"I truly thought that if I let my children know that they were treasured and
helped them make decisions for themselves and taught them, by example, how
to be compassionate toward others, that they would have flawless self
esteem, firm self confidence, select good partners, make wise decisions,
find fulfilling jobs, and generally have mostly trouble-free lives....but
they tell me about
feeling incompetent, they have not yet found the "right" jobs, they don't
accept criticism without great pain, and they doubt their abilities. They
are not trouble free."
Speaking as one who was similarly raised and who tried to similarly mother,
and as the mother of at least one (of my 3) young adult child who is almost
exactly like me, I feel qualified to say that a trouble-free life is often
over-rated as a goal!
My mother always wondered why I made everything so HARD for myself. I wonder
the same about my daughter. I have always made decisions that have made my
life more difficult; my life as a teen and adult *has* been difficult, as a
direct result of choices I made. But it has also been intense and engaging
and joyful, and I wouldn't trade it for a more placid easier existence for
anything!
Raising my children, I've been able to see that, from her first days of
life, the daughter who's "just like me" just came into this world like that;
she is an examiner of everything, she spares herself no pain in her quest to
understand and master and experience life. She was an intense baby, and now
she's an intense young woman. For her, as for me, the journey is the thing,
and the goal is not to have a neat-looking life but to live from her Truth.
And Truth is not usually trouble-free, at least IME.
As a baby, Elizabeth was referred to as "She Who Will Not Be Moved", the one
who never accepted a bottle in her life, who, if a seam in her clothing was
irritating her could not be pawned off with stop-gap comfort measures, who
was fully capable of making her displeasure known till hell froze over or
the problem was fixed (whichever came first). Who HAD to do it herself
("self" as a verb was one of her very first words). Who in school just
wouldn't do a stupid assignment, or hand in work she considered flimsy, but
was completely happy to do much harder but more "meaningful" assignments or
to make her case for her position, before the school board if necessary.
(And nearly didn't graduate from high school - which bothered her not a
fig!)
In many ways, I've had to be a different mother to Elizabeth than to my
other two. As I watch her struggle and deliberately put obstacles in her own
way, I have come to appreciate my own propensity for "making everything so
hard", and, seeing her strength as she works out her life, to appreciate my
own. And if my life hasn't usually been easy, it's clearly been ZESTY!
Well, anyway, it's made me wonder if children like her do not in fact
*experience* things more intensely, right from the start. Both pain and
pleasure. (She was my heartiest, must gusto-displaying, nurser too.)It's not
that they over-react, but that they react in proportion to what they
experience. For example, I have at times been unable to work because of a
migraine that started as an uncomfortable place in my sock or some totally
trivial (to others) little thing; when I am in pain, I CAN'T function, and
pain seems to be provoked by things that many others take in stride. BUT I
also have more FUN than most people I know - because I see to it that I do!
All part of the same picture.
Cathy B.
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