Lately, I’ve been thinking about how I’ve changed as a parent, and in my parenting style, since completing grief recovery and certification.
Before grief recovery, particularly in the last five years, I recognize that the anger I’ve carried within me since childhood has often gotten the best of me. As a newer parent, when my children were young, the pressure of taking care of the kids in the day-to-day (often alone) was very isolating and overwhelming. It makes me sad that I don’t feel like I truly enjoyed those years as much as I could have. But, when your spouse’s job takes them away, often for days at a time, you don’t have time to dwell on such things. You simply carry the parenting torch sleep-deprived and, in my case, with anger, too.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for the parent left behind when their spouse deploys. I have much admiration for the parents that carry the parenting torch alone when their spouse deploys – which, comes too, with grief for all involved. And, I certainly have empathy when a parent is left to parent alone when it’s due to the death of their beloved.
What Grief Recovery Taught Me about Parenting
What I have come to know and learn through grief recovery work is we all, each and every one of us, carries our inner-child within us. And, we all carry the stories, bruises, hurt, sadness, etc. that we experienced in childhood, too. We learn at a young age how to cope, or rather, not cope, with all of our emotions. We will continue to parent our children in the present with a veil of sadness, anger, or hurt we carry unless we own and heal our inner-child. We will also teach from a place that lacks boundaries – because we teach what we know.
If we were raised by our parents getting anything and everything we wanted and never had to take responsibility for our actions, what are we learning? Similarly, what if we never had to experience consequences resulting from our behavior? Or, on the flip side, what if we’re raised by dictating, rigid, controlling parents? We, too, will raise our children this way. My point is, no matter which camp you were raised in, you likely have some grief as a result. Parents who bail out, excuse, and over-indulge likely didn’t share an emotional connection with their child – or didn’t know how; the important stuff was swept under the rug. On the flip-side, those who raise their children in a dictating, rigid, controlling way – likely, too, lack emotional connection with their child.
In full transparency, I fell into the camp of dictating and controlling and, until grief recovery, hadn’t recognized that’s what my parenting style had been. This parenting gig is the hardest job ever. By no means, are there any experts because we all learn along the way because, too, every child is different. The consequence of not connecting the dots of our inner-child wounds to our parenting style is that we will continue to raise our kids how we were taught. And, the vicious cycle will continue. The way we learned to process our emotions (or not deal them) as kids, has a direct impact on how we teach our children to deal with theirs.
Consequences of Not Healing Your Inner-Child
Rather than parenting to control, fix, serve, or dictate, we can learn how not to project our pain onto our kids. And instead, approach parenting from a place of connection and acceptance rather than who we think our kids should be. We are born perfect but along the way, we often learn we are less than. So, we do our damndest to become more than – prettier, skinnier, faster, smarter, etc., but often end up self-destructing because of the inner-child saying, “you’ll never measure up.”
Regardless of which way the pendulum swings for you, either way, you likely have self-worth issues. Either you’re always working to reach higher; be, have, do, and achieve more. Or, you’ve never actually believed you had potential in the first place (and did anyone encourage you), so why try?
Grief recovery has been a gift beyond my inner-child wounds; bringing to light the errors of my ways in parenting. It’s allowed me the necessary space to learn and grow and become emotionally healthier for me, so I can better connect and express myself toward my kids. I’ve quit saying, “I’m proud,” and instead of say, “you should be proud of yourself.” You may not think anything of that, but the truth of what you’re saying is that your child has the power to make you feel a certain way. Which, goes against a fact we already know: we are responsible for our own feelings, no one else.
It has been in learning to re-parent the inner-child within me that has helped me grow in my parenting style. I see things in my kids now that I don’t believe I noticed before. Our oldest, 14, is a deep thinker like myself, but he also has big emotions like I do, too. So, I’ve learned I need to remind him he’s responsible for those big emotions, no one else. Our middle, almost 13, has been more open about her feelings than before. I’ve been able to help her understand that our emotions have a direct impact on our bodies. She’s learned that the mind-body connection is a real thing, and I’ve felt more prepared to help her. It was through grief recovery, where I gained the same understanding. And, our youngest, 10, lights up when she’s sharing a story or personal experience, and she never leaves out any details. This has translated into my understanding that she also requires lots of more information to feel secure and confident in situations or in knowing what is happening next.
The amount of awareness grief recovery has brought me is more than I could ever possibly put into words. I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it, grief recovery is a gift you give yourself that will keep on giving. Our children were not given to us to fill some need or deficit in our lives. And if you think about it, that’s a lot of pressure to put on another human being. What we crave is the fundamental human need – connection. However, the first (and most important) connection we need to focus on is the one with ourselves. Everything else in our lives flows from that and any issues we encounter in our lives, parenting or otherwise, leads back to us – and our inner child.
All roads lead back to us. Always.
How can we learn to listen to our hearts and truly hear what they are trying to tell us?
Hello! The best way to tune into our heart and hear what it is trying to tell us is to quiet our monkey mind. Meditation, sitting/walking in nature, or journaling are great methods to tune in. 💛