Journey to a New Life

In my previous blog I shared a quote from Osho on ‘sharing truth’ which one’s child.

I’ll be re-quoting the section that will be relevant for this blog:

“But never say an untruth to a child because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you – don’t betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day all trust in you will disappear.”

So I left off my previous blog mentioning that I went through such an experience of betrayal – and how my parents’ decision to uphold an ‘untruth’ changed my relationship with them forever.

Now this particular memory…is all about Santa Claus.

I found Santa Claus didn’t exist for the first time around when I was about 8. Us kids went to the basement and found all the gifts there. Though I am not sure I fully grasped the implications of the gifts being in the basement – cause by the time I was 9 and it was next year’s Santa Claus = I believed in Santa Claus again (or had forgotten that he doesn’t exist).

Anyway, the second time I found out that Santa Claus didn’t exist was when I was about 12 years old. I know, pretty late right – but the whole setup at home was reeaally well done, so it was all very convincing. That year I was writing my letter to Santa, and I was asking for Barbies. According to my peers, Barbies were for ‘small children’ but I still loved playing with them and would do it in secret. So Christmas was the perfect occasion to ask Santa for Barbies because it was something just between ‘him and me’, no-one else would ever need to find out.

So I had just placed my letter in my shoe by the chimney, and I am all chuffed and happy – I’m gonna get my barbies!! Then as I am walking upstairs, I see my sister is in a bit of a bad mood and she asks me what I am so happy about, and I say it’s because of Santa Claus. Then she all of a sudden tells me ‘You stupid runt, don’t you know Santa Claus doesn’t exist – it’s been mom and dad reading our letters all these years and buying the gifts, or other family members buying it for us’. In that moment the fact that she’d called me a stupid runt completely flew by me – what shocked me to the core was that ‘mom and dad have been reading our letters all these years and buying the gifts’.

I ran down the stairs and grabbed my letter and quickly replaced my request with something more mature/adult like than ‘barbie dolls’ and put in a picture of a (Barbie) camera (since I couldn’t find any other pictures of cameras in the toy store advertisement booklets they dump in your letter box during Christmas time).

They ended up getting me a polaroid-camera which turned out to be a great present, but the whole Christmas experience was tainted by the sad truth that my parents were liars and deceivers.

It wasn’t like “ooooh Santa isn’t reaaaal – oh hohoho, that’s so funny, you really got me there!” and then the next moment all is forgiven and forgotten – No, no, no – I took this reaaaal serious.

I remember sitting on my bed the evening my sister told me, and when I was re-writing my Santa letter and going over the fact that they had been putting up this ‘alternate reality’ in essence, every year for the past 12 years, knowing they are presenting a lie. I looked at the amount of time and effort that had to go into keeping up this illusion every year and it was quite a bit of it!

So naturally I went: Jesus Christ, if they lie about this, if they go ‘this far’ to uphold something like this and didn’t even tell me the truth (had to find out from sister) WHAT ELSE ARE THEY LYING ABOUT.

I was heart-broken.

As a child, you have that absolute trust and confidence that you place in your parents, because after all: you are kind of defenceless in this world as a child, and so you trust your parents completely to ‘do the right thing’. That they stand as a point of absolute support, is assumed as ‘given’ when you’re a child.

Until it turns out that it isn’t.

Major illusion shattered right then and there.

I could barely look them in the eye.

The whole Santa thing is supposed to be a fun, magical, mystical experience for the child and where this ‘illusion’ is supposed to be a gift you give to the child where they can still experience these things and believe that the world is ‘a nice place’ before they reach adulthood and total disappointment in life on Earth.

Really, it’s only making it worse. If you want your child to experience ‘fun and magic’ – don’t uphold a fictitious reality and so by implication fictitious fun and magic. Rather, work on creating a real bond of trust, of communication with your child. Do it every moment of every day (in contrast to throwing the Santa show once a year), develop integrity and respect between yourself and your child – the type of fun and magic that emerges from this is a lot more valuable, and actually makes the world a better place.

