Something about my relationship with my children is shifting. A vulnerability is surfacing. For whatever reason, more recently I’ve been willing to dive into the connection I have with them in a way I didn’t think I was supposed to get wet.

Without knowing it, I had been keeping my children at bay. A safe invisible boundary that somehow protected me from their choices, their mistakes, and their magnificence. It’s as if I believed that this space would make it easier for us when we had to physically part ways. 

I had it in my head, and feel I’ve been taught through psychologists, that the child has an innate need to please the parent. It’s not until recently that I’ve discovered that the opposite feels just as true. Do my children know that I revere them in the same way a flower reveres the sun?

They have unearthed me. They have demanded of me that I go back to find that little girl unaffected by life and bring her forth. All of my judgements, beliefs, and impatience had to be faced and reshaped or I was going to sacrifice blocking the exact warmth that helps me grow. They have reached down and dusted that little girl off and asked her to dance—dance whatever dance she wants to dance, as long as it’s not filled with judgment, insecurity, or criticism.