Empowered In Parenting

         Yesterday was an awful day for me. We went to my husband's awful family's family wedding, and everyone there was fake and infantile, even the grandparents. They all felt like they had to please everyone in order to be liked, and I got a little too much butt kissing for my liking. It made me feel CRAZY that I was the only one who noticed. Well, my husband did too, he started to notice it more because of me. So he also feels weird there, but stayed because they were family. But.... My daughter was lost as I was. And it was three hours with no sleep on the hour and a half drive, and I got her to scream and cry for most of it that by the time we got there she was spent. 

           The crying from her on the way home was the same way in hysterics because of over stimulation and my blabbing with strangers the whole wedding while holding her. I let her scratch my face and ruin my makeup, and grab at my hair until she fell into a deep sleep. My body sank into relief. But it lasted a half hour, and then she was back at grabbing at me and distracting herself when we stopped in the grocery on a high whim to buy ingredients for a grand soup.

           We got home finally, and I was fully spent that I could not do the crying it out with her anymore. I realized that I lost her trust again after the surprise supermarket trip, where she was exhausted and overstimulated once again, and she would not even look at me. It was 7:30, and this was the longest she had gone without sleep, only having had a short nap from 10 am. My husband supported me the whole time, solemnly discussing the situation we were in and doing his best to help. Unfortunately, he could not get her to cry as it was me she was connected to the most and I had betrayed her by abandoning her feelings once again by not noticing her withdrawal in the store. I tried looking at her face, but she struggled to sit up and eat each time, and my resentment grew. As I read in Tears and Tantrums, maybe there is a lot of use to having a community in raising a child the "aware baby" way.

           I felt trapped in my own feelings of failure to be a good mother that each time I tried to see her I was seeing disapproval of me. Through her shifted eyes and her distracted yelps and nervous laughs. I mimicked her and lost train of focus. I was also deeply lacking sleep.

         I read in Lost and Found The Adoption Experience, that adoptees in therapy often look back at their childhoods as if there is no past, as if they are standing at the edge of a cliff. I agree, my past seems so disconnected from me now, and is so scary to think about. I experienced in the past couple of days intense rage for insignificant reasons, and it is too hard to swim in those feelings. I feel like it comes from a portion of my past that I never dealt with creeping up. Such as with my anger at my husband for not validating my stress at having to hold my baby in her car seat when she was screeching, and his saying that the stress of the trip was on us having not had time to leave earlier, or my projection at him as indulging in pleasure to escape the pain. His seeming selfish really rages me.

          I typed in Marion Rose crying on YouTube, and got the video of Claim your power as a mother (without overpowering your kids).

           She was saying how when we fall into sweet spots of feeling powerless it is because we were raised by parents who had to have power over their kids, and it made us feel powerless. Therefore, when we feel that way with our kids when they don't listen, we act from that feeling by trying to gain control back. But it hurts our kids and we feel shame afterward, because we never wanted to repeat what happened to us. I went to the website she mentioned to continue reading about it- Www.powerandpowerlessnessinparenting.com.

             It explained how when we feel powerless, we try to gain power over our kids with punishment and harsh intellectual wording, but it doesn't work because they in turn feel powerless. True feminine power is in connection with ourselves, and then we can connect with our kid/s to enable the to cooperate because we will understand them. When we have COMPASSION for our selves when we are stuck in a sweet spot of feeling helpless, and go back to the past that needs to be heard, we can have COMPASSION for our little ones. Instead of seeing the adult who hurt us in them when we feel powerless, we can see THEM at their age and stage and recognize that they are powerless. 

           She also said that us mothers are viewed by society as the most powerless, but in truth we have great power. We have power in creating a child, and the power to raising them and shaping them for how they will become for the rest of their lives. How we treat them will create their world, thus creating the future generation. It's in our power through every action we do with them.

          Thus it is important to see that we have power, and to do things that make us see our power. We all have ways of creating, whether it be swimming, painting, blogging, making the choices to eat healthy foods or other. When we feel powerless it's important to make sure we do what we need to feel our power in changing the world. 

          I resonate, and I fall into feeling powerless to the outside world a lot. I sink, and feel like nothing I do matters and the world will always have the last say. This affects being present in myself, and having compassion for me or my daughter.

          She also wrote that when we feel powerless, we are disconnected from ourselves, almost out of body like, and cannot connect the our kids either. She said the more connected we are to ourselves, the more we can connect to our kids, and the more they will connect with themselves. Kids naturally want to cooperate, and when they are fighting and not listening it's because they are not connected to themselves. 

         This is beautiful, but unfortunately true with my daughter when I notice when she pushes me away and acts silly, she is not truly connected. Because she wants my attention, but feels powerless because of how I am not seeing her feelings, because I am often caught up in feeling powerless and unable to make a difference and that affects her.

           I learned that it's important to face feeling helpless and be curious about where they come from, and that helps deal with other's helplessness without thinking they have power over you. Also, being connected with a child is the power in which you can get them to cooperate and then trust in themselves to be autonomous.

Love,

An Adoptee in Motion