Not so long ago I decided to try and shower with Cesar, as I wanted some variation to always taking baths. He had been opening the shower doors and gone playing in the shower when we’d go in the bathroom, so I knew he was curious about the space. I saw it might also be tricky for him to be okay with a shower experience since he’d be way down below and I’d be standing instead of being low down with him, and he would also be more likely to get water in his face.

Since I figured that I was probably not the first mom to go around experimenting with taking a one year old with in the shower, I figured there’d be some good ‘tips n tricks’ on the internet of how to go about showering with your little one so both parent and child can have a fun experience.

I though the search results would be pretty straightforward, but interestingly enough the type of topics/results that kept crowding the search engine results were about ‘whether it is okay to take your x year old toddler into the shower with you’ – where in essence the ‘big debate’ was a morality issue of whether or not it’s okay for your child to be naked with you / for your child to see you naked, especially if you’re of the opposite sex. I found this quite fascinating because if I look at me and Cesar bathing (and also having successfully showered, by the way) – I don’t experience any issue with us being together in the water and washing ourselves. So – it’s not like there’s an inherent problem in the act of ‘showering’/’bathing together’; it is one we make up in our minds and then impose on the act/situation and make it real by thinking and creating emotions about it.

Then, quite interestingly – I came across a piece of Osho writing (I’ve been reading a bit of Osho every day, and then seeing how/where I can integrate/live a particular insight in my life/reality) which was directly relation to this point of ‘sexuality’ and how we, ourselves have supplemented sexuality with an additional meaning of ‘badness’ and taboo – and within that ‘warp’ the truth of sexuality and create a lie which we then present as ‘the truth’ and ‘how it is’.

“Truth is truth, and nobody should be debarred from it. Just because children are small, do they have to be fed on lies? Is truth only for grown-ups? Then does it mean truth is dangerous to the delicate consciousness of the child?

Truth is never dangerous, untruth is dangerous. And if you tell an untruth to a grown-up he may be able to defend; it can be forgiven. But never say an untruth to a child because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you – don’t betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day all trust in you will disappear.”

When I read this piece, I remembered my own experience of betrayal with my parents and how deeply this touched me, and how I that day decided to never ever trust my parents again.

To be continued

This is a continuation to: Day 60: Being a Mother is not like Being a Father | Parenting & Fairness
In my previous blog I explained how I initially would become quite reactive towards my partner, within comparing my situation with his – where I would stay at home and take care of the baby while he would spend most of the day and evening at work, leaving little space and time for him to help out with the baby.

This reactive state and inner-conflict I would experience was very unpleasant, and not something I wanted to keep up with. So I gave myself a moment to look at my experience, the reactions that I was having and the nature of my thoughts.

One point which I’ve gotten pretty used to in my process, is that whenever I have experiences, reactions and thoughts which keep moving away from myself towards another – where my focus and fixation is on another person being ‘the problem’, being ‘at issue’ – I know that I am dealing with a very serious case of denial lol.

So here what I did for myself, was to first remove my partner from the whole equation. Who would I be and how would I experience myself if my partner was not here at all – so I would have nothing to compare to, no-one to point fingers at. I realised, that I would still be unhappy and would find something or someone else to complain about. I also realised that, within removing the element of ‘hope’, where I would ‘hope’ my partner to help out / help out more – I saw that I would move myself to run things more efficient, and that if I put my will behind it – I would make the situation work for myself = because I would have to.

So this gave me my first clue. That I could be doing things differently, that there was room for change, for improvement coming from my side only - but that I had created a relationship of dependency to/towards my partner within the ‘hope’ that he would help out to make things easier for me – instead of me stepping things up for myself, and pushing beyond some of my own limitations to come to a satisfactory outcome.

Then, I also imagined the opposite – where I would place myself in the ‘ideal situation’ which I had been whining and complaining about inside myself, as the ideal I was hoping for / expecting. And again I realised = I would still be unhappy. It may not be about practical helping out points that would make life with a baby more manageable / less intensive – but would emerge under a different picture, a different play-out – but I could sense inside myself that the dissatisfaction would still remain.

