Re-parenting

Adulthood grants us the privilege and responsibility of re-parenting ourselves.

That has become my definition of adulting as of late.

Adulting, to me, is not really about having a job, a career, a house, a relationship, status, community, etc etc etc.

It’s about coming home to self,

about acknowledging, recognizing, holding the child within,

the one that walks today with wounds of past,

experienced in painful relationships with blood parents, other adults, authority figures, etc.

It’s about creating space for that child,

remembering the trauma,

not to re-live it,

but to honor it, and allow it to pass through,

through tears,

sadness,

grief,

heartache.

It’s about allowing ourselves the dignity of our process,

of having grace on the parts of us we’ve judged all our ‘adult’ lives,

parts that we feel ‘should’ be further along,

‘should’ be more mature, developed, etc.

It’s about recognizing the sheer importance and value of the wonder, awe, and pure-ness that is the essence of the child within,

healing the parts that have closed off to that part of us,

allowing it permeate our being-ness, consciousness, thoughts, day-to-day-ness,

little by little, delighting in the miracles, big and small, that is Life.

It’s about remembering the magic we believed in, and opted to forget and leave behind so we could make sense to the world,

so we could fit into the idea of ‘adulthood’,

let it fit into us.

It’s about allowing our hearts to lead us, our souls to anchor us.

It’s about loving every part of us,

even when we seem so unlovable,

especially when we feel so unlovable.

Because that is what we needed as children,

something that we didn’t always receive

even if we demanded it, yearned for it.

It’s to no one’s fault that that is the story and experience for many of us.

Our parents were busy trying to parent and adult, often without the awareness that they too, need to love the child within.

So, as we grow up, get bigger, hold jobs, sustain ourselves, feed ourselves, take care of our bodies, have the wherewithall to take care of our well-being,

we become fully equipped to parent ourselves,

not in the typical parenting way, of discipline, nagging, ordering, etc.

But in the way that we wanted to be parented and loved, 

in the ways we didn’t even know back then,

in the ways that will come through if we listen to, create space for the child within.

Being Good, not just good, at anything in life, whether parenting, working, life-ing, teaching, etc.,

begins with one’s wholeness.

It’s not to say that we need to be whole to do anything good.

But it’s to say that the desire to do and be Good is possible and can be deeply realized, when we allow ourselves the grace to love and bless all parts of us, young and less young.