034_ Parenting With Love and Trust

Parenthood is ashram. Our children are our gurus.

What if our children come ready-made for the challenges and choices and consequence of those choices as they arise in their lives. If we don’t interfere by trying to mold them into what we think they should be, what might they teach us? 
What if our job is to see them, and love them and be their champions so they can truly flourish, creating the lives that are uniquely theirs? 
Can we be their companions rather than their bullies? That’s what we’re doing when we try to mold our children and their lives into what we think they should be. We call it love. But it’s really fear, played out as control.

In today’s podcast, my partner, Lar, joins me in another yummy conversation about living the yummy way, letting love and trust guide our relationships. Today we’re discussing the art parenthood. 

We talk about the way we were raised, the fundamental beliefs we learned and being willing to question and find the truth for ourselves. 

We talk about honesty and being willing to be cop to our fears and faults, and to forgive — not behind closed doors, but in the company of one another. Everything that happens is part of our learning, loving and living as equal contributors, children and adults alike. This is family.

Parenthood isn’t about parenting. It is about grace and trust. 

It’s about finding our true identity as a parent and letting our children find and express their true identity... We are in relationship to help each other be true to ourselves and by extension, to each other.

Be present.
Love first. 
Follow our joy as guide. If it doesn’t feel yummy, we’re out of alignment with our true nature.
Be honest, tell the truth as it resides currently for us, trusting ourselves and the other. 
Lean into trusting where our children choose to discover themselves. 
Managing our own fears when they come up, so we don’t push them off on the kids. 
It is learning together, the art of  friendship — being companions in this life we’re living together. These are the cornerstones of yummy parenting.

Our happiness is essential. We model whether we realize it or not. Our children learn from us every second of every day: our presence, our being, what we do, how we react, what we are going through, how we relate to them, to others, to our self. Our happiness fosters their happiness.

It is who we are they learn from. Not what we say. It is our presence that has the most impact. Are we being true to ourselves? This is their model, thus allowing them to be true to themselves.

Being authentic as a parent requires we examine the beliefs and ideas about parenthood we learned from childhood and reevaluate each, using the touchstone of love and trust — It requires we forgive the past, letting go of that programming so we can live authentically in the present with our children, seeing what is actually there, instead of projecting a set of ‘should be’ believes and attitudes on to them. 

Parenthood is an choice to trust deeply — in the truest knowing of our hearts, where we are all united with one another. To trust that divinity plays a role in everything that happens and that each of us is part of the mystery unfolding as the current situations and circumstances of our lives. 

 Parenthood is an ongoing quest to see what is unique to each child and foster what brings them joy, so we can understand each other as whole beings. 

Ultimately, we are here to BE UNIQUELY WHO WE ARE... This is the great lesson and gift of parenthood.