Your children know what you hope they don’t.
So many of us like to believe that our children don't know what we don’t want them to know.
But they always do.
And deep down, deep deep down, we know that they do.
But. We choose to ignore what we know in favour of the illusion of what we think could be (but we know: isn't). Crazy making stuff, the la-la land of pretend …
To make the secrets and lies become not-that, we pretend our children don’t know what they know, don’t see what they see, don’t experience what they experience.
So we silence ourselves from owning the truth inside ourselves, and in the process we silence our children from even being willing to go there (never mind able to, since, you know...monkey see, monkey do aka modeling is our greatest teacher).
In that nanosecond where the child notices the inauthentic response demanded of them, a lifelong double bind emerges. And just like that, in the a glimpse of an eye, the animating Life-Force that fuels their Joy dissolves …
That's the parenting gift that keeps on giving when we parent habitually.
Our children are brilliant …
You see, when our children feel unsafe to own the truth of their experience (because the adults around them are not there — you know, lights on nobody home), they spend their whole lives not noticing all the ways in which they silence their internal cues in favour of protecting the illusion of some "other".
Initially, the "other" is their same-gender caretaker.
Then it becomes their partner.
Then they pass the gift on to their children, who pass it to their children, who pass it to their children ...
This is the process of normalizing secrets and lies as the process to live their life from. With boundaries lacking, all that’s now available to them is manipulation...
Until one day, a brave soul awakens to who and what they are, and they mindfully and intentionally sever the illusions, one at a time, and integrate their innate Truth.
And, it is not enough to awaken once; to stay awake, we must be willing to engage the process of Self (Truth)-discovery over and over and over again, because the bulshit and lies we have been fed intergenerationally seem to have no end.
The process of awakening and reclaiming is evergreen. It must be. Life is in flow; never stagnant. There isn't a singularity of Truth; Truth is evolving.
It isn't easy to unapologetically perpetually pattern-interrupt the infinite tenants of the insufferable cycle of intergenerational violence. That's for fucking sure.
Which is why so few people actually fully and continuously surrender to "breaking" their habits and making considered and congruent choices, instead.
Intentional living in alignment of our internal Truth is not for the faint of heart.
And from where I stand, living the lie and pretending it ain't so is THE thing that's killing women, and their daughters.
That is precisely how predation continues to win … and women are the ones who let it happen.
