you go on to college or the working world - suddenly you have to stand on your own two feet and fend for yourself. No-one is going to rescue you and life is hard. You either find yourself in a community that makes life a little easier or you find yourself competing against those who should be uniting with you. Disconnection sets in, and the loneliness of adult responsibility seeps through your mind, body and heart. It's a heavy feeling, walking around with this secret wish in your heart. The wish that someone would just give you a break. A break from having to drape this exacting cloak of resignation onto your shoulders every day. Wake up, ooze out of bed, get dressed, drag the cloak onto your shoulders and plaster a smile onto your face.
The cracks in this heart of yours, once molten with curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, have hardened into protective crusts, keeping the world at bay, and confining the pure inner you until it's safe to come out again. But it never seems to be safe again. Perhaps you find a partner who envelopes you in their affections and might even commit their lives to yours. Eventually you start seeing each others' flaws through the pink haze of attraction, and then love becomes a conscious choice you make every day. A choice to see the good and the bad. A deep and concrete commitment to stay even when you don't want to. Does that pry open the cracked, hardened surface of your heart? Perhaps. Indeed perhaps this significant other creates a safe space with you where together you explore and gently heal your wounds. Such a cautious and laborious, if absolutely necessarily rewarding, work.
It seems then, that having children is one way to finally tear open those cracks and let the unbridled love burst through. No-one or nothing can make you feel the way your children make you feel. Love, hate, joy, despair, unconditionality and resistance. They all flow out of you whether you like it or not. And through this expulsion of secreted emotions you find freedom. No more measured doses of You.
The space between you and your child is an where you invite your Younger Self in to meet. Your own child knows your Younger Self already, because that's who they talk to, who they bond with. The front that you present to the rest of the world is a veneer that is invisible to your children.
Your child forms a relationship with your inner child, and if Adult You is separate and cut off from Young You, then you will find challenges in connecting to your flesh and blood, as you will be the third wheel in this party. You have a chance to meet your own inner child through the connection with this human you have brought into the world. Whether you are wantonly joyful and loving, or losing your temper - those are both pure versions of your Young Self being triggered and called out to meet your child. Like any child they need warmth and love and boundaries to feel safe and important. They need Adult You. How beautiful that in this union of three, is your opportunity to reconcile those pieces of you once lost or hidden, and be a whole and vulnerable patched up You.
The cracks in this heart of yours, once molten with curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, have hardened into protective crusts, keeping the world at bay, and confining the pure inner you until it's safe to come out again. But it never seems to be safe again. Perhaps you find a partner who envelopes you in their affections and might even commit their lives to yours. Eventually you start seeing each others' flaws through the pink haze of attraction, and then love becomes a conscious choice you make every day. A choice to see the good and the bad. A deep and concrete commitment to stay even when you don't want to. Does that pry open the cracked, hardened surface of your heart? Perhaps. Indeed perhaps this significant other creates a safe space with you where together you explore and gently heal your wounds. Such a cautious and laborious, if absolutely necessarily rewarding, work.
It seems then, that having children is one way to finally tear open those cracks and let the unbridled love burst through. No-one or nothing can make you feel the way your children make you feel. Love, hate, joy, despair, unconditionality and resistance. They all flow out of you whether you like it or not. And through this expulsion of secreted emotions you find freedom. No more measured doses of You.
The space between you and your child is an where you invite your Younger Self in to meet. Your own child knows your Younger Self already, because that's who they talk to, who they bond with. The front that you present to the rest of the world is a veneer that is invisible to your children.
Your child forms a relationship with your inner child, and if Adult You is separate and cut off from Young You, then you will find challenges in connecting to your flesh and blood, as you will be the third wheel in this party. You have a chance to meet your own inner child through the connection with this human you have brought into the world. Whether you are wantonly joyful and loving, or losing your temper - those are both pure versions of your Young Self being triggered and called out to meet your child. Like any child they need warmth and love and boundaries to feel safe and important. They need Adult You. How beautiful that in this union of three, is your opportunity to reconcile those pieces of you once lost or hidden, and be a whole and vulnerable patched up You.
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