Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Day 67: Parenting as Duty vs Parenting as Self-Expression - Part 1 | Parenting & Fairness

Continuing from: Day 66: Why Do I Hate Being a Mother? | Parenting & Fairness

Another dimension I would like to explore / open-up in relation to being unhappy or simply having resistance from time to time towards tending to your parental responsibilities is that of parenting being a ‘duty’ versus parenting as self-expression.

Often I found within myself, when there was resistance or a nagging sensation within myself within moments where I had to tend to my baby, that I within that moment was approaching parenting/tending to my child as a ‘duty’; and so as something that I ‘have to do’/’must do’.

Parenting then becomes a ‘duty’, where you are ‘paying your dues’. The problem with ‘duty’ is that you will only do what is due, when something is due – where your starting point is determined by a negative energetic experience. Once you have ‘paid your dues’ – you stop. There is now nothing left to move you – all dues are gone, you are no longer obliged to move and so you don’t. You stop being a parent the moment the need for it is removed. You are parenting at the bare minimum, where self will do what needs to be done – but please don’t ask me to do more.

What’s fascinating about this – is that your range of movement as a parent is limited within a scope of negativity to neutrality. You will only ever ‘be a parent’ as ‘performing parenting tasks/points’ when there is a need for it, and this ‘need’ is channelled through a negative energetic charge within yourself, by your very starting point. Then when you have completed your duties, and all is back to neutrality – you stop being a parent the moment your duties are over. Now you go back to ‘being me’, ‘doing what I want to do’. Implied within that, is that you will only ever experience Parenting as being something negative, as a burden, as a duty – because you yourself set yourself up to only play out your parenting role when there is a need for it. And this need is always situated within a context of negativity, where you can only remove what is due/the negative by performing your duty. Now the child has stopped crying, now I can return to what I was doing.

If you look at dues and debt – you will only ever pay what is due. And you pay your dues because it is written somewhere that ‘you have to’. There’s an actual figure indicating/showing you what is needed from you, and as you pay your dues, the negative figure decreases until it reaches zero and then you stop paying your debt. You don’t go on paying more money once you’ve reached zero!

So when you parent from a starting point of duty – you do the same. You do what needs to be done but once the need has been removed you stop, you retreat. Parenting is then a formality, you do it because ‘it is written somewhere’ that you have to do it. You don’t do it from a point of understanding, you don’t put anything from yourself into it, you don’t allow yourself to explore what is possible when there is ‘no more need’, you don’t do it just for the sake of it – the very notion of spending more time/moments with your child, giving more of yourself is seen as ‘a waste’ (just as you would paying more than what your debt told you to pay). And every time you ‘pay your dues’ as ‘tending to your child’ – you take note of it, you keep a record – just like you would with a bank account where money movement is involved. And then later, when you child is older – you can remind him/her of these records and what the child now ‘owes you’ in return. Look at all these things I did for you – now what will you do for me?

This is parenting on automatic mode – there’s no life in your actions, in your attention. You are simply reacting to impulses. The impulses stop and you stop. You did not do those things ‘for the child’ – you did them out of duty, you fulfilled your duty – but you did not fulfil your child.

To be continued…

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Day 66: Why Do I Hate Being a Mother? | Parenting & Fairness


In my previous blog I ended off with how one can become reactive and resentful within wanting to hold on to one’s ‘off time’ when a child needs your sudden attention. This point also links in with a previous blog I wrote, Day 51: Why Babies throw Tantrums | Parenting & Fairness, where one can become ‘unhappy’ and throw inner tantrums when you compare the moment/situation you are in vs. the situation/moment you would rather be in as what would make you happy (eg. Current moment ‘changing frantic screaming baby’s dirty diaper’ vs. desired moment ‘sitting down, reading newspaper with cup of coffee’).

Within this blog, I want to investigate a different dimension that is connected to this point of being unhappy when faced with parenting responsibilities and wishing that you could be doing something else that would make you ‘happy’ – specifically looking at: what determines our happiness?

If we go back to the scenario of the previous blog where we have the two parents relaxing / enjoying some off time and both not wanting to give this up when being faced with a needy child; we can already see/identify a first ‘clue’. Here, I am looking at how one labels/compartmentalizes one’s time in ‘work-time/child-time’ and ‘off-time/relax-time’.
When we create labels for what we are doing, because they refer to distinctly different experiences of ourselves during these different time-periods = something’s up.

In terms of the scenario, self had created a polarized experience, whereby tending to the child was distinctively ‘negative’ while ‘not tending to the child’ as ‘off-time’ was a distinctively positive experience. So in this case ‘not tending to the child’ makes self happy because then you can do ‘whatever you want’ without being limited by a child who needs your attention.

So, why does this make you happy? And why does tending to one’s child make you unhappy?
If we have a look at what determines our happiness, we need to look at the things we find valuable in life, what we find meaningful. When we identify the variables of value and meaning, we can determine what makes us happy, where if x (value) and y (meaning) is in place = I am happy.

If we look at what society promotes as being of value and meaning in life, we come up with factors such as:

- freedom (of choice)
- money
- beauty
- career/status
- individual identity
- partying/events
- consumerism
= ego, freedom and selfishness

So when we take these ‘values’ and translate them into parenthood then...yes – life is hell.

