Detached from Nature

I was walking along thinking how detached I am from nature and the seasons. It is so easy to forget that the world has a rhythm and so do we as humans to. It is autumn and the leaves are dropping and it almost feels like I'm ready to slow down, getting ready to fatten up and hibernate in the coming cold weather.

Even food should follow seasons. Eggs naturally aren't available all year - strawberries, peppers, even apples aren't annually grown. So I have started again with an organic vegetable and fruit box. Now we can only ear what is in season and grown locally.

One thing is got sure, I won't miss returning all the unnecessary wrapping the supermarkets toxify my produce with for no apparent reason.. Yes, I do that.

Cutest baby moment of the day: My girls clapping hands at eachother and giggling!

Making things Simple

On reflection I wonder if my family's beliefs that academic intelligence and education are actually damaging. I've grown up feeling not good enough or feeling superior at times, both ugly experiences.

As I watched my son - his simplicity is so beautiful and I wonder why we spend life making everything so complicated? As if by building this bank of false beliefs about what we need and should or shouldn't do we're somehow successful or important? I've been running around thinking I have to do this, decide where we'll live, when we'll go, how we'll sell the house and what to do because we cannot afford it. I've created so much stress and pain and yet our situation remains the same.

I definitely need to watch my son and baby girls - let them guide me, teach me how to be in the here and now.

Favourite child magic moment of the week: we went for a walk and our son kept walking ahead, he'd scrutinise a stick, murmur to himself, drop it and find another. After a while he turned around and said "none of these have my name on? Where is my stick?". It took me a while to realise when we got there my husband had said "bet there is a big stick here with your name on it!"

A Beautiful Poem

On Children Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Parenting for a Peaceful World

I have been reading Robin Grilles book - Parenting for a Peaceful World. It covers the history of parenting, how they have been raised through the ages and the building research about how important parenting is in shaping children into adults and society overall.

This book was really to read in its content, but not so easy on my emotions. Some parts were hard to read because they are so raw,uncomfortable in terms of how children have been treated historically, but then as we got into the last 100 years and present day and emerging parenting methods - I felt an impending guilt, self -disgust and  pressure to really do better.

One part, I don''t know exactly how it was put, describes how even the best mothers, those with the most loving intentions, become abusive if they do not have any support. That really hit me. I am not saying I am a child abuser - but okay I am actually. Because in term of how I want to parent my children, my ideals, I am abusive. I really do know better but I find it so impossible because I am unsupported, overburdened and lonely. I am not a victim, not anymore because I am going to change the situation. I don't need to live like this to be at my family's pleasure so they can "pop in" and see a grandchild and then go off to live their "own life".

Looking at how authoritarian parents use guilt, control, manipulation to control - I can see why I have been mindwashed to try to please everyone (up until recently) and now understand the overwhelming guilt, self hatred and shame I feel when I even THINK about doing something my old family don't approve of. I guess if you are brought up to be judged and blamed and evaluated, that is how you think to treat everyone, including yourself. You can imagine our family converstaions - you should do this, you shouldn't do that... so painful and negative.

Something to mull over - I'll keep reading this book however painful I find it. If it didn't ring true it wouldn't hurt so bad, and I think if I face it I can change it.

A poem by Mary Haskell that I have been thinking of in the last few days  - great fridge poetry for parents:

"Nothing you become will disapoint me; I have no preconception that I'd like to see be or do. I have no desire to forsee you, only to discover you. You cannot disappoint me"