The Light. The teacher. In a 3-year old.
Jonathan Knepper, Unsplash
It really helped me to learn that we, as souls, choose the families we come into.
We create these sacred soul contracts that allow us to evolve forward — that gave me a lot of compassion for my parents, these people who I thought were perpetrators of so much wounding in my life — to know that what they signed up for was to act in this way, to essentially suffer, so that I could grow beyond what I thought I was capable of.
Whether or not that's true, it's what I believe and it's helped me.
Today, my father called me.
I've been a "Daddy's girl" in my life, so much as that I was the one who was the biggest advocate of my father's emotional state, because I resonated the most with him.
I knew he was good-hearted, if not foolish in his decisions, and that as much as he wanted to, he didn't know how to dive into vulnerability in a way that would benefit all of us as a family collective.
He was concerned with our upcoming next stage of travels and adventure...
He wanted me to call my mother more, because her health is declining, and as he's done so often, he's asked us to play the part of her partner when he couldn't fulfill the role.
He told us that the place we wanted to go to is much more conservative than our "modern" way of being, so that Jules and Wilder would have to both put on more clothes and conform to the standard...
He told me it was getting expensive and that my idea of coming back to the U.S. every three months would be exorbitantly so...
That sent me into a TAILSPIN.
I got so frustrated with my daughter, because we've been selling our possessions bit-by-bit, and one of the buyers came by and handed her cash, and she put it somewhere she couldn't remember.
I grunted.
I shouted.
I got pissed.
And, I told her, "Wilder, losing things is one of the things I hate MOST in life!"
Wilder went outside.
She got me a leaf.
She said, "This is a present for you. Do you feel better now? Are you not as frustrated?"
Then, she went outside, got another leaf, and said, "This one's better. It's shinier. Are you done feeling annoyed?"
My daughter is 3.
I always tell her it's not her job to fix my problems.
She knew that I wasn't mad AT her, but just at the situation.
And yet, here she was, reminding me that it's not that big of a deal, because in the end, she had actually placed the money with our other stack of money that had been coming in, since she likes organization as much as I do.
I laughed when I found it.
She looked at me.
I said, "Oh, I was silly for getting so upset earlier."
She smiled.
"Yeah, Mama, you were silly."
Today, when my daughter didn't want to take a nap, she spent at least 45-minutes quietly playing in her room.
When she finally called out to me, her hair was disheveled and her room slightly in disarray, but she said, "I need a tissue. I squirted medicine up my nose."
It's the same medicine she HATES when I squirt up her nose to clear up her sinuses, but this time, she did it herself.
Then, she said, "I need a tissue, because I used the bandage wrappers as tissue," and then I looked. She had placed bandages all over her boo-boos, her skinned knees and bruises from playing and her recent visit to the doctor.
This 3-year old practiced SELF-CARE better than I had this afternoon.
And this is why she is MY BEST TEACHER.
She shows me what's up, when I forget.
She reminds me of Love, when I forget.
She is Light, when I forget.
