atomic mama

Jon Kabat-Zinn, in Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, is encouraging me to think of parenting as if it were one long mindfulness meditation retreat. Parenting is perhaps especially suited to this due to its moments of stress, emotional hooks, and repetitive cycles. The idea is to act with intention and be aware of what’s going on, such that I don’t feel like some force outside myself is dragging me through the day against my will. Living every moment doesn’t necessarily mean enjoying every moment, but instead noticing it, accepting it for what it is, and then letting it go to move on to the next moment. This is incredibly challenging for someone as analytical as I am… someone who spends years in inner dialogue before making decisions. But because I have that tendency, by the time I do the thing, I waste time comparing the thing against my expectations of it and forgetting to actually experience it. I have been aware for some time now that this is not the way I want to go through my life, and it’s definitely not the way I want to parent.

So this is my work right now. Some moments are better than others, and I feel my awareness growing, which is encouraging. I am starting to notice when I’m looking at Lina through a lens of expectation instead of with clear eyes. I am starting to notice when imposing my will on her dominates our time together. (I often notice this because, thankfully, she fights it). Lina is strong and intense… and more like me than I’m truly comfortable with yet. She holds up a mirror that I’d rather not look into sometimes, but if I am to truly parent this child, I absolutely must look. I am stunned by how much I am learning from her, when I thought my feet were planted firmly in the role of teacher.

In Everyday Blessings, Kabat-Zinn explains, in true Buddhist fashion, that conflict arises out of expectation:

…if we can let go of our idea in such a moment of how things “should be,” and embrace how they actually are with this child; in other words, if we can remember that we are the adult and that we can look inside ourselves at that very moment and find a way to act with some degree of wisdom and compassion, and in the best interest of our child — then our emotional state and our choices of what to do will be very different, as will be the unfolding and resolution of that moment into the next. If we choose this path, she will have taught us something very important. She will have shown us how attached we can be to have things happen in a certain way, that our mind wavers when we are challenged, and that we have various choices available to us.

I knew I was bringing home a daughter, but I had no idea I was bringing home a little Zen Master to put me through my paces. So now I’ll finish this post and go on with my day, knowing that in order to be the wise adult, I must be the humble student.

Namaste, little Lina. Namaste.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 11:25 and is filed under stephanie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.