Relationships As Spiritual Practice
Hello Goddess Friends,
It seems to be that when you get one area of your life figured out, another area pops up and screams “Hey you! I need healing too!”. And so it is that I find myself in a new situation that is requiring immense reflection, awareness, and trigger control practice. This new area for me is the relationship with my 13 year old daughter.
“Hey you! I need healing too”
I am writing about it here for my regular blog readers to gather more insight into the life of a Goddess on a healing journey. So here it goes…I feel like I have mastered the masculine/feminine romantic relationship thing. I have a handsome, thoughtful, romantic, successful husband that adores me and lives to make me happy. I even use my experience to coach other women with amazing results. Yet, life is always moving us toward wholeness and healing and I am being asked to heal more. Ugh!!!!! Life/Universe/God is now asking me to look at the unconscious emotional patterns that are woven deeply into the fabric of my relationship with my daughter. A little about my daughter - My daughter is a very loving, emotionally intelligent, extremely opinionated and fiesty teenage girl. She is acutely aware of social inequities in our society and finds many aspects of life extremely unsatisfying, complaining that there is too much emphasis on materialism and hates the restrictive rules of the school system saying they have no inherent purpose. She is rebellious in a good way, always questioning the status quo. It’s exhausting!
“Life is always moving us toward wholeness”
So, what is the problem? The issue is that I keep finding myself having deep emotional reactions to her way of being. In psychology speak - I am projecting all my unhealed, unresolved, emotional issues surrounding what it means to be a young girl and woman onto her. What this looks like is this - I am expecting her to be the new better and improved version of me. I want her to be the happy teen, the good girl, the emotionally stable teen, the successful driven teen, the popular well-liked teen. In essence, I want her to be the teen I never got to be. The universe is very intelligent. It gave me a beautiful soul (daughter) that refuses to conform to my unconscious needs and now, this is my new big trigger!
Here I am triggered in a new relationship. It is not with my husband, so I am in unfamiliar territory. One would think I could just transfer my skills over to this relationship, but I have been blindsided. I wish the same formula I have mastered in romantic relationships was a perfect template I could just layover on my relationship with my daughter. So, while the awareness and deep feeling work is the same, my emotional patterns are different and not as easy for me to see, reflect on, and process.
“I want her to be the teen I never got to be”
Today, I find myself on another spiritual journey, using a relationship as my vehicle toward transformation and healing. Everytime I feel triggered, I will do the deep internal work knowing that this work will not only heal me, but it will also set my daughter free. Set her free to be who she is meant to be and not forced into being a projection of my wounds.
I feel a little lost but I know the direction to move in. I know I must keep my heart open and my energy moving through the transmutation process (blocked stagnant energy turning back to life force energy). I know to stay in the moment in order to watch the crazy story my ego mind will try to convince me to engage in. I know to be vigilant and watch out for my negative thinking and emotional patterns in order to remain the “witness” and not a puppet for the ego.
“I feel a little lost but I know the direction to move in”
I love my daughter more than I could ever express and I accept this new challenge. I actually thank my daughter for being my new spiritual teacher. May I also be her guiding force allowing her to find and embrace her true essence. May my internal work allow her to more easily find her authentic destiny and connect with the divine spirit within. I hope this resonates with some of my readers. Relationships are where the work is.
Much Love,
Malena xoxo
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