Coming to conscious awareness

As time goes by, and if you are even mildly reflective, patterns emerge in your life. Questions rise up. You can find yourself requiring answers.

It can take decades potentially for consciousness of a pattern to occur. I think little niggles and doubts and concerns can be present but we are ingenious in the way we repeatedly squash them down.

One day, we find that it is all starting to make some sense. We have enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to start to see a picture. It's at this time that we might furiously look around for the last missing pieces. That's what I did.

Once one piece emerged and then another I became indefatigable in my attempts for a complete picture. My insistence paid off. I have a full picture and I'm in the healing and moving on process.

This is not to say that I don't make errors still because when you are around certain personality types they have a way of being triggered such they can act their most wounded selves at a moment's notice. There is no telling what might set them off, how they might hear and interpret your (innocent) words.

Someone said to me recently that they admired the fact that I had a irrepressible sense of humor about the circumstances of my life.

I don't ever think I've lost that sense that even the most damaged and difficult of people are multi-dimensional people. Nobody wants to be seen as a condition, or a victim, and those I have known and loved, as flawed as their behavior might be, are all good people at their core. Nobody asks for parents who are incapable of parenting in a good-enough fashion, or for childhood experiences which cut across the sense of self.

It might be excruciatingly difficult for them to overcome what has happened to them, the changes in the brain, probably impossible, but they have all had good and kind qualities. I never forget this. Never.

So long as I can be insulated from the toxicity through methods of self-love, not relying on  or expecting reciprocity, then I can hold onto feelings of unconditional love for them. I can't have the sort of relationship I'd ideally love to have with them, but I don't stop thinking of them with great affection.

When children comes into the world they expect, demand, that their primary caregivers unconditionally love them. That's their right as human defenseless babies with hard wired personalities.

Alas, optimal parenting isn't necessarily available to some people and the child is unable to construct an integrated self.  The parent(s) liked some qualities - abilities in the classroom or on the sporting field perhaps - but they despised  the vulnerabilities and certain expressed feelings; aspects of the children's personality that didn't serve their parents well.

Vulnerable feelings that were expressed by such children, but unwanted by parents who insisted that the child esteem them, created a false self. It's this false self that is protected with every fiber of some people's being throughout their lives. It's this false sense that demands that anyone that comes close to breaking into this false self must be torn apart and chewed up.

It seems to be the case that I was born with a remarkable degree of maternal love. It's not just children but adults too. I see into the damaged soul of some adults and I see a child that needs love. I seek to heal. It's this 'weakness' of mine that can, and has, caused me so much grief.

Now that I know exactly what I am dealing with I am less and less hurt every day by any arrows thrown in my direction. I've an acute sense of what is indeed going on, and I side step rather than duck these days. I do what I can where I can.

However, I no longer believe in miracles, or that I have love enough to offer such that I can save every situation. I'm no saint, can't walk on water; can't change what happened way back when. I do my best.  I'm satisfied with that now.

Considering the future

We tend to have our own individual versions of how to make a better world. I think that relates to how we see the world and how we see ourselves. The more extroverted, global thinkers tend to take the political track. I don't dismiss that as a powerful course of action...best funding for good quality day care, tax incentives for families, access to excellent education for all children and so on.

In my case, I continue to believe that it starts with the children, at the grassroots level. You can have all the policies in the world about children and for children but if they are neglected by their parents, you have a real problem. The simple fact is that parents need to spend time with their children, listening to them and talking to them. It is a basic and fundamental right of children that they have the attention of their parents and that they are given permission to be themselves and to be accepted as their authentic selves.

I spent the day with my daughter yesterday, a treat for me since she has a very busy life. Over lunch she talked of wanting a family soon. She's a teacher. She can neither afford, nor wants to give up her career completely, but having seen children in child care situations at school she doesn't really want that for her children. Most of the people at school with children of their own have grandparents involved with child care, she says.

'Well, I'm good for a day a week,' I told her.
'But, it's a long way to come,' she said.
'Well, I can manage. And, I wouldn't just stay at home. I'd take the child/children to the park or to a music group or to a movement class, or for a picnic, or to the library. We'd get out and do things; have experiences.'

You see, I don't like the thought of my young grandchildren in child minding situations either. If I have oodles of them, well, then I have to help  find the best child care, but I don't think I will have oddles of them and not all at once.

A step-brother of my husband has a 14 month old and last weekend I could have scooped him up a hundred times and smothered him in kisses; breathed in his scent. But, that's not how he wanted to interact with me, preferring to study me; to hold one of my fingers or gaze into my eyes, or hold my necklace. He wanted to be held and touched by his mother and his father, mostly.

 I'm just so darn ready to interact with a little being again, but I had to hold back. The older kids (6 and 4) wanted to chat and that's fun too. Funny how the 6 year old went to each person for something different. He's desperate for my older son to rouse him up; hold him upside down; scare him.

If kids experience neglect, for whatever reason, fantasy becomes more important to them than reality, because the brain does that; creates in some way a place where the need is fulfilled. Too much time alone as a child and the early opportunities to relate to people are taken away, making fantasy seem soothing; changing the way the mind feels and keeping the fantasy alive as a joyful and soothing experience.

This feeling about fantasy can be taken into adulthood making them vulnerable in their relationships. It's not at all a good outcome and what we don't want as a society is a society of adults who are trying to overcome the neglect of their childhood. People wonder about the 'bout' of narcissism these days, but it didn't just arrive out of nowhere.

It's strange too how some people think being there is parenting when what parenting really is is being present for the child in a mindful way. Like, stop what you are doing and listen; really listen. That is important to do at any age. That's the best present you can give: your time.

In my opinion the damage of early neglect has far more palpable repercussions than anything else. I don't dismiss the danger of a narcissistic, self-involved President, or of a culture that praises possession over the more meaningful aspects of life. However, there are billions of people in the world who come into the world individually, dependent on those who brought them into the world. The real power lies in individuals taking that responsibity very seriously.

Imagine if we put the focus on the children. Imagine the world then.