Between the chaos of three kids and teaching yoga, expanding my healing practices, trying (and failing) to squeeze in quality time with my husband, I find myself losing my mind (and my temper) at times (ok, maybe a lot of times), and I feel like I’m failing at it all. I practice self-love and forgiveness and talk about emotions with my children a whole lot, and we get by, and as chaotic as life can be, I mostly feel pretty satisfied with my place in life. I find that I’m less hard on myself now than I was when I was young and kid-less because I don’t want my girls to think I need to be perfect, which means they need to be perfect, because if we really get deep into it, we’re perfect in all our imperfections.
I had a brief moment of clarity recently while pumping gas. (I have to take those moments to pause when I can!) I found myself gazing at my daughter, amused by her quirky style. It filled me with joy, and I silently acknowledged how much I loved her for her sense of style and her spunky personality. I thought about how much she reminded me of myself as a girl, and I felt a twinge of guilt because I didn’t always like my quirkiness. A strong wave of emotion washed over me, and I realized this brief moment was an opportunity to connect with myself as a young girl and to acknowledge that it was OK to love myself and all my imperfections along my journey of self-discovery. I experienced both sadness and healing simultaneously – I was sad that I didn’t have the ability to fully love myself before, but I had this opportunity to recognize that and send love into the past to heal that part of my soul. Motherhood has given me the opportunity to see myself in my children and learn to love all the things I didn’t really like about myself in the past.
I also realized that seeing ourselves in others can have a profound effect, even beyond the eyes of a parent. I recalled a practice in a yoga training where we gazed upon a partner through the eyes of the divine: God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Mother Nature, the Universe, whatever your source may be. And then we gazed upon ourselves, gazing at our partners through the eyes of the divine. It was so easy that I felt silly doing it, like I wasn’t really DOING anything, but both times, my partner was moved almost to tears. I wasn’t really sure what happened in those moments, but in recent days, I find myself practicing this often when I hold the space of a yoga class or when I practice healing. I gaze upon my students and clients as if I were their mother. I picture them as they were as a baby, and I feel so much incredible selfless love for them. And I see myself and my imperfections in them, and I learn to love that about myself also.
The challenge for me is viewing myself through the eyes of the divine, but this is where profound shifts occur. It happens unexpectedly when I see myself in my children, but I can also get there by practicing on people who are different from me and who think differently than me. It isn’t always easy, but I find the more I practice, the more effortless it gets, and the more love I feel for myself and those parts of myself that I struggle with. So I challenge you to practice this. View your opponents, your neighbors, your colleagues, those who are different than you, through the eyes of a parent, of the divine. They are worthy of love. You are worthy of love.
Can we begin a collective healing there?
