I adore this piece by Kahlil Gibran On Children. For it’s so easy to get caught in the grit of parenting, the daily grind and lose touch with love. We can get stuck in the trappings of the ego identifying with the parts of our children that remind us of us that we secretly love about ourselves, and find joy, and then also have reflected back to us all the yucky parts of ourselves that we see also in them and feel frustration and anger.
In the thick of school drop off, fundraising, packed lunches and monitoring screen time that they are a small living soul. As they transition from feeding literally off us, then their wanting to either throw food at us, refusing to eat anything we cook from them to then being able to prepare their own food, that they are humans, not just children. That we are humans, not just parents.
We forget they come THROUGH us but not FROM us. They are not us and they don’t belong to us. We walk the path alongside them, and are ‘the bows from which our children as living arrows are sent forth’.
I cannot say that I am nailing being a parent. But the struggle through parenting, single parenting, establishing a new partner, marriage, and father into our life, has taught me something. I wrote a book called The Mothers Mind Cleanse, which is not about parenting, but more about coping, intertwining beautiful ancient wisdom in with our modern lives. And as Mothers Day is coming up, I wanted to offer you a gift of 30% off, for yourself or for a woman in your life that could do with a little hand to keep inspired and their head above the stormy waters of parenting.
You can receive the book in print format, (my personal favourite, we use local Sydney printers Morgan Printing, they are meditation students of ours, and it’s printed sustainably, on high-grade paper; you don’t get more lovely and conscious than this in the book world!) or as an e-book.
The link to purchase is HERE and the code you enter on check out to receive your 30% off is MMC30.
Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Sent with love,
Jac x