Because parenthood means:
- absolute responsibility for another life
- being practical with money
- dealing with body changes / minimal time towards looking presentable
- spending time home / with kids
- personal sacrifice
- being on a schedule / getting all the sleep you can get
- cleaning up after another / managing a household
= humbleness, responsibility and selflessness

So if we look at what society promotes and values, we find these things to be completely absent within the world of motherhood/parenting. Being a housewife / stay-at-home-mother has become stigmatized and looked down up – why would anyone ‘give up’ doing something meaningful with their life to look after children and staying at home?! You could be having a career, be productive, going out and do things whenever you want!!

So then looking after a child, changing diapers, wiping butts, making food, cleaning up, feeding and whatever else is involved in taking care of a child becomes an experience of being ‘degraded’ and ‘suffering’ because it doesn’t fall within the category of value and meaning that has been fed to us through and by society. The worst part is that one actually believes self to be ‘unhappy’ and ‘not doing anything of value/meaning’ and not seeing/realising that self was not the directive principle within deciding for oneself what you find valuable and meaningful in life, but instead went with the ideas, pictures and imaginations sold by our consumerist and capitalistic society. Society’s values are all about accumulating, while that of parenting is that of giving away.

This schizophrenia of values reminds me of an article I read a while ago, where a person went into a hospital for a hip surgery but ended up dying from dehydration. Why? Because everyone thought that getting the patient water was ‘beneath’ them, after all they are a surgeon/doctor/this or that and surely it’s not their job to do something ‘ordinary’ like bringing someone water? Surely someone with less important things to do can take care of this?

And then the man died.

This nicely illustrates how within our obsession with career/status/prestige, our individual identity and self-importance – leads us to neglect important, life-enabling factors such as providing someone water because it’s ‘too ordinary’. We look at things in terms of specialness and ordinariness, and make our decisions according to what we believe will add to our own splendour.

Similarly within parenting/motherhood, we have forgotten the value and importance of tending to a child, performing ‘ordinary tasks’ – because they create no grandeur, they don’t add to your amazing personality and no-one’s there to pat your back and say how amazingly productive you are.

Parenting is the business of life. And life is not about all the imaginary concepts we’ve promoted and elevated to godliness. Life isn’t about personal grandeur, beauty, freedom and self-interest. It’s about eating, shitting, sleeping and looking after each other. It’s about guiding one another and creating responsible human beings who in the future will ensure responsibility towards themselves, others and their environment.

With the values we are currently upholding, the only thing we are ensuring is for life to go down the drain. Everyone’s so busy going ‘me! Me! Me!’ and ‘Money! Money! Money!’ – that we forget to look around ourselves and spend our (oh so precious time that we could be spending doing whatever the f*ck we want) time towards life-enabling and life-supporting goals such as ensuring proper housing, proper food security, proper education, etc. – all these ‘ordinary’ things, all these things which are absolutely vital to life.

So we are not just dealing with a value crisis in parenting, but a value crisis over all – which becomes reflective within parenting.

To be continued
Saturday, December 13, 2014

Day 65: Fear of Missing Out | Parenting & Fairness



 In some of my previous blogs (Day 60 , Day 61) I wrote about how comparing yourself and your responsibilities to that of another, specifically the father of your child – can be a source of inner conflict within self.

Because being a mother is a very specific role, you cannot compare it to being a father – and even more so if you as the mother are the primary caretaker of the child while the father is primarily the breadwinner. You’re both looking after your child(ren), but in different ways. The mother through a one-on-one direct approach, the father through creating financial stability to ensure a proper environment for the children/family to live and grow up in.

Another point which I identified within this framework of ‘fairness’ and ‘comparison’ (well, they’re really one framework, comparison always precedes fairness) is that of ‘fear of missing out’.

Having children/a family can be a stressful situation. Especially if not so long ago it was just you and your partner, there were fewer responsibilities and fewer financial pressure. When a child enters reality, both these aspects grow exponentially. Suddenly you are overrun with things to do in relation to your child, and your spending pattern suddenly takes a surge. What I found here is that in essence your ‘survival mode’ knob gets switched up a bit higher, and both mother and father are more tensed.

Then, when there is a moment during the day where both parents can relax / take some time off from one’s responsibilities and ‘switch out’ from survival mode; both parents will tend to want to ‘hold on’ to that time/moment. If then your child suddenly needs attention, obviously one of the parents needs to attend to the child and step away from one’s relax/fun time. And here something interesting happens, where neither of the parents want to go and stand as the point of support for the child, because both parents believe/perceive that they are entitled to their own ‘time off’ and that it is ‘the other’ who should go and stand as the point. This is even more so, if you are still holding on to comparisons between yourself and your partner, where you’ve still been comparing your responsibilities to that of your partner and believe that you got the short end of the stick and that within you ‘suffering more’, your partner should now go and you should be allowed to stay in your ‘off time’. Within this fairness point playing out, there is also a fear that if one goes and tend to the child, that there is a chance your partner was more rested/more up to it than you are and so ‘more suitable’ to go tend to the child than you are, where you fear that your partner is now enjoying himself ‘unduly’ – time that *you* could have been spending enjoying yourself in some time off. So with this added dimension, where you fear you are being taken advantage of – you will resist tending to your child not because you’re not physically up for it, but because you don’t want your partner to ‘cash in’ on your actions; where there’s now this whole mental competition game playing out between the two parties involved, where each one will be reluctant to do what needs to be done because each one is suspicious of one another and fear missing out.