In a way this makes sense, because when looking at the worst-case-scenario: I am forced to move myself, I am forced to step it up – to level my living to what I know I can potentially live and be.

Within the worst-case-scenario my dependency and so postponement of me fully taking charge of myself and my life was revealed and it was clear that the only way to have things be different, is if I do things / live things differently – there was no space to seek for someone else to fix things for me.
In the best-case-scenario – I ‘get what I want’ as having an easier life and my point of weakness is covered/compensated for with someone else standing as a point of support for me that ‘I can count on’, and that I am actually holding back, postponing and not living to my full potential is being obscured / not as easy to see and identify, because I am now ‘contained’ and ‘in my comfort zone’ where I do not get wrought up and where nothing’s prodding me, nothing’s stimulating to question my experience/my situation and so I settle for this limited version of myself and compromised living.

Yet, this experience of comfort would only last for so long, and some new outlet, some new point that one could be unhappy about would soon emerge – until that one gets satisfied, and then a new point of dissatisfaction would pop up – where the ‘problem’ jumps from being one point to another – and another. And because the ‘problem’ keeps being out there, keeps being something else, one will remain convinced that the problem is real, that each problem is a ‘different problem on its own’ – while they are merely different outlets for the same problem, a problem which resides within self that that self does not want to look at / tackle.

So – after looking at all of these dimensions, all of these points inside myself I decided to take on that which I was postponing, that which I was resisting inside myself. To be okay with the challenging situation that I was finding myself in and to find ways to make it work, within and without myself.

I communicated with my partner, to make sure that we are on the same page – that we help each other out according to our own ability, which we realise is variable. We realised that we can’t always know 100% if we are helping out as much as we can, if we couldn’t really do more and that we would never be able to know 100% if the other is helping out as much as they could – and that this would not matter. What mattered was that each of us individually was doing the best we can. Then, comparison falls away because you are your own reference point to judge whether or not something could improve. What another can or can’t do becomes irrelevant – even if it so happens that they are ‘doing less than’ what they actually could be doing, you can never know for sure; and this would be their own process point to walk and one can only stand as example. Within this, you then also ensure that you direct your own self-movement, and that your movement is not dependent on what another is or isn’t doing.

So we decided that we each work with our own self-honesty, assess our own individual situations and take into consideration the other – and accordingly make a decision to help out or not help out. So that, we first and foremost respond to our own individual needs of our respective lives, and know that the other is okay walking/responding to their own individual situation, so that we are not dependent on one another. This doesn’t mean that we don’t assist and support one another and that we live ‘completely separate lives’ – but that this assistance and support comes and goes. It is welcomed, it is appreciated but when it is no longer there, it is also not an issue. So that we each are stable within our own realities, and when we can through assistance and support: enhance each other’s’ lives.

I also realised that ‘being a mother’ is a very specific role; and even in terms of your relationship with your child, it will be different than the relationship between the child and the father. It does not have ‘more’ or ‘less’ value – it is just different by design/through the circumstances each one finds oneself in and having to partake in different responsibilities. And unless we find a way to swap bodies – we will always have ‘incomplete information’ about another’s circumstances; which is why it’s a bad idea to make decisions / base your own movement on your interpretation of another person’s reality.

As I was looking at my previous blog about ‘being a mother’ and ‘redefining mother’ – I remember a point I faced here, which also links back into the Fairness point I have been walking in some of my other blogs.

And the point which opened up/that I am looking at is how being a mother is a very specific point, a very specific role. And in the beginning when I just started out walking this role – I had a lot of reactions towards my husband/father of the baby.

This was because I was comparing my role and what I was doing compared to what he was doing. The first 2-3 weeks he was at home and would help out but soon after that he was gone working for prolonged times and I would not see much of him. At times that he was home, I would react if he wasn’t helping out or resting because he was tired of work – and so by implication not being available to help with the baby.

