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.
The above poem by Kahlil Gibran has always resonated with me when it comes to parenting. Receiving compliments on my children has always rung false to me and it’s not because I don’t think they are amazing people. I, like most mothers, think that my four children are the most incredible people on the face of this earth. When I do receive compliments, I have a pat answer. “Thank you. God figured we couldn’t handle much.” My children have been easy to raise, kind and understanding, and full of life. If my husband and I gave them a stable and peaceful environment in which to bloom, which I hope we have, then maybe we deserve a compliment for that, but overall they are blooming into the interesting, talented and lively people that they are because that is the seeds that were implanted into them by forces much greater than I. They are part of this unfolding Universe, part of God’s plan and my only job is to get out of the way and let Divinity take its course. This is especially true now that they are embarking into their own adulthoods.
Years ago I read an article about Paloma Picasso. I cut out the part she wrote about being a parent. She said, “I don’t think the parent and child should be so intimate that it becomes a jail for the child. I’ve tried to help my children become themselves.” So the other day, when talking on the phone to my son who has moved out into his independent adult life, he kindly asked me what I had been up to since he’d been gone. I proudly mentioned that I had started blogging. I wanted him to feel comfort that I was branching out, listening to my own deep longings and taking brave new steps into new avenues of my own life. I wanted him to feel as secure about me being okay and energized and positive, as I feel about him and his experiencing of his new journey.
One of my favorite books of all time, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching talks about the Empty Nest this way:
The “empty nest syndrome”
should never bother
parents of the Tao.
Of course we’ll miss our children
But all of their lives we have helped them
embrace life and welcome change.
We have learned to do the same.
New moments await us.
Our nest
and theirs,
is never empty.
I couldn’t say it better.