Being real, connection and false self images

I realized something profound a few days ago- I have been inadvertently teaching my daughter to be false. I had a rough day with several crying jags and then the spine squeezing energies sucking the life out of me. I felt like I could  go crazy. WhenI picked my daughter up, she could tell I’d been crying. I admitted I had been crying which is progress. In the past I’d try to deny it. But then later I realized I didn’t want her to see me actually cry and I had to ask myself why? I recognized that I had a belief that parents shouldn’t allow their children to see their "negative" emotions. WHAT?!?!? Where does that nonsense come from? I was taught that, but it makes no sense. When I really stopped and took a look at it, I realized my example was saying the "darker" emotions are to be hidden which suggest they are bad. I realized how indoctrinated I was into being “nice” and I was inadvertently passing that toxic belief on. 

When I understood what I’d been doing to her and how it would harm her, I changed my behavior. I told her I need to take some time in my bedroom to cry before dinner. I asked her for a hug. She refused. I accepted that without any hesitation and went and cried. She ended up crawling in to bed with me and hugging and kissing me. It was one of the most nourishing experiences of unconditional love I have ever known. It was so unbelievably healing. 

Don’t we all just want a hug and a kiss, the certainty that someone cares deeply about our well-being? Why do we say that parents should never have any needs when it comes to their children? That is unnatural. Of course, it is one thing to parentify a child, expect them to take care of you, to meet your needs. It is another to allow them to see we are human and that we have all the emotions they do. This models for them that all emotions are important. There are appropriate and inappropriate ways to express them yet all emotions are acceptable. They are what keeps us real and show us our values and beliefs, reveal to us the consequences of our thoughts. They are our guidance system.

Who taught us to teach our children to stuff their "negative" feelings? This is where our false self images come from which lead to so much pain. And this is what I was doing supposedly for my child’s  benefit? Whoa! I can’t believe I fell for it for so long. Our emotions just are, they are neither good or bad. They reveal our internal landscape.

I just got a great book called Don’t  Be Nice, Be Real, by Kelly Bryson. Apparently the Universe has decided it is time for me to wake up. In my desire to get away from codependency I have trying to convince myself I have no needs. Absurd! My greatest need is for connection. It is just a question of where does connection come from? Before I tried to connect outside to feel connected on the inside. Now I know I need to self connect first before I can authentically, without manipulation, without making demands instead of requests, connect on the outside. If I seek fulfillment on the outside first, I am a puppet to the other person, a beggar waiting to see how this person responds so I can feel connected.  Dangerous. Yet I swung from one polarity to the other, from being totally needy to trying to be totally independent. Of course we are interdependent. Without my relationships, my life would be empty. I tried to tell myself I need nothing outside. WRONG. We all have universal needs for peace, equality, joy, love, meaning, connection

I know for sure that I have needed to use special relationships to ladder myself up to the point where I had enough internal mojo to take over for myself, to belief that I am enough, to begin to truly see my own magnificence and unlimitedness. While I have been cursing special relationships because I must break away from them now, I’d never have gotten here without them. So when I see others still caught in the web of specialness, I need to get out of judgment and know that their soul knows where it needs  to take them. Our greatest task as a human being is to truly love. We must do whatever it take to get there. So forgive me for my harangue against specialness. Because my eyes are newly opened to the cost, I have been disgusted and almost nauseous as I see what I have done to gain approval and acceptance and as I witness others do the same. How silly. It is so human and so necessary until it isn’t. So now I must get off my knees and yet ask to be humbled, to return to the soil of my own being, to free myself from the belief that I am nothing without the love and approval of another. And I must respect that no one else is ready to see that until they are. So it goes. Another error to correct. Ah well...

P.S. Feels to me like another energy surge yesterday. I feel fabulous and giggled my way through the day. My day was so delightful. I still can hardly believe how rapidly I can swing from heaven to hell and back again in the blink of an eye.