This then opens the door for strange behaviour such as insisting that ‘both go’ so that ‘both miss out’, believing that this creates a more ‘equal scenario’, whilst this only satisfies one’s fairness construct. Or the opposite where one insist on making plans where both can have ‘off time’, not because you necessarily want to spend time together, but because you don’t want to experience yourself as ‘missing out’.

To be continued…
Sunday, December 7, 2014

Day 64: Do You Really Need all those Baby Products? | Practical Parenting

While I was pregnant I received lots of gifts and goodies from friends and relatives.
One of the areas where I received many things was that of diapering. The top of Cesar’s clothing cabinet was covered with them. There were creams, gels, powders, wipes, liners,… Then you also have a whole range of products on how to go about storing/throwing away used diapers – it’s an industry by itself.

I kept all the products I had been given thinking that I need all this products and that they were given to me because I must have them. ‘If you didn’t need these products for the diapering process – why would they be made?’ – was how I approached it then. The fact that there were so many products and within each product there being so many varieties; this scared me off a little because I perceived that this was an indication of how complex diapering is lol.

In the beginning we tried out different diaper brands and different creams. Diapers wouldn’t sit well or Cesar would develop a skin rash simply because of the materials present in the diapers, so it took us a bit to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Cesar also had sensitivities to some foods that he would react to within my breast milk, such as tomato which would give him very acidy poop and a rash (which we didn’t know yet at that time).
To minimize the effects of any acidy poo and to reverse the rash he already had, we needed to change his diaper often to make sure he stays dry and clean. Interestingly enough, the diapering/cleaning process was actually making things worse.

I then stopped using the ‘specialised’ products that I was using, and started using a simple baby bum balm based on essential oils, and used cotton wipes (which were sold as baby face cloths lol) with some water and little bit of glycerine as ‘baby wipes’, to which I added some Epsom salts if he had a rash (which after the switch became very very rare).

So here what I found interesting is how if you know nothing about babies and diapers, and you go by what is presented to you: you believe you need this wide variety of products which need to be bought on a regular basis.

While, if you look at what works – it’s all very simple things and a down to earth process. And here what’s interesting is that as I took on this more say, ‘minimalistic’ way of working with the diapers, there was this small moment where I saw I was a bit ‘sad’. Where I saw this sadness was related to not being able to participate in trying out different products, getting to know different brands, seeing what brand suits me / “suits my family”. When I was pregnant I’d read up a lot on things in magazines as well as online, and you come into contact about a lot of information about different things/products and images are presented to you of how say ones diaper changing station will look like with all the different little products lined up. So as you are preparing for having the actual baby, you are starting to take in all these images, and the ‘feel good’ experience that is created around these images where you are preparing yourself to also enter this world/reality. So when I realised that I wasn’t going to be participating in any of that because it was clear that it just wasn’t what was going to work for us – I had to also let go of the idea, the energy and the emotions that I had attached to using different products and the image that gets created around the whole diapering process. So here I saw that I was still taking into account images and energies when making a decision instead of simply, common sensically going with ‘what works’; where in this case was making my own wipes which I would wash and some plain old water; you know, this ‘idea’ had never been ‘hyped up’ anywhere so it didn’t have the same ‘feel good’ experience as using other store bought products, where there is a belief that they will bring more enjoyment to the diapering process simply because you bought them and you’ve been into contact with their advertisement.

And sure – this applies to any area where it comes to advertisement and consumerism where you can ask yourself whether you really need something or where buying something really adds additional value to your life; or whether you are creating the additional value through the emotional and feeling experiences you generate within having been in contact with particular advertising or other environmental influences. Though what struck me in this case, is that with parenting/babies – this is something you don’t really get to learn about throughout your life or in school. I didn’t know anything about babies / taking care of another little human until I got pregnant and started doing my research. So here, where a lot of future parents are faced with a big unknown; advertisement becomes a big part of the first information they come into contact with when it comes down to parenting/babies. And since you’re no expert, there’s the tendency to just take the companies word for it, to ‘go with the flow’ in terms of doing and buying what everyone else is doing and buying without really questioning or investigating what you’re getting into.

And then with pregnancy especially, you have your 9 month waiting period where you’re full of anticipation which is 9 months where you delve yourself into information and receive a lot of impressions on which you later base your purchasing decisions.

So here – to always investigate what ideas, images, energies, emotions or feelings one is accessing when dealing with baby items and purchasing things for your baby; to ensure that one’s purchasing things from a practical perspective and to buy things that work, and not allow self to fall for the temptation of buying things because they give you a particular experience and which may not be best for your baby.
Saturday, November 29, 2014

Day 63: Trust in a Parent – Part 2

In my previous blog I shared a quote from Osho on ‘sharing truth’ which one’s child.

I’ll be re-quoting the section that will be relevant for this blog:

“But never say an untruth to a child because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you – don’t betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day all trust in you will disappear.”

So I left off my previous blog mentioning that I went through such an experience of betrayal – and how my parents’ decision to uphold an ‘untruth’ changed my relationship with them forever.

Now this particular memory…is all about Santa Claus.

