I’ve been on an incredible personal development journey intentionally for the past 4+ years.
What I am finding fascinating and extremely interesting is in fact how many of our beliefs can come from when we are younger and can be from 1 moment, memory or experience.
Ever since becoming a mom, I’ve learned more in life than my previous 25 years. My children truly have been my best teachers.
As I have been growing, my family has as well. Being more aware of our actions, being true to ourselves, honesty, trustworthy and just simply being authentic.
My children are much like me, like both my husband and I being empathetic and sensitive. As I clear negativity and dig deep to clear skme of my own belief patterns and negativity I can see them doing their own digging, which we help them through.
A couple instances have really stood out for me…
The weekend we moved into our home, our family dog, who had been by my side longer than my hubby, passed. He spent a couple days here with us before crossing the rainbow bridge. This was incredibly hard for me, and the emotions still can take over me. I was home alone with the kids when our old man was stuck on our deck from having multiple seizures. During a quiet moment I got the kids to go out and sit with him so I could take photos of our boy Elwood and his siblings. Our kids were almost 3.5 and almost 5… this exact moment and memory became concrete in our daughters memories of our dog Elwood. It became a very emotional and tragic experience for her that we did not even realize until years later. This exact moment is what she held on to, what she remembered as her first dog.
It wasn’t until I read it in one of her school projects and she drew a picture of their last photo together – in their jammies snuggling Elwood up on our red deck. A moment that at the time in my mind I was simply capturing the kids and their dog. A moment that has haunted her emotionally for years 😦
More recently with another school project our boy Elwood came up again… it broke my heart in two, however I was much more equipped to handle her emotional sadness and her anger towards not being able to remember him other than when he died because she was only 3…
Our daughter is now 10.5 and our son 12. This memory had been haunting her for over 7 years. This memory also hadn’t come up for more than a year…
What is interesting is we’ve been doing some oily energy cleansing in our home this past month which typically means things come to the surface for us to deal with – what we should do vs pushing down and ignoring.
When it came up this time she was prompted again during a school project to recall a memory. When I read what she had written my heart began to sink, but not for long. While consoling her I suggested we change this sad memory into something happy, which is exactly what I had to do for myself many years ago.
Yes our boy Elwood died after just being here for a couple days… but he moved here with us and knew we were happy and safe. He knew his time with us was coming to an end and it was time for us to remember all our happy times with our Elwood and trust that he is now happy and healthy himself. He knew we were ready to open our hearts to a new puppy for all of us to grow with and love because just days after our boy Elwood crossed our boy Becker was born.
As a child she was unsure how to handle these emotions. She worried that ‘forgetting’ of him and being happy to have a new dog meant she didnt love our Elwood, which of course as an adult we know is not true.
This. This exact example is how easy it is for a memory to suddenly become a belief and become hardwired in our minds.
Another example of my amazing daughter is from back in Kindergarten… so approx 6 years ago when her teacher brought in pumpkin muffins from a store. She had a reaction after eating these muffins and has avoided anything pumpkin ever since. This week my mom made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and offered them to the kids to try… they both LOVED them!
When I told her that I had good news that she wasn’t allergic to pumpkin she was ecstatic! She never was allergic however she had a reaction that put fear in her mind and thus she never touched it again. She had a similar experience with bacon, that was a bit chewy and she choked on. Both situations her feelings were validated and understandable. We never pushed her to make her eat anything she didn’t want to. However she quickly did realize bacon is absolutely amazing when cooked properly haha!
Another example was one teacher told her they couldn’t use the word “perfect” because nothing is perfect… I will be honest when she told me this, I pushed back and my response to my hubby was, why don’t they see how their words DO affect children so very much. For a long time if we used the word perfect we got told we couldn’t… simply because one teacher and her belief told the students that. Is the teacher wrong, no because that was her belief. My point is that it’s this simple for something to be concrete in a child’s mind.
When you choose what your belief’s are, regardless of anyone else’s you can change your life. An empowering part of raising kids. We aren’t raising kids to be identical copies of their parents, they are their own true soul’s who need to discover who they really are. As their parents, we can empower them and guide them to discover their own voice. To question and ask why. To research and discover more. To truly be themselves no matter what and not “because I said so”.
Your Life As Art Essentials 