Journey to a New Life

If I look at all the knowledge and information published on the internet, books, magazines, tv – there is so much information out there; that if you’d bring all this information together and study it as a subject, it would be just as massive, complex, and full of conflicting schools of thought as any other big subject out there, say Politics and Economics.

With any topic in these disciplines, for every ‘right’ someone states, another will claim it is ‘wrong’.

Me, being the reading type – I read a lot and am aware of a lot of the information existent with regards to many parenting topics. This makes me awfully aware of all the ‘right’ and ‘wrongs’ – and how everything which is a ‘right’ in some circles, turns out to be a ‘wrong’ in other circles.

When I was in school and a student, I wanted to do ‘right’ and ‘be a good student’, as a way to please everyone around me. At least, that was easy – simply copy/paste information from books into your brain, when time comes cut and paste on test. Making friends and being liked? Look at what the popular kids are doing, copy/paste – done deal. The expectations from my environment were clear-cut and so easy to determine what my course of action should be, to meet those expectations.

Within parenting, I saw and am still seeing this exact same dynamic play out. I am still looking to please everyone around me, I’m still wanting to do ‘the right’ and be a ‘good mother’. With parenting, this gets tricky, because there are many different types of schools, as schools of thought. What’s the right answer for one, is the wrong in another. Within my head, this then makes a ‘good mother’ to one, and a ‘bad mother’ to another. With this, I often come to a point of being really conflicted inside myself and how and what I do with my son, because I each time I do something, I trace it to ‘all the information I have read’, remember all the different views and opinions – and in the end I could be both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Then I wonder, shit, what’s other people going to think of me? Should I have done the other thing? But maybe that one is wrong too??

When I hold on to all this information in my head, I quickly accumulate a breakdown. Because whatever I do, whatever move I make, whatever direction I take with my child – it’s always going to be wrong in someone’s eyes. I simply can’t make everyone happy.

So then I move myself to let go of all the knowledge and information, and respond moment by moment. But then here, I notice, I am still in tension, because even though I am now listening to myself, I’d still reaaaaallyy would like to find out, as soon as possible, if what I did was indeed a proper move. Was it conductive to his personal growth and development? Which is not something I can just find out, right after the deed is done. Children grow up very slow – where animals tend to take months rather than years; children take a long time to grow and develop. The effects of a decision you’ve made and follow through on, may only much later surface to provide you feedback.

I noticed that I don’t like this; that I very much would like to know, or have someone tell me that ‘everything’s okay’ and that ‘I’m doing a good job’. Only time will tell.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to be a ‘good mother’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to know what a ‘good mother’ looks like, and what she does, so I can closely follow those guidelines to feel safe inside myself that I am doing good and doing the right thing

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear ‘doing wrong’ and someone telling me that I am ‘doing the wrong thing’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to be right, regardless of the nature of the content of what it is I have to do, to ‘be right’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have trained myself to follow guidelines to the T so I can be ‘right’ and a ‘good girl’ – without ever really investigating or critically going over the guidelines I am following as the content I am absorbing and implementing, what their implications and consequences are – where I did not care/bother about any of that, as long as I would be able to get my stamp of approval that I am “right” and “being a good girl”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to only ever follow instructions and do what other people tell me to do so I can receive a stamp of approval and within that experience myself as “safe” inside myself, where I can now ‘relax’ – knowing that I am standing in everyone’s good graces and that no-one will be mad at me

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be in constant anxiety in relation to parenting and taking care of another life as myself, because no-one can give me definitive stamp of approval, because nowhere in this world have we ever really investigated what it means to bring up a child in this world in a way that is best for all, we’ve all just been following instructions as the structure of the system established, follow those guidelines no matter what, never question if our actions produce results which are best for all life

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live in anticipation of someone calling me out and telling me I am doing it all wrong, within having made the conscious decision to not follow mainstream parenting – where I fear I made a mistake by ‘stepping out of the box’ and that any moment someone’s going to call me out and be mad at me for the decision I made

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be uncomfortable within exploring and walking unchartered territory for myself, believing I MUST have a proper, clear cut plan, worked out to the T that I can follow to ensure NO mistakes can happen

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself for not having a plan

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I am irresponsible within not having a plan

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the day that I will have to answer to ‘the world’ about the decisions I have made

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have separated the world from myself, where I have to be okay and accountable to myself – always

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to step out of doing right/wrong – as its not about doing the right or wrong as an external label outside of myself, but about checking in with myself, seeing who I am in the moment, and moving myself to always direct/move from a starting point as self and not as mind/energy

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself tor the friction and tension I face inside myself within my parenting journey

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise I have never in my life been in a position to make major decisions about myself and my life, where I merely ever did with others told me to do without question

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I never developed personal self-responsibility inside and as myself as I only ever followed instructions given out by others as to how things are done and simply having to follow what is laid out to me

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to long for the experience of security I experienced back when I did not have to make any major decisions for myself or for another

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that my experience of security was not so much an experience of security but an accepted and allowed experience of ignorance is bliss

I commit myself to unconditionally walk and explore my parenting journey

I commit myself to when and as I find myself going into fear of doing the right or wrong thing, to take a deep breath and step back within myself. Instead of associating information with right/wrong labels, I look at my actions, who I am within them, what consequences/outflows they could create and asses myself and my direction based on that

I commit myself to when and as I judge myself for experiencing conflict and friction within my parenting, to remind myself that I have never been in such a position before, that I have never really walked anything for myself, that I have never really created anything for and as myself – and that within learning and walking something new, there’s going to be friction and conflict within the process of letting go of the old and inviting and creating the new