I found Santa Claus didn’t exist for the first time around when I was about 8. Us kids went to the basement and found all the gifts there. Though I am not sure I fully grasped the implications of the gifts being in the basement – cause by the time I was 9 and it was next year’s Santa Claus = I believed in Santa Claus again (or had forgotten that he doesn’t exist).

Anyway, the second time I found out that Santa Claus didn’t exist was when I was about 12 years old. I know, pretty late right – but the whole setup at home was reeaally well done, so it was all very convincing. That year I was writing my letter to Santa, and I was asking for Barbies. According to my peers, Barbies were for ‘small children’ but I still loved playing with them and would do it in secret. So Christmas was the perfect occasion to ask Santa for Barbies because it was something just between ‘him and me’, no-one else would ever need to find out.

So I had just placed my letter in my shoe by the chimney, and I am all chuffed and happy – I’m gonna get my barbies!! Then as I am walking upstairs, I see my sister is in a bit of a bad mood and she asks me what I am so happy about, and I say it’s because of Santa Claus. Then she all of a sudden tells me ‘You stupid runt, don’t you know Santa Claus doesn’t exist – it’s been mom and dad reading our letters all these years and buying the gifts, or other family members buying it for us’. In that moment the fact that she’d called me a stupid runt completely flew by me – what shocked me to the core was that ‘mom and dad have been reading our letters all these years and buying the gifts’.

I ran down the stairs and grabbed my letter and quickly replaced my request with something more mature/adult like than ‘barbie dolls’ and put in a picture of a (Barbie) camera (since I couldn’t find any other pictures of cameras in the toy store advertisement booklets they dump in your letter box during Christmas time).

They ended up getting me a polaroid-camera which turned out to be a great present, but the whole Christmas experience was tainted by the sad truth that my parents were liars and deceivers.

It wasn’t like “ooooh Santa isn’t reaaaal – oh hohoho, that’s so funny, you really got me there!” and then the next moment all is forgiven and forgotten – No, no, no – I took this reaaaal serious.

I remember sitting on my bed the evening my sister told me, and when I was re-writing my Santa letter and going over the fact that they had been putting up this ‘alternate reality’ in essence, every year for the past 12 years, knowing they are presenting a lie. I looked at the amount of time and effort that had to go into keeping up this illusion every year and it was quite a bit of it!

So naturally I went: Jesus Christ, if they lie about this, if they go ‘this far’ to uphold something like this and didn’t even tell me the truth (had to find out from sister) WHAT ELSE ARE THEY LYING ABOUT.

I was heart-broken.

As a child, you have that absolute trust and confidence that you place in your parents, because after all: you are kind of defenceless in this world as a child, and so you trust your parents completely to ‘do the right thing’. That they stand as a point of absolute support, is assumed as ‘given’ when you’re a child.

Until it turns out that it isn’t.

Major illusion shattered right then and there.

I could barely look them in the eye.

The whole Santa thing is supposed to be a fun, magical, mystical experience for the child and where this ‘illusion’ is supposed to be a gift you give to the child where they can still experience these things and believe that the world is ‘a nice place’ before they reach adulthood and total disappointment in life on Earth.

Really, it’s only making it worse. If you want your child to experience ‘fun and magic’ – don’t uphold a fictitious reality and so by implication fictitious fun and magic. Rather, work on creating a real bond of trust, of communication with your child. Do it every moment of every day (in contrast to throwing the Santa show once a year), develop integrity and respect between yourself and your child – the type of fun and magic that emerges from this is a lot more valuable, and actually makes the world a better place.
Friday, November 21, 2014

Day 62: Trust in a Parent – Part 1

Not so long ago I decided to try and shower with Cesar, as I wanted some variation to always taking baths. He had been opening the shower doors and gone playing in the shower when we’d go in the bathroom, so I knew he was curious about the space. I saw it might also be tricky for him to be okay with a shower experience since he’d be way down below and I’d be standing instead of being low down with him, and he would also be more likely to get water in his face.

Since I figured that I was probably not the first mom to go around experimenting with taking a one year old with in the shower, I figured there’d be some good ‘tips n tricks’ on the internet of how to go about showering with your little one so both parent and child can have a fun experience.

I though the search results would be pretty straightforward, but interestingly enough the type of topics/results that kept crowding the search engine results were about ‘whether it is okay to take your x year old toddler into the shower with you’ – where in essence the ‘big debate’ was a morality issue of whether or not it’s okay for your child to be naked with you / for your child to see you naked, especially if you’re of the opposite sex. I found this quite fascinating because if I look at me and Cesar bathing (and also having successfully showered, by the way) – I don’t experience any issue with us being together in the water and washing ourselves. So – it’s not like there’s an inherent problem in the act of ‘showering’/’bathing together’; it is one we make up in our minds and then impose on the act/situation and make it real by thinking and creating emotions about it.

Then, quite interestingly – I came across a piece of Osho writing (I’ve been reading a bit of Osho every day, and then seeing how/where I can integrate/live a particular insight in my life/reality) which was directly relation to this point of ‘sexuality’ and how we, ourselves have supplemented sexuality with an additional meaning of ‘badness’ and taboo – and within that ‘warp’ the truth of sexuality and create a lie which we then present as ‘the truth’ and ‘how it is’.

