This is graduation time in America. Our nephew just graduated from high school. This year, out of our group of eight best friends from college, three of our children have graduated from high school, one has graduated from college, and one has joined the Coast Guard. Our daughter has been attending graduation parties more often than she practices tennis, these last few weeks.
No one told us how hard these transition times would tug at our hearts, when we started having these children, did they? Or perhaps the older people did tell us these things, but most likely, we weren’t really listening. We were busy being busy. And when the children were little, it often felt like those “raising the children” days would go on and on, forever. (in a good sense and in a bad sense)
I was watching a video of the author Kelly Corrigan, giving a recent commencement speech. Kelly Corrigan is an amazing writer and an engaging, sincere speaker. She gave excellent, funny, yet heartfelt advice to the graduates, but the part of her speech that got me beyond misty-eyed, and reaching for the tissues, was this part:
“Speaking of deep connection and great rewards, before I go, I want say something about the people who raised you. I have identified a fundamental difference between parent and child that I think helps explain all the crying and staring and weirdly-long hugs.
So… you were little and then, at some point you came into consciousness and looked over and there we were: the tall people cutting apples the way you liked them. You have never known a world where we were not.
But for us, we were just regular people and then you came and changed the whole thing. We could win the $19 million-dollar California Super Lotto tonight and you would still be the biggest thing that ever happened to us. We love you more than you have yet loved anything.
So yeah, maybe we want to stare at that face a little longer, hang on to that body that we once carried, take one more family photo. Be patient with us. This is hard.”
I have told my children often that they will have no idea how much I love them, until they have children themselves. Yet, it has also been of the highest, most deliberately practiced importance to me, that my children never feel like my love is a cage. It is my own greatest privilege, to feel and experience, the love that I have for them. As a mother, I have made an earnest effort to embody Khalil Kibran’s poignant reminder to us parents: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”
I see too many parents living through their kids these days, and that’s sad. We are all meant to add a unique, authentic footprint on this world, which we have all co-created. When we are focused on living through someone else, we have stifled their footprint with a heavy load, and we have robbed the world of our own developed, distinctive mark. When we take “ownership and possession” of our kids, and try to make them conform to the “image” we wish to portray, we all lose.
That being said, it’s not easy to let go. We keep our most precious material things in safes, with encrypted passcodes, hidden away under lock and key. We do this because we dread losing these things, right? At the same time, any of us parents, would empty our safes, our bank and investment accounts, our jewelry boxes, etc., if it meant keeping our children, alive and well and happy and thriving. That’s the big Catch-22 of parenting, right? In order to healthfully fulfill our parental duties, we must let go of what is the absolute most precious to us. It is our job to send our babies out into the world, in order for them to fulfill their lives’ purposes, lessons and adventures to the fullest. We spend eighteen years making sure that our children are safe and protected, and yet at the same time stimulated to go after their own dreams. We best give our children permission to go create their own lives, when we show them that we are living our own personal purposes, lessons, adventures and dreams. Most importantly, we let our children know that we will love them until the end of time, but with an unconditional, freeing, cageless love, an unfathomably bottomless love, which also comes through us (just as they did) from our Creator.
I love this quote, which I saw the other day on Twitter, directed to the writer’s mother: “You’ll always be a shareholder in all of my successes in life.” (Wisdom Amplifier) That’s the right word, isn’t it? Shareholder. We all have shareholders in our own lives, who have helped spear us on, to our own successes. Parents, siblings, lovers, family members, friends, teachers, ministers, counselors, mentors, employers, even detractors, are all shareholders, in whom we have become. Shareholders are invested. If we take this idea to the macro-level, we are all shareholders of this life on Earth. Are we invested? It’s easy to be invested in our own children, our own best friend’s children, but are we invested in the children of the world? Are we invested in co-creating a world that is safe and secure and nourishing and empowering for all of us? As my children have grown and started leaving the nest, considering these things at this higher level, has been helpful to me, as I work on letting my own children go. I’ve been reminded to become reinvested in my own life’s experience (as an example to them), and to make sure that I am also invested in doing my own little part, to make this world a better place for all of us. Still, it isn’t easy. As Kelly Corrigan says at the end of her address, “Be patient with us. This is hard.” It is perhaps one of the hardest tasks which we will ever do, as parents – letting our little birdies fly from the nest, with the secure feeling of being confident and blessed to do so, freely and uninhibited, with excited anticipation for all that lies ahead.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