I created a lot of inner conflict and friction about how much he would or would not help out and how he was living his life vs how I was living my life. My life was very restricted to moving from my bed to Cesar’s cot to the rocking chair where I would feed him – with occasional trips to the bathroom. His life on the other hand hadn’t changed much and when the nights were too rough he’d sleep somewhere else so he could still be functional the next day for work.

So there the thoughts started creeping in about ‘how it’s not fair that I am stuck here and can’t go anywhere/do anything’ and ‘he can just go sleep somewhere else, I don’t have that luxury’ and ‘he can go rest when he is tired, and I have to be on constant stand by for the baby no matter how tired I am’, ‘I am sure his work/job is not as intensive as what I am doing with the baby – it’s not fair that he wants to rest and doesn’t help me’ and so on and so on…

This made me be in a snidely mood whenever my husband was around where I was constantly, chronically comparing my situation with his – and we’d easily fall into stupid little arguments/reactions because of this, as my entire attitude was becoming hostile towards him within following the thoughts and energies.

Taking care of a new-born being strenuous on my body, I quickly had enough of the added strain I was creating for myself within myself and in my body within participating in this mind-job so I had a sit down with myself to see what is going on and what I was missing that left me playing out this mind pattern.

To be continued

In my previous blog I described some points I faced with the idea of ‘becoming a mother’, where I was lacking trust within myself which moved me to look for ‘what to do’ and ‘how to be’ within the information and knowledge I had acquired over my life on the topic of ‘being a mother’.

What was quite fascinating was that most of the inner conflict and friction which played out inside myself, took place predominantly while I was pregnant and not yet a mother in fact – where I was still busy entering the ‘unknown’ and would allow myself to get swept away by little nagging fears which would present themselves here and there. Then – when I had my baby and looking back in retrospect: most of the points I had been fussing about inside myself simply disappeared. Turned out that ‘being a mother’ and ‘thinking what it’s like to be a mother’ are worlds apart (surprise! Lol).

While I had carried much anxiety about the new role I would be taking on – actually living it was a down to earth process, simply walking things moment by moment. Assessing new points, new directions as they come up – always referencing back to my principles, cross-referencing with others: basically walking the mother process as I would walk any other point or project.

It keeps astonishing me how much value and credit we tend to give to the thoughts, imaginations, ideas and projections that come circling inside our head. When I was in that state – it felt ‘so real’ so ‘convincing’ all these worries, thoughts – they must be valid! They must be relevant! But then when you get to the actual physical living of a point or process, they just go *poof*. Makes you wonder what else in your reality you’re investing credence into that’s just waiting to get caught out and disappear.

If I look at the amount of information I was holding unto and what I perceived ‘being a mother’ to be – it was a mountain of stuff and if you looked up you couldn’t see the end of it. Then, the actual walking, what it actually entails – the simplicity of what you’re actually working with = you can hold it in the palm of your hand.

We tend to bring and haul in so many issues when we look at what it means to parent, to being a mother – as we’re very good at making things complicated and valuing things which are of little relevance. For that, it can be helpful to look at nature and how nature/the animals express parenting/being a mother. Animals don’t share our weakness for making things complicated and creating attachments where none are required. So when we look at nature / the animal kingdom and the general (with the emphasis on general because some animals’ parenting could use some serious upgrading, like the geese we have on our farm) trend of how ‘being a mother’ is expressed – it is actually a very simple point:

You have an animal who gave birth to another animal/being and who nurtures/looks out for the animal until the animal can take that role unto itself and then that’s that. And here, even the ‘birthing’ part is optional in the animal kingdom (as some animals raise other animals their young albeit knowing or unknowingly).

One lioness is not going to be bothered worrying about what any other lionesses thinks of her parenting or how she looks as a mother or how her cubs look/act compared to other cubs, she doesn't go off gossiping with other lionesses or whatever other weird things we humans entertain and preoccupy ourselves with.