“Truth is truth, and nobody should be debarred from it. Just because children are small, do they have to be fed on lies? Is truth only for grown-ups? Then does it mean truth is dangerous to the delicate consciousness of the child?

Truth is never dangerous, untruth is dangerous. And if you tell an untruth to a grown-up he may be able to defend; it can be forgiven. But never say an untruth to a child because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you – don’t betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day all trust in you will disappear.”

When I read this piece, I remembered my own experience of betrayal with my parents and how deeply this touched me, and how I that day decided to never ever trust my parents again.

To be continued
Saturday, November 15, 2014

Day 61: Why Won’t you Help Me? | Parenting & Fairness

This is a continuation to: Day 60: Being a Mother is not like Being a Father | Parenting & Fairness
In my previous blog I explained how I initially would become quite reactive towards my partner, within comparing my situation with his – where I would stay at home and take care of the baby while he would spend most of the day and evening at work, leaving little space and time for him to help out with the baby.

This reactive state and inner-conflict I would experience was very unpleasant, and not something I wanted to keep up with. So I gave myself a moment to look at my experience, the reactions that I was having and the nature of my thoughts.

One point which I’ve gotten pretty used to in my process, is that whenever I have experiences, reactions and thoughts which keep moving away from myself towards another – where my focus and fixation is on another person being ‘the problem’, being ‘at issue’ – I know that I am dealing with a very serious case of denial lol.

So here what I did for myself, was to first remove my partner from the whole equation. Who would I be and how would I experience myself if my partner was not here at all – so I would have nothing to compare to, no-one to point fingers at. I realised, that I would still be unhappy and would find something or someone else to complain about. I also realised that, within removing the element of ‘hope’, where I would ‘hope’ my partner to help out / help out more – I saw that I would move myself to run things more efficient, and that if I put my will behind it – I would make the situation work for myself = because I would have to.

So this gave me my first clue. That I could be doing things differently, that there was room for change, for improvement coming from my side only - but that I had created a relationship of dependency to/towards my partner within the ‘hope’ that he would help out to make things easier for me – instead of me stepping things up for myself, and pushing beyond some of my own limitations to come to a satisfactory outcome.

Then, I also imagined the opposite – where I would place myself in the ‘ideal situation’ which I had been whining and complaining about inside myself, as the ideal I was hoping for / expecting. And again I realised = I would still be unhappy. It may not be about practical helping out points that would make life with a baby more manageable / less intensive – but would emerge under a different picture, a different play-out – but I could sense inside myself that the dissatisfaction would still remain.

In a way this makes sense, because when looking at the worst-case-scenario: I am forced to move myself, I am forced to step it up – to level my living to what I know I can potentially live and be.

Within the worst-case-scenario my dependency and so postponement of me fully taking charge of myself and my life was revealed and it was clear that the only way to have things be different, is if I do things / live things differently – there was no space to seek for someone else to fix things for me.
In the best-case-scenario – I ‘get what I want’ as having an easier life and my point of weakness is covered/compensated for with someone else standing as a point of support for me that ‘I can count on’, and that I am actually holding back, postponing and not living to my full potential is being obscured / not as easy to see and identify, because I am now ‘contained’ and ‘in my comfort zone’ where I do not get wrought up and where nothing’s prodding me, nothing’s stimulating to question my experience/my situation and so I settle for this limited version of myself and compromised living.

Yet, this experience of comfort would only last for so long, and some new outlet, some new point that one could be unhappy about would soon emerge – until that one gets satisfied, and then a new point of dissatisfaction would pop up – where the ‘problem’ jumps from being one point to another – and another. And because the ‘problem’ keeps being out there, keeps being something else, one will remain convinced that the problem is real, that each problem is a ‘different problem on its own’ – while they are merely different outlets for the same problem, a problem which resides within self that that self does not want to look at / tackle.

So – after looking at all of these dimensions, all of these points inside myself I decided to take on that which I was postponing, that which I was resisting inside myself. To be okay with the challenging situation that I was finding myself in and to find ways to make it work, within and without myself.

I communicated with my partner, to make sure that we are on the same page – that we help each other out according to our own ability, which we realise is variable. We realised that we can’t always know 100% if we are helping out as much as we can, if we couldn’t really do more and that we would never be able to know 100% if the other is helping out as much as they could – and that this would not matter. What mattered was that each of us individually was doing the best we can. Then, comparison falls away because you are your own reference point to judge whether or not something could improve. What another can or can’t do becomes irrelevant – even if it so happens that they are ‘doing less than’ what they actually could be doing, you can never know for sure; and this would be their own process point to walk and one can only stand as example. Within this, you then also ensure that you direct your own self-movement, and that your movement is not dependent on what another is or isn’t doing.

So we decided that we each work with our own self-honesty, assess our own individual situations and take into consideration the other – and accordingly make a decision to help out or not help out. So that, we first and foremost respond to our own individual needs of our respective lives, and know that the other is okay walking/responding to their own individual situation, so that we are not dependent on one another. This doesn’t mean that we don’t assist and support one another and that we live ‘completely separate lives’ – but that this assistance and support comes and goes. It is welcomed, it is appreciated but when it is no longer there, it is also not an issue. So that we each are stable within our own realities, and when we can through assistance and support: enhance each other’s’ lives.

