On Happiness
Why I no longer "just want my children to be happy".
It's something I have said so many times over my 13 year journey into parenthood....."I just want my children to be happy".
My intentions were always good. My desire was to free them from my expectations of what their life should look like and to liberate them from the shackles of societal norms around 'success'.
But I am coming to realise that my desire for them to be happy might create shackles of a different kind. That they might become performative around happiness in a desire to please me or because they feel there's something wrong or shameful about being unhappy. They might hide their darker emotions, their more challenging experiences in a bid to protect me or to protect themselves from the unsettling feeling that comes from seeing the concern cloud their mama's face. I know this to be especially true for my youngest son who has held a mirror up to me to realise that I am where he gets his heightened sensitivity from. We now realise this is one of our superpowers.
Life has taught me that the experiences that have left me feeling broken have often been the experiences that have broken me OPEN. Every day I see this in my clients too. On the other side of their hardest experiences, their biggest challenges, their dark nights of the soul, they often find themselves opening up to a bigger vision for themselves and their lives. I practice holding deep space to allow for these incredible transformations to alchemise.
Why would I want to rob my children of this soul medicine by wishing for them only to experience happiness and not the full range of emotions that we humans are capable of experiencing?
In my effort to avoid my own discomfort, am I prioritising MY need for them to be happy (to validate that I am a "good mother") over their soul's desire for growth and expansion? I think so.
And so I have shifted my wish for them. I now wish for my children to feel fully expressed.
Of course, this is actually my wish for myself. Our kids have an incredible way of holding up a mirror to shine a light on where our own healing and growth needs to happen.
