Challenges of Being the Parent Who Ends Cycles
Exploring family beliefs, behaviors, patterns, and how to hold space for our kids to grow.
No one gives you a handbook when you have kids. So as parents we make mistakes, we learn, we (hopefully) grow. Quite often we start off raising our kids in a similar fashion to how we were raised, which was based off how our parents were raised. This might include some not so healthy beliefs, behaviors, and unconscious patterns. But, as society has programmed us, we must just keep going and do whatever is thrown out to us as “proper parenting” for our generation. Right? Wrong.
The more I dive into ancestral lineage healing, family patterns, beliefs, behaviors, and traumas, the more I question WHY we continue to do the things we do as parents. And as humans as well, without questioning why we do the things we do. The more I explore how I have parented at each stage of my children’s lives and compare that to how society tells us we should parent, I realize I may have done some things wrong. Or at least wrong based on the person and parent I am now. Is there really a “right” and “wrong” or is it all based on our soul’s journey to learn and have certain experiences so we grow?
Many of us who study our ancestors lives came here to end toxic, negative, traumatic, and harmful family patterns and cycles. Many of us knew this from a young age. We may have even uttered the words, ‘I never want to be like my mom/dad, or raise my kids, the way my mom/dad did…..’ We realize though that sometimes we do behave like our parents or whomever we have decided we didn’t want to be like. Even I’m guilty of this as I simulatenously strive to end cycles, do my inner work, connect more deeply with my ancestors and just let my family members be who and where they are on their journeys. It’s not always easy.
Parenting Changed in 2020
When 2020 rolled around, most of us thought it was going to be just another “normal” year. We made our plans and were living life until 13 March 2020 when it all changed. Everything shut down and we were all locked away.
For the people who were awake and aware on some level, questions began forming about what was actually happening on the planet. Was it really what the television kept pushing on us every minute of the day or was something else happening?
With all the local and global changes, the way we parented also changed. Many of us went from sending our kids to school to doing school remotely at home. The freedoms and activities our kids enjoyed suddenly ended and then changed as some were allowed to re-emerge. Our kids suffered, perhaps in some ways more than we did, which created a mental impact on them that may still linger today. I have witnessed this in my own family.
Regardless of what you believe about the events of 2020 until today or what side of any fence you stand on, one thing you must admit is parenting has changed. As a parent who is awake, aware, questions things, does her inner work, and came here to end cycles, who had an ex who wasn’t those things - parenting became even more challenging than it already was. So what did I do?
I chose to take the higher spiritual timeline with myself, my parenting, and how I spoke with and encourged my kids to live. I planted seeds about things and received a lot of resistance. Sometimes I receved a lot of toxic backtalk. I cried when I was alone or did more of my inner work to release the need to control the kids or push too hard or whatever things I was trying to end in the family. To my kids you could say I became even “weirder” than they already thought I was as a spiritual person. I understood how they were programmed to think this and I knew the way I had previously parented by buying into society’s brainwashing, that some of it was my fault. I learned to make peace with this. I didn’t know then what I know now.
I also made choices to allow what was in the highest good for my boys, even though it hurt me deeply and I knew in some ways it was going to hurt them and maybe even damage them in some ways. I made choices that many judged and berated me for or told me I was not a good mother. Yet in my soul I knew I was doing the right thing for all of us as even I had lessons to learn by letting them go.
My boys’ spiritual journey was not mine and I constantly received intuitive information that they needed to walk this path and I needed to allow them to because I could not control everything. I could not save or protect them from all the emotions or lessons they came here to learn, no matter how hard as their mother I wanted to.
This journey of mine as a parent has not been easy, but when is it ever? It has required me to do a lot of inner work to see what energies and behaviors I kept repeating that didn’t make our lives easier or better. Then I had to let those energies go or make different choices. I’m not perfect and still working on some of this that I wasn’t ready to face before.
It required me to get clear on what I had control over and what I didn’t. It required me to learn lessons so I could just allow people, my parents, siblings, kids, friends, colleagues, humanity, be who they were and where they were without judgment on their journeys. To learn to hold space in a deeper way for myself and my boys.
As my twins begin college this week and my oldest starts a new job more aligned with what he wants to do in life, I’m reflecting on my parenting. I’m reflecting on the parenting I received and remembering that my parents also have their own emotional and traumatic baggage. I’m trying to process the emotions, release the guilt over choices I cannot change, and not too harshly judge the blatant mistakes I made. I will remember we are all exactly where we need to be on our journeys. We will all be ok. I’m making peace with the first part of my parenting journey. And now that all my boys are out of the house, we will all navigate this new phase together.
What has changed for your parenting journey since 2020? How has that impacted your ability to heal family patterns and traumas that no longer serve you? What cycles have you been able to end? How have you grown and changed?