9:46pm Sunday 6th July, 2014
I wanted a night off from the messages; more specifically I wanted this night off from the messages. I had become accustomed to them emerging at all times of the day and night – when I was meant to be sleeping, when I was trying to enjoy a shower, when I was…well you get the idea….just about everywhere and anywhere I would receive messages. And for the most part I embraced it.
I learned to have a pen and paper at the ready wherever I went. I even thought of a new invention “The Shower Whiteboard – where creativeness meets cleanliness!” This handy little device would allow you to write messages while you were in the shower but then I realised it had a fundamental flaw in that the water would just wash the messages away. Maybe it required special ink or a special whiteboard. Anyway, I digress; the point is that tonight I wanted a break. I wanted to feel what I was going through in my own way without having to write about it. But as I’ve discovered lately, my Spirit takes over and I’m magnetised to write, as if I’m in a trance. I can’t fight it anymore, so I don’t.
So here I am and I’ve spent the best part of my evening consoling my 4 ½ year old son, Leo, who is feeling deeply the effects of our recent move from our old home on the coast nearly six hours away. In the move, he has left the house he grew up in, his pre-school, his friends, and most of all he is missing his Grandma and Poppy who he is very close to. He even lost his Buzz Lightyear in the move (well that’s what we told him after we discovered we accidentally-on-purpose gave it to charity…there’s only so many times you can hear “to infinity and beyond!”) But now even that was coming back to bite us after he was becoming so home-sick and he had developed a clinginess to his possessions to provide himself comfort and security. People had said to me on numerous occasions “kids are resilient, at this age they don’t really have strong friendships anyway”. I do believe kids are resilient but they also have feelings. They are more in-tune with their feelings than I think we adults give them credit for. And they do form strong connections with people. A move, like the one we have just undertaken, has an effect on adults – why don’t we think it would affect our kids too?
Call me naive, delusional or just in denial but I really felt as though he wouldn’t get to the point where he would say with tears streaming down his face “Mum, I want to go home!”
I wanted to ask myself “what can I do for him to help heal his pain?” and instead my Spirit was guiding me to ask “how can I show him how to heal his pain?”
And I know at one point during the night when I was holding his hand trying to comfort him to sleep, and he was holding in his other hand the pink rose quartz crystal I had given him, I began contemplating (if only for a nano-second or two), to not pursue this blog. That maybe in light of what was happening this wasn’t the ‘right’ time to pursue my own passions when it was glaringly obvious that my kids still needed me around the clock.
But instinctively I knew that was not an option for me. When I posed that question “how can I show him how to heal his pain?” I immediately saw myself doing the things I love, which in turn switched to a vision of me spending time with him and I was happy because I was fulfilled and I could see on his face he was happy too. In fact, in part, I could recognise that doing this personal project was essential to the solution. And that’s exactly how I’ll help him through this, by being a positive role model and showing him what life is all about; how to enjoy the ups and how to grow through the downs.
Through this experience, I became more aware that I need to demonstrate to him that there is a time to follow your dreams (which this blog represents for me), there’s a time to be with your kids – playing, having fun – and there’s a time for all the other stuff we do. But the key here is whatever we are doing at the time to give if it our 100%, to give the moment our presence and consciousness, anything else just isn’t true living.
I had done everything I could over the past few weeks and especially over the past few days, as I could sense his anxiety levels rising. When he had come into our bed in the middle of the night (which was very uncharacteristic of him), I let him sleep next to me. I had comforted him when I could tell he was sad. I validated his feelings and told him that what he was going through was ok. I had reassured him he was safe, loved, and that in time he would enjoy it here; that he wouldn’t miss his old home anymore. When he admitted he missed his Grandma and friends, we skyped. I had saged his room, given him homeopathic drops, and conducted energy healings at the appropriate times with his consent.
Now I’m sure that if I hadn’t taken those actions (which were guided by Spirit), he would’ve felt more distraught. And in the very least it showed him I validated his feelings by not sweeping them under the carpet. Instead, he could see I was trying to do all that I could to support and nurture him through a difficult time. There is definitely a place for doing whatever it is you are doing when it comes to your children. You don’t need to explain or justify to anyone or yourself – and sometimes there’s no words for it anyway – it is simply a knowing of what you need to do. It did reach a point for me, after trying lots of remedies, that I acknowledged that he just needed to feel whatever he was going through for himself.
It was only earlier today that I was confiding in a good friend about Leo’s recent homesickness and how regardless of what he was going through I felt strongly about kids feeling the full range of emotions and experiences and here I was essentially getting the chance to practice what I preached.
He’s sleeping soundly now and while I didn’t feel like writing, already it has been cathartic for me to get my own emotions out. I’ll admit it, when my son told me he wanted to go home; we both had a good cry in each other’s arms.
If only I could explain to him what I believe in – that Home is not a place – at least not in the bricks and mortar sense, but the real Home is your Source, your Spirit, your light inside – oh and by the way – that you’re already there.
That will be a conversation for another day.
