My experience working with clients in my nursing practice for the last 14 years, is that people are fervently seeking healing. People want to feel more energetic, have less pain, worry less and have greater inner peace. Out of this burning need for health, people seek a cure from their healthcare providers. They want the right diagnosis, the right pill, the right quick-fix.
And I have to admit that I have a lot of my career being very invested in matching this burning need to be fixed by urgently trying to “fix” others. There was a time when I was much to invested in my identity as a healer, both to the detriment of my energy and the detriment of my client’s sovereignty.
This happens for a lot of highly sensitive folks. With our innate gifts of empathy and compassion possibly combined with upbringings of emotional caretaking of other adults, it can be a natural choice to desire to be the fixer and the rescuer.
This comes up in parenting as well. When our children are born and we are faced with the enormous task of attuning to and responding to all of their infant needs, this pattern of being the all-knowing fixer and helper can take over.
But here’s the thing, this approach to parenting is actually disempowering for ourselves and our children alike. Because parents are not a child’s healer or saviour. As parents, we are simply the conduit for growth and maturation. The safe resting place for exploration and expansion of their heart’s desires and life’s path. Just as I cannot take away my clients’ mental or emotional loads, we as parents cannot protect our children from the suffering and lessons of life.
But we can light the path that leads to lightening the loads of life.
In medicine, my clinical diagnosis is helpful in identifying a path for healing but it does not mean I take responsibility for the suffering associated with that diagnosis. What I can do, is accompany my clients in their suffering and find pathways towards ease.
And so it is in parenting. We can share the lessons we’ve learned from life. We can trust our inner wisdom and share it with our children. We can model integrity and compassion and love. But we can’t take away the pain of life.
And the ultimate, divine goal of parenting does not become to save and protect but rather to deeply know our children. To compassionately listen. To guide in a non-intrusive way. To seek the answers to our own life’s problems and to trust that they will figure out theirs.
Yes, we provide routine and boundaries, limits and structure.
Yes, we show them that sometimes they need to do things they don’t want to because of greater responsibilities.
Yes, we coddle them and snuggle them and protect them.
But ultimately, we trust them and their path and we stay close, always holding a willing, loving lamp to light the way.
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