I also realised that ‘being a mother’ is a very specific role; and even in terms of your relationship with your child, it will be different than the relationship between the child and the father. It does not have ‘more’ or ‘less’ value – it is just different by design/through the circumstances each one finds oneself in and having to partake in different responsibilities. And unless we find a way to swap bodies – we will always have ‘incomplete information’ about another’s circumstances; which is why it’s a bad idea to make decisions / base your own movement on your interpretation of another person’s reality.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Day 60: Being a Mother is not like Being a Father | Parenting & Fairness

As I was looking at my previous blog about ‘being a mother’ and ‘redefining mother’ – I remember a point I faced here, which also links back into the Fairness point I have been walking in some of my other blogs.

And the point which opened up/that I am looking at is how being a mother is a very specific point, a very specific role. And in the beginning when I just started out walking this role – I had a lot of reactions towards my husband/father of the baby.

This was because I was comparing my role and what I was doing compared to what he was doing. The first 2-3 weeks he was at home and would help out but soon after that he was gone working for prolonged times and I would not see much of him. At times that he was home, I would react if he wasn’t helping out or resting because he was tired of work – and so by implication not being available to help with the baby.

I created a lot of inner conflict and friction about how much he would or would not help out and how he was living his life vs how I was living my life. My life was very restricted to moving from my bed to Cesar’s cot to the rocking chair where I would feed him – with occasional trips to the bathroom. His life on the other hand hadn’t changed much and when the nights were too rough he’d sleep somewhere else so he could still be functional the next day for work.

So there the thoughts started creeping in about ‘how it’s not fair that I am stuck here and can’t go anywhere/do anything’ and ‘he can just go sleep somewhere else, I don’t have that luxury’ and ‘he can go rest when he is tired, and I have to be on constant stand by for the baby no matter how tired I am’, ‘I am sure his work/job is not as intensive as what I am doing with the baby – it’s not fair that he wants to rest and doesn’t help me’ and so on and so on…

This made me be in a snidely mood whenever my husband was around where I was constantly, chronically comparing my situation with his – and we’d easily fall into stupid little arguments/reactions because of this, as my entire attitude was becoming hostile towards him within following the thoughts and energies.

Taking care of a new-born being strenuous on my body, I quickly had enough of the added strain I was creating for myself within myself and in my body within participating in this mind-job so I had a sit down with myself to see what is going on and what I was missing that left me playing out this mind pattern.

To be continued
Friday, November 7, 2014

Day 59: Redefining ‘Mother’ – Living Simplicity | Principled Parenting

In my previous blog I described some points I faced with the idea of ‘becoming a mother’, where I was lacking trust within myself which moved me to look for ‘what to do’ and ‘how to be’ within the information and knowledge I had acquired over my life on the topic of ‘being a mother’.

What was quite fascinating was that most of the inner conflict and friction which played out inside myself, took place predominantly while I was pregnant and not yet a mother in fact – where I was still busy entering the ‘unknown’ and would allow myself to get swept away by little nagging fears which would present themselves here and there. Then – when I had my baby and looking back in retrospect: most of the points I had been fussing about inside myself simply disappeared. Turned out that ‘being a mother’ and ‘thinking what it’s like to be a mother’ are worlds apart (surprise! Lol).

While I had carried much anxiety about the new role I would be taking on – actually living it was a down to earth process, simply walking things moment by moment. Assessing new points, new directions as they come up – always referencing back to my principles, cross-referencing with others: basically walking the mother process as I would walk any other point or project.

It keeps astonishing me how much value and credit we tend to give to the thoughts, imaginations, ideas and projections that come circling inside our head. When I was in that state – it felt ‘so real’ so ‘convincing’ all these worries, thoughts – they must be valid! They must be relevant! But then when you get to the actual physical living of a point or process, they just go *poof*. Makes you wonder what else in your reality you’re investing credence into that’s just waiting to get caught out and disappear.

If I look at the amount of information I was holding unto and what I perceived ‘being a mother’ to be – it was a mountain of stuff and if you looked up you couldn’t see the end of it. Then, the actual walking, what it actually entails – the simplicity of what you’re actually working with = you can hold it in the palm of your hand.

We tend to bring and haul in so many issues when we look at what it means to parent, to being a mother – as we’re very good at making things complicated and valuing things which are of little relevance. For that, it can be helpful to look at nature and how nature/the animals express parenting/being a mother. Animals don’t share our weakness for making things complicated and creating attachments where none are required. So when we look at nature / the animal kingdom and the general (with the emphasis on general because some animals’ parenting could use some serious upgrading, like the geese we have on our farm) trend of how ‘being a mother’ is expressed – it is actually a very simple point:

You have an animal who gave birth to another animal/being and who nurtures/looks out for the animal until the animal can take that role unto itself and then that’s that. And here, even the ‘birthing’ part is optional in the animal kingdom (as some animals raise other animals their young albeit knowing or unknowingly).

One lioness is not going to be bothered worrying about what any other lionesses thinks of her parenting or how she looks as a mother or how her cubs look/act compared to other cubs, she doesn't go off gossiping with other lionesses or whatever other weird things we humans entertain and preoccupy ourselves with.

Now, in terms of humans and walking your Journey to Life – it’s just a matter of taking this elementary point and placing it within the context of what is Best for All so that you as a mother take it upon yourself to guide, nurture and direct your child so he/she may achieve its utmost potential in all dimensions (eg. physically and in one’s character/expression).

