A Tidbit from my Mother-Daughter Book

ENERGETIC CONNECTIONS WITH MY MOTHER

This book is my mother’s biggest fear. Why would she fear that her daughter would write an engaging, pioneering handbook about enhancing the mother-daughter connection? Shortly after I embarked upon a spiritual path, my mother confessed her fear: that I would discover she was a bad mom. Was she a bad mom? Well, that’s not exactly the point. The point is, she had an idea in her head that that’s what happens when people go to “therapy,” or do personal growth workshops. They discover bad parenting. But just to add to the fear that I’d discover she was a bad mom, here I am writing a book about…moms. So as she reads this, she is no doubt waiting for the part where it says she was a bad mom. There is evidence that our thoughts create our world. How disastrous that that fear of hers would be about to manifest…it could be in the next couple of paragraphs! I may be leading up to it now!

Can you see how a belief like that might color her experience? Of life, and of reading this book. Can you see how reading a book from a fearful place, or from a place of vigilance, would cause a feeling of contraction?

Just to liberate her right away, I will proclaim to the world: you were not a bad mom! Part of growing up and part of personal growth is looking back and seeing how our habits were formed so we can be aware and have choices.

And for all the rest of us, moms whose daughters are still growing avidly, I will proclaim: we are the perfect mom for the daughter we have.

The way my generation was parented was often based on a fear of authority. In reaction to that, there is a generation that has been parented from the opposite place, a place of child-led parenting—pleasing the child as opposed to doing the potential damage that the fear of authority clearly created.

And I would like to offer another option: yogic parenting. Conscious parenting. The premise is soul connection. The premise is that at the highest possible spiritual level, this child chose her parents precisely for what she’d get—and not get. And our responsibility is not to go on autopilot, not to unconsciously repeat what we were taught or told, or decide that pleasing the child is the less damaging, easier route. Our responsibility is to be conscious.

If both mother and daughter listen to their own inner voice, the highest voice that comes through at any given moment, we will be guided to a place that will be fulfilling for both of us.

Life is always changing, all around us. How do we handle that change, how do we adapt and enjoy? What messages do we send ourselves when our life does not seem to be flowing in our chosen direction? And on top of that, what do we do or say when our daughters’ lives are not flowing in their—or our—chosen direction?