Now, in terms of humans and walking your Journey to Life – it’s just a matter of taking this elementary point and placing it within the context of what is Best for All so that you as a mother take it upon yourself to guide, nurture and direct your child so he/she may achieve its utmost potential in all dimensions (eg. physically and in one’s character/expression).

Once you have integrated this definition as your baseline, as what you are living by within being ‘a mother’ – it’s just a matter of living and walking day by day, moment by moment – and checking that whenever a decision/direction arises, that your course of action/decisions matches your commitment of living the word ‘mother’. And you simply check: if I do this, am I in anyway compromising my child? Is there another way? Is there a better way? Am I adhering to an idea/belief/value inside my head or am I taking into consideration physical reality / what will actually empower/support my child?

And as you go along, you may make mistakes, you may find that there was a different way, a better way, you may find you acted according to a belief that you weren’t aware of, … -- and so you specify yourself and improve your way of seeing/looking at things and perfect your skills of supporting another being as yourself. But the one point which is paramount, is to in every moment check and cross-reference your course of actions/decisions within yourself, within your own self-honesty. To have that relationship of engagement with yourself where you check every point to ensure that you are in fact parenting in awareness, that you are in fact in every moment being the directive principle, that you have in fact checked the foundation of your decision and that you can stand by it – to not leave a moment up to ‘automated parenting’ where you’re just acting and directing things from a starting point of ‘what you think’ you should be doing, where you haven’t actually investigated the basis of what you are doing or merely acting/playing out a pattern not really knowing why or how you could improve it. These are the ‘danger traps’, where if you leave the directive seat within yourself for a moment, and kind of ‘sit back and relax’ within yourself and act/live/guide according to how you feel, how you are experiencing yourself and the things that pop-up in your head: those are the moments where you are stunting your own self-expansion, your own potential and directly stunt and diminish your child’s self-development and expression. And this is about the 'hardest' part of being a parent - to keep pushing and moving yourself to be in the directive seat, to move and live in awareness - to make that decision to live and create a reality for yourself where you're the one checking and directing things, and to move and keep your feet out of the mind's reality: over and over again until one day there is only one reality as the one where you're constantly in awareness and the directive principle in every single moment.

This blog is a continuation and extension of:




When I first found out that I was pregnant and was going to have a child in the near future – my eyes went wide open at the thought of "I am going to be a mother”.

I hadn’t really looked at or contemplated the point of being/becoming a mother or investigated what it really means to ‘be a mother’. So when I looked at the point of ‘being a mother’, I was still looking and accessing an idea/construct outside of myself where ‘being a mother’ means ‘so and so’ and ‘mothers do this and that’ where being a mother was like pulling on a suit/playing a character with a set script; and where I was essentially looking at becoming this other person because I don’t really know what to do with a child/baby, but this ‘mother character’ does!

So with being faced with the new point and stepping into the unknown – I immediately accessed a point of having no self-trust. Where I am aware that I am stepping into something new, fear that I will ‘not get it right’/make mistakes – immediately lose all trust within myself and reach outside of myself for a structure/direction to ‘tell me what to do’.

I didn’t yet see and realise that nothing was really changing. I mean, yes, things were changing in that my physical reality was going to be a whole lot different and my responsibilities would need to adapt to this new situation – but in terms of ‘who I was’ and ‘who I was going to be required to be’ – this would not need to change, as I would be taking the principles I stand by and work with into this new journey, and these principles = don’t change. So when I was looking at having to become this ‘whole other person’, this ‘mother’ – I for a moment completely abandoned my principles and was looking for someone/something outside of myself to prescribe my behaviour and how to go about this new situation, instead of simply trusting myself and walking the process moment by moment and falling back on my principles to ascertain for myself ‘what to do’ whenever a question would arise.

I then as I was pregnant worked with my ideas and beliefs around ‘being a mother’ so that I would be able to remove as much “disinformation” as I could for myself before actually being a mother, so that when the time comes, I would then be able to see more clearly what to do/how to approach things without these ideas/beliefs influencing my approach.

Here are some blogs I wrote at that stage in relation to my ideas/beliefs/memories connected to ‘being a mother’: