Today, I am feeling the tenderist place in my heart.  As I open to this exquisite place, my heart breaks open to an even deeper place with my daughter.  Often, when I’m busy and trying so hard to ‘keep it together” as a mom, I notice that my heart closes.  Even though I can still feel my love, for my daughter, I don’t feel I’m acting out of that love.  It’s as if, in my need to be responsible and keep it together, I separate from my love.  Often it feels like a deep chasm and I can’t find the bridge back to love.  When this happens, I start to focus on the things my daughter’s not doing, more than our connection.  It’s as if, I imagine if only I can get her to “do” all the things I need her to do, then I can open to love.    I make our loving connection second on my priority list.  I’ll move toward love, after everything is done!  What a funny creature I am!

Today, notice when you are truly moving toward your child from a deep, open loving place.  Then notice how you are moving toward them when you are running late, they won’t do what you want or your just overwhelmed by the day!

When my heart is open I reach out!  When my heart is closed I shut out!  I’m the one who opens and closes the door, no one else has the key!

Lately, I’ve experience a lot of turbulence due to my circular thinking.  When I perceive something from the external, thwarting my need to be seen and heard, I experience a lot of turbulent stirrings in my body which triggers many turbulent thoughts. My mind goes round and round trying to make sense of it all.  This happens almost daily with my daughter.  She is moving more and more into her own world.  When I reach out and she doesn’t appear to be interested in connecting, I jump on my version of a hamster wheel and off my thoughts go.

Most of the time instead of sitting through the turbulence I want to get up out of my seat and control her.  So, I thought about when I choose to fly on a plane.  I actually walk on the plane, without really knowing how it works or who is even flying it, and sit down in my seat.  I buckle myself in and stay in my seat.  When turbulence hits, I have to sit there, breathing through my fearful thoughts and ride the waves until it is calm once again.  I don’t get up out of my seat and go try to fly the plane!  Wella!  How many times, when I am on the “see me hear me” plane, have I gotten up out of my seat and tried to fly my daughter’s plane?

Today, notice when you are feeling turbulence and see if you can strap yourself in and ride the waves of your own fear before trying to control anyone or anything outside!  Wait for the calm to return before moving out!

When our children are experiencing intense emotional states they can often trigger us and before we know it our anchor of calm and connection has been ripped out of the ocean.  When this happens we begin riding the same intense wave as our child  and in our panic look to them to help us.  We try our hardest to get them to STOP expressing their intense feelings through punishment, consequencing and control and yet they are in the middle of an intense wave and can’t be the anchor we need in that moment.  They need our anchor to hold strong so they can experience the wave and know that it is just a feeling and if they ride it they will come out the other side. If we hold our strong anchor of love and support they will even learn to ride the waves with joy, for surfing can be fun when you know how.

Think about a time when your child was able to ride a HUGE wave of feeling and you didn’t get triggered.  I know when my daughter has, she comes out the other side with a smile on her face and says, “ok, let’s go play!”  I’ve learned that when I get triggered, I have to make the commitment to ride my own wave and show her I know how to ride my intense feelings without lashing out.  It takes my internal commitment to take responsibility for the intense feelings I have that come up in relation to some of my daughter’s behaviors.   I let her know, she is not responsible for my anger and she can’t fix it.  It is my place to sit with myself, learning to ride my intense wave.  When I’m able to, I have a smile on my face, for feelings can be very powerful and learning to ride them instead of control them, believe it or not, can be fun.
Anchors away!

Being a single parent, I get overwhelmed with all the things my daughter leaves around the house.  I am always picking up something that shouldn’t be there.  One of my biggest irritants are those long clear, tube popcicle wrappers.  Of course, I buy boxes of them in the summer and leave them in the freezer for all the neighborhood kids.  They love them and yet I get a little crazy when I find those wrappers all over my house.

