The female was endowed by nature with the ability to bring children into the world. Since this is true, it must follow that we are capable of nurturing them to reach their full potential. Animals protect their young. Why can’t we?
When we allow ourselves to confront emotional trauma from the past, we gain the power to release the hidden trauma that we live with and pass on to our children. After all, we’ve bought into this culture’s definition of what success looks like and preoccupied with equality.
My question to mothers: Equal to what? A culture thriving on the theft of the Indigenous People’s land and currently killing children, civilians and soldiers in other countries while education in this country is sorely in need of revamping, adopting a nation -wide curriculum based on Multiple Intelligences where the student enjoys and eagerly await classes of interest placing less interest on recess.
Our role and duty as mothers is to keep the gifts our children are born with alive and expanding. The prerequisite for this conversation is our taking responsibility and consequently garnering the power to save our young and have them contribute to saving humanity. We continue Mother’s Month by exploring ways to maintain one’s sanity without destroying the child’s self-esteem.
Clear your emotional residue – We need to recognize that while the roots of our upsets, anger and regrets among other emotions stem from the past, we can rid ourselves of those effects today. We can change the impact they have on us today and be empowered to liberate our children from the generational inheritance. The first step is admitting “I felt hurt when….. or I feel hurt”. We’re so conditioned to making the other person wrong that we don’t address our feelings, so they linger and distort our view of others while decreasing our sense of self-worth… We organize to seek equal rights to other people. It’s time to declare a movement to regain self leading to healed relationships and restored families.
A Pretest – Do you have any of these issues? A) Seeing the negative in others, including your children, more than positive; B) Do you make statements that communicate your power over your child, i.e. ,“Your butt belongs to me” or “Shut up”; C) Do you feel a need to always be right, D) Do you tend to compare yourself and compete with others? E) Do you compare your child to others? These are a few examples of low self-esteem as quiet as it’s kept, self-esteem doesn’t come with positions, money, material possessions, attire or authority. Self-esteem is based on love.
When we master the art of forgiving and loving ourselves, we can love our children – not because they look or behave a certain way but simply because they are. And when we reconnect with our feelings, we become more aware of the possible freedoms of others, including those of our children. We are then able to provide a listening that releases the emotions attached to those feelings and freeing the need for negative behaviors.
Loving ourselves and our biological children opens the door to loving all children and humanity. Interestingly enough, it has nothing to do with their religion or nonreligion. Then as with other species of nature, we will create ways to protect those we love from all predators – even ourselves.
Family is a special classroom if used to teach tolerance and respect for differences. Members were not interviewed and selected from other applicants. They became family because, at some point, a male and female came together and the family tree was born. It occurs to me that the ideal place to heal the world begins with the family – not by everybody having the same vision but by supporting each in having a vision thereby sowing the seeds for Peace on the Planet. Listening to public media free of commercials one learns of the wars undeclared and existing throughout the world and the role that this country plays. Instead of commercials, we hear about men, women and children, civilians being killed by America’s troops. We are witnessing an increase in numbers of our youth dying in the streets. I think if we looked closely, our wish for the world and for our children would be the same – a world where each one matters and life of each and all is considered sacred. Share with us your tools for building self-esteem and healing relationships within the family. Send to: parentsnotebook@yahoo.com.