Once you have integrated this definition as your baseline, as what you are living by within being ‘a mother’ – it’s just a matter of living and walking day by day, moment by moment – and checking that whenever a decision/direction arises, that your course of action/decisions matches your commitment of living the word ‘mother’. And you simply check: if I do this, am I in anyway compromising my child? Is there another way? Is there a better way? Am I adhering to an idea/belief/value inside my head or am I taking into consideration physical reality / what will actually empower/support my child?

And as you go along, you may make mistakes, you may find that there was a different way, a better way, you may find you acted according to a belief that you weren’t aware of, … -- and so you specify yourself and improve your way of seeing/looking at things and perfect your skills of supporting another being as yourself. But the one point which is paramount, is to in every moment check and cross-reference your course of actions/decisions within yourself, within your own self-honesty. To have that relationship of engagement with yourself where you check every point to ensure that you are in fact parenting in awareness, that you are in fact in every moment being the directive principle, that you have in fact checked the foundation of your decision and that you can stand by it – to not leave a moment up to ‘automated parenting’ where you’re just acting and directing things from a starting point of ‘what you think’ you should be doing, where you haven’t actually investigated the basis of what you are doing or merely acting/playing out a pattern not really knowing why or how you could improve it. These are the ‘danger traps’, where if you leave the directive seat within yourself for a moment, and kind of ‘sit back and relax’ within yourself and act/live/guide according to how you feel, how you are experiencing yourself and the things that pop-up in your head: those are the moments where you are stunting your own self-expansion, your own potential and directly stunt and diminish your child’s self-development and expression. And this is about the 'hardest' part of being a parent - to keep pushing and moving yourself to be in the directive seat, to move and live in awareness - to make that decision to live and create a reality for yourself where you're the one checking and directing things, and to move and keep your feet out of the mind's reality: over and over again until one day there is only one reality as the one where you're constantly in awareness and the directive principle in every single moment.
Monday, November 3, 2014

Day 58: What does it mean to ‘be a Mother’? | Principled Parenting

This blog is a continuation and extension of:




When I first found out that I was pregnant and was going to have a child in the near future – my eyes went wide open at the thought of "I am going to be a mother”.

I hadn’t really looked at or contemplated the point of being/becoming a mother or investigated what it really means to ‘be a mother’. So when I looked at the point of ‘being a mother’, I was still looking and accessing an idea/construct outside of myself where ‘being a mother’ means ‘so and so’ and ‘mothers do this and that’ where being a mother was like pulling on a suit/playing a character with a set script; and where I was essentially looking at becoming this other person because I don’t really know what to do with a child/baby, but this ‘mother character’ does!

So with being faced with the new point and stepping into the unknown – I immediately accessed a point of having no self-trust. Where I am aware that I am stepping into something new, fear that I will ‘not get it right’/make mistakes – immediately lose all trust within myself and reach outside of myself for a structure/direction to ‘tell me what to do’.

I didn’t yet see and realise that nothing was really changing. I mean, yes, things were changing in that my physical reality was going to be a whole lot different and my responsibilities would need to adapt to this new situation – but in terms of ‘who I was’ and ‘who I was going to be required to be’ – this would not need to change, as I would be taking the principles I stand by and work with into this new journey, and these principles = don’t change. So when I was looking at having to become this ‘whole other person’, this ‘mother’ – I for a moment completely abandoned my principles and was looking for someone/something outside of myself to prescribe my behaviour and how to go about this new situation, instead of simply trusting myself and walking the process moment by moment and falling back on my principles to ascertain for myself ‘what to do’ whenever a question would arise.

I then as I was pregnant worked with my ideas and beliefs around ‘being a mother’ so that I would be able to remove as much “disinformation” as I could for myself before actually being a mother, so that when the time comes, I would then be able to see more clearly what to do/how to approach things without these ideas/beliefs influencing my approach.

Here are some blogs I wrote at that stage in relation to my ideas/beliefs/memories connected to ‘being a mother’:



Walking this process of looking at how I had constructed an idea about ‘what it means to be a mother’ and deconstructing it assisted me a lot in clarifying points for myself and giving myself direction. 

When you aren’t a mother or have had no actual experience with children – all you have is knowledge and information. And this knowledge and information consists firstly of your own experiences with your own mother and other female figures in the family, and then all of the impressions you’ve received from your environment as your friends’ families, school, media, etc. So you have all these inputs that you’ve received about ‘what it means to be a mother’ – but all of it is all just knowledge and information. You haven’t yet actually walked the process of ‘being a mother’, so you don’t really know what’s real and what’s not, what’s relevant and what’s not.

So walking the process of going through the information and knowledge you’ve acquired and compartmentalized in your ‘being a mother’-file inside yourself, is quite handy in sorting out ‘the good from the bad’ and seeing and checking which information will benefit you to raising another being within the framework of What is Best for All – and which information/scripts should be deleted/removed when it becomes apparent that they produce harmful effects.

To be continued

Like us on Facebook

Powered by Blogger.

