Let me introduce you to a new Substack offering from Simply Sarah – an unfurling wonder to behold!
Sarah is a single Mom, having sort-of-recently adopted a young girl with a highly volatile internal landscape, sculpted from a ‘troubled’ start in challenging circumstances. Enter Sarah… bringing courage, compassion and new hope to a young girl in desperate need of it all.
I encourage you to visit Simply Sarah and watch – as it unfolds – what it takes to be a powerful presence (i.e. parent) in her young daughter’s Life, recognizing that she cannot give what she does not have. With that, Sarah claims her own evolution as the essential element in creating a safe space within which her daughter can reclaim hers. I stand in awe of Sarah and her willingness to do what it takes – and become who she must – in order to give her daughter a fighting chance at living a resourceful and meaningful life of her own.
At the very core of all our misery – intimate, local and global – is the essential process of parenting. That idea that a child requires a care-taking, guiding and nurturing presence in order to survive to a level of self-care that can, at the very minimum, ensure the continuation of breathing in and breathing out. Surely, we long for more for all of our collective children.
‘Parenting’ is not about people – it’s about a process that we seem unable or unwilling to recognize as the primary and fundamental force that shapes culture; that locks in a ‘reality’ that few are ever able to see and asses let alone challenge. The power of this process as the undercurrent of shaping reality cannot be underestimated. And the damage done by immense power wielded by imperfect and (more often than not) deeply wounded and damaged people cannot be left unexamined.
Long ago, in my third book When the Horse Dies, Get Off… and Stop Dragging it Around, I was compelled to share thoughts on the power of the process of what we have labeled ‘parenting’. This cultural sacred cow is long overdue for scrutiny. Being willing to recognize that if I – as the ‘parent’ – am either unwilling or unable to take ownership of my own historical trauma, I am incapable of becoming the permission for my child to lay claim to their own unique and authentic expression of ‘being’. As we already know: our children do not do what we tell them to do – they do what we do.
Over these now 30+ years of engaging with others, I have repeated more times than I can remember: Your (fill in the blank…) clients/colleagues/children/students/patients/etc will never evolve beyond your own limitations. Why? Because you will not allow them to go where they need to go when your own fears prevent YOU from doing so. You will instead, redirect them in a way that feels safer to YOU… and potential is stifled.
Kudos to Simply Sarah for daring… for being willing to be powerful and vulnerable; to be willing and unsure; and to set the compass of inner truth in the direction of growth and evolution for herself and her young daughter. Already – together – they have become more.
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