Every time I’d find one, I would feel my irritation rise and then I’d yell  at my daughter, “why can’t you put these in the trash, they are driving me crazy.”  I would make my usual threat that I was not going to buy anymore  if she didn’t throw the wrapper in the trash.  Of course, the next time I was at Costco, I’d buy the box again.

Then one day, as I’m about to yell about the wrapper, I stopped and said, “what if every time I saw one of these wrappers I saw it as a note from you saying I love you.”  Well, my daughter loved this and said, “yeah, what if it was written in big letters, I love you , mom?”  We, both got a kick out of this.  The next morning I went down to the kitchen and next to the trash was a wrapper, folded up with a sticky note wrapped around it with a big I love you mom written on the note.  As I picked it up, the joy inside welled up and I knew I’d found another way to see and irritant as a reminder of love.  That wrapper sits in my kitchen window as a reminder.

The ironic part of this story is, my daughter has started putting the wrappers in the trash!  Go figure!

Being a single parent,  I move into overwhelm when I have too much on my plate.  Trying to make sure that everything gets done, often doesn’t leave a lot of down time to take care of me.   Unfortunately, when I am overwhelmed, my daughter, joins right in.  She can’t keep her equalibrium when I am drowning.  Those are the times when we both go after each other, nagging and criticizing.

Bringing awareness to these times, is the first step.  Even though I can’t always shift the state, I can at least acknowledge it.

Example:

We are going on a raft trip this week, so I am totally overwhelmed, trying to pack all the gear and see clients before leaving town.  Of course, the more overwhelm I feel, my energy field is anything but welcoming.  So, instead of helping, my daughter heads out the door to play with friends.  I feel even more burdened and by the time she comes in I am frustrated and ready to go after her.  As we are sitting at the computer, trying to download my camera, I get frustrated and start making some noise.  My sweet girl is sitting there next to me and she says, “Mama, take a deep breath.  You can breathe through it.”  This alone, brings a smile to my face and I start breathing.  She looks at me and says, “I think I’ll breathe with you.”  So here we are, sitting together breathing and smiling at each other.   Suddenly, my overwhelm is managable and my relationship with my daughter is at the forefront!  We giggled our way to bed leaving all the gear for another day.

What we focus on is what we will see.  When I find myself focusing on all the things my daughter is doing that I judge as negative, I often find even more.  When I’m tired and down on myself, I can walk in the house and within 2 minutes see everything that she hasn’t put away or hasn’t done to help out.  Even if she walks in with a huge smile on her face, I am energetically focusing on all that she hasn’t done.  What a downer!

I’ve learned, that this happens because of my own self-judgment.  As a kid, I didn’t like chores either and I was told over and over how selfish I was.  So, if you ever think, trying to get your child to do chores by shaming them, think again.  To this day, I still don’t like chores, and yet now when I don’t do them, I do the internal shaming.  When I focus on all the negatives and what I’m not doing I project it out onto my daughter.

As a single mom, I’ve had to learn to focus on what I am giving, and what I can take care of in one day.  When I’m able to do this, I’m able to focus on my daughter’s “greatness” and all that she gives me, just by being alive.

Usually when I work with a family that has a struggling teen, I begin the work with the parents struggle.  So often we want to “fix” our teen because we think they are the problem.  We assume since they have brought so much discomfort to us, and the family, that if only we could have them “fixed” then everything will go back to normal.

Many families I work with at Vive (http://www.vivenow.com) send their teens away to wilderness programs or residential treatment centers.  Even though everyone gets a respite and the teen does learn and grow, they still have to transition back into the home.

This is when the family has to look at their part in the struggle.  This is a family system and everyone has their part.  When working with parents that feel like victims of their teen, I begin to work with their beliefs and how they have given their power away and now see their teen as a victimizer.   Not a pretty picture!

With a love-based model, the focus turns toward the one that is in the most discomfort, which is usually the parent.  We begin to pull apart their beliefs that don’t allow them to see what is truly going on and therefore show up for the struggling teen.  Taking responsibility for our own discomfort allows us to regulate our own emotional states and therefore be a safe emotional place for our teen to share.