Popular Posts

Tags

6 month old abstract acceptance acid acid reflux actions adult advantage advertisement advice africa allopathic ancestry Android anger management angry animal kingdom animals annabrixthomsen anticipation anxiety anxious apathy apgar score application approval art of motherhood asset association associations attention atypical authority awareness babies baby baby blues baby economicus baby won't sleep baby. child babyblues backchat bad bad news ball barriers basic income becoming like my mother behavior Belgium belief beliefs bernardpoolman best for all best friend best intentions betrayal bi bias big biology birds birth birthing bleeding blogging body books bpm brainwashing break break down breastfeeding breastmilk build trust burden burnout c-section caesarean section calm down camp cannot change care cats cause cesar change changing character characteristics child child development Child support Childbirth childhood children chill choice choices choke choking christmas city city life class cleaning clone co-sleeping cold colic commitment comparison competition compromise concern concerned conditioning conflict connotation conscious consequence consequences consumerism control cooperation copy copy paste cracked cravings crazy cream Creation creativity creator crisis criticism crossing over Crucifixion of Jesus cruel crying crying emotional cultural differences culture cure curiosity dairy debt decision declaration define definition delusion demanding dependent depression design desire desteni desteni farm development developmental milestones diaper change diaper changing diapering digestive system dimensions DIP direction dirt disasppointment discipline discomfort discontent disgust disruptive distract distraction disturbance doctor doctors dogma dogs dream driving me nuts dues duty eagle Earth echo education emergency emotional well-being energy enjoyment enrichment eqafe eqaulmoney equality equalmoney europe example exams excuse excuses exhausted exhaustion expand expansion expect expecting expensive Experience explore expression failed failure fairness fairytail Family family life fantasy Farm farm life father fatherhood fear fear of making mistake Fear of Missing Out feeding feel good female ego Fetus fight financial security first time mother flashback Fomo forced Forgiveness formality formula foster free time freedom frequent frustrated frustration fun fussy future gender genealogy generation generations genious gerd germs gift gifts gifts from animals giving up going crazy google grounding grow growing growth guidance happy hard hate healing Health heart beat heaven heaven on earth help help me helping hide high tech history holding back holistic living hollywood Home home environment homeopathy homeschooling hormones Horse horses hospital howard zinn Human Human breast milk human nature human rights humanity hunger games husband hygiene hyperactive hypocrite icequeen ideas ignorant illness illusion immunization impossible inconvenient incubator inductive control indulgence industry inequality inexperienced Infant Infant formula information innate innocence insane insecure insight insights instruction integration integrity intelligence intelligent design intense internalize internet intimacy investigate iPhone irritable isolated jealousy job joints journey justification justifications kid know it all knowledge labour language latch late Learning lessons lie life life coaching life lessons lifestyle lig ligaments limitation limitations lineage little mermaid live for children live through children living for others living income guaranteed living through others living words log magic make the best mama manipulation media medicine memories mercola milk mind mind consciousness system mistake moment to moment money morality morning sickness mother mother earth mother matrix motherhood motherhood paranoia movies must mysophobia naked naps National Vaccine Information Center natural Natural Horsemanship natural learning ability nature nausea negative new new baby new mother newborn news night change night feeds no choice no questions no time noam chomsky noise non-stop normal not fair nursing nurturing ob gyn obedience obey offspring omniscient on the go oneness opinions osho pain palevsky paranoia paraphernalia parennting parent parental leave parenthood parenting Parenting & Fairness parents parrots past pattern people's history of the united states perception perfection periods persist pets physical Physical body picture perfect play playful playfulness playground point poison positive positive parenting positive thinking postnatal postpartum postpartum depression postponement potential powder Practical Parenting preconceived ideas pregancy pregnancy pregnant pride principle principled parenting prison privileges probiotics problem process procreation products programming psychology puke purification purity purpose quantum quantum mind race rage rat react reaction reactions reading reality realtime reason record redefining words reflection reflux regret relationship relationships relax relaxin remove repulsed research resent resist resistance resonance respect responsibility rest reward Rhythm right righteousness risk role sand sandpit santa claus scan school screaming screeching seed self appreciation self control self defeat self development self forgiveness self growth self improvement self interest self limitation self limitations self love Self Pity self-change self-empowerment self-expression self-forgiveness self-growth self-help self-honesty self-improvement selfish sensitive separation anxiety settle sex sexuality shame shock siblings signs silent reflux simplicity sins of fathers sleep sleeping sleepless nights slow life smile solution soothe soothing South Africa speech spit up stay at home mom stigmas stomach stress struggle stubborn style subconscious sucks sucks ass suffering suit sunettespies support surgery survival Survivalism survivor swear sweets system taboo take back tame tantrum tantrums teaching teamlife teamlikfe teething Tempo testing kit thinking Thought thoughts throw up time time off tired tiredness toddler toddlerhood toddlers too much torture tough toxic toy toys trade transformation trauma travel travelling treatment treats trust truth tv typical ultra sound unchangeable unconscious unexpected unfair unicorn unnatural unpleasant unstable untruth upbringing update useleless useless utmost potential Vaccination value values veno violation virtual vocabulary vomit vomiting walking example want wanting to be right weak digestive system weight what is it like to have a baby whine whining who you are why wife wild winged word definition words work working mom worry worth writing wrong

Followers

Subscribe and Follow

recent posts

Follow on Bloglovin

footer social

Heaven's journey to life
Heaven's journey to life
Creation's journey to life
Earth
Earth
Instagram

SUBSCRIBE

SUBSCRIBE

Instagram