Living my life, with my child.

I have been making many changes in my life lately. I have reintroduced exercising, praying, and meditating into my life on a daily basis. There is such a common belief amongst parents that they can't do anything when their kids are around. If they try to do anything "quiet or calm" then their kids crawl all over them. They can't shower when their kids are awake because they scream or don't leave them alone or whatever. They can't cook or garden or sew or whatever, because their kids will...............whatever, you fill in the blank.

But what if, we could?

I have been known to fall victim to this common idea also, but I have been pushing myself to move beyond it into reality. I have been wondering......
What if it wasn't all our kids' fault that our lives get put on hold?
What if, our lives don't get put on hold, but get transformed?
What if we change the way we think about parenting and who we are and who these young people are in our lives now and forevermore?

So I have started doing yoga and pilates with my daughter, who is 3 and not interested AT.ALL. in yoga or pilates. Yes, she pulls me, yes, she climbs on me, yes she lays under me. So what? I think about all these books and support systems out there about connecting to our babies -- breastfeeding them, wearing them (to have them be there right with us, when we live life), bed-sharing or co-sleeping, massaging them and just generally adoring them as much as we can. (Tangent coming up here) I remember reading Pee Wee Pilates right after having my daughter and I loved it, because it lovingly talked about the balance between nurturing ourselves and nurturing our babies. It lovingly talked about loving our bodies and taking time to take care of ourselves. It lovingly gave ideas about how to do pilates with your baby on you and next to you. So many of the other post-partum pilates books were all written in a subtly harsh tone, disguised as 'pep', about women hating their bodies and getting them back in shape as quickly as possible, and doing it alone, because mom's deserve alone time. I don't deny that we deserve alone time, I just didn't like the internalized- self-hatred-of-one's-bodies and the death-grip-approach-to-keeping-the-"old-you"-alive-and-active tone of the other books. Okay, the internalized-sexism rant ends here.

My original idea here is that we, in the attachment parenting community, are supported in lavishing attention on our babies, but as soon as they turn 2, there is still such a conventional put-your-kids-in-their-place idea still overshadowing everything, just without the spanking or intentional yelling. Why not embrace all of our children's stages? Embrace them being 2 or 3 or whatever age they are? Why not embrace them, and live our lives with them?

So yes, I now take time every day to do pilates or yoga, prayers and meditation and this is still, slow, "quiet" time for me. (For me, "quiet time" refers to quieting my mind, not my daughter).
Yes, she is there, living her life with me. Yes, we look like we have different agendas (me wanting to do still-quiet-peaceful-awakening-practices, and she wants to play with me). However, I believe that we actually have the same agenda here: to connect. To connect to our spirits, to connect to each other, to connect with God.

I think that kids easily always stay connected to God, if allowed to by the adults in their lives, and eventually because of various reasons, we learn to disconnect. Sweet Darling talks about God all day long, "Thank you God for this dolly. Why did God make the roads bumpy? Why did God make scary movies?" I want to write about this more, but I'll save that for another post. The point is, she is still in reality, loving God and all people easily most of the time. She easily makes new friends and calls strangers friends. She has her uneasy feelings too, of feeling shy or scared or unsure, but she voices these feelings, sometimes cries or screams to push them out of her, and then moves on with living life.

Why do I want to do these practices with her? Because I live my life with my daughter. Because I don't want to keep my life and my beliefs and my practices a secret from her. Because I want to show her who I am. Because I want to share what is important to me with her. Because I want to learn from her. Maybe she can shed some light onto my practices.

Last week, I was doing prayers, and she was really acting silly and pulling on me and talking lots of silliness and laughing and running around me and I got really, really annoyed. I said something to her to make her stop, and now that I am reflecting on this, to "put her in her place", so that I could focus (not something that I technically believe in doing, but something that happens from time to time). But after contemplating this, I realized that I get really serious when praying. I get really heavy and serious and tight and.....weird and isolated, when approaching God. I grew up in a highly religious household that happened to have a lot of various kinds of abuse going on. I have learned how to forgive the past and how to establish a new relationship with God and with life and how to make loving God and myself and people my choice. But I still fear God like a little child afraid of one's parent who is sometimes loving, and sometimes confusingly cruel. I can see now that my parents lacked support and understanding and they did they best they could. But I still have residue left with my ideas of God. What if I pray wrong, or I don't repent appropriately or I am not focused or whatever, and God decides to punish me? I consciously have been shifting these ideas to believe in a loving God, but still, when I pray, I get s.e.r.i.o.u.s.

Maybe my loving daughter, the one who wants to play while I pray, is not trying to annoy me, but trying to get me to lighten up, to love God and remember God with a smile and a laugh and with every action I take? What if she plays they way she does with me when I am practicing my faith through prayer, meditation or body awareness exercises, because she loves me and God? Because she knows how to connect effortlessly and often? What if she is trying to remind me that in order to stay connected to God, that means I get to stay connected to her and myself and other people as well? What if she is trying to show me that connecting to God and life and love is easier and more joyful than I realize? Does it make sense to hurt my daughter's feelings, to stop her from connecting and to push her away while I am trying to better myself through some sort of spiritual practice? No. It doesn't.

I am no angel, and this is not easy for me. But I have faith that in continuing to try to live my life fully, openly and lovingly with my Sweet Darling, that my life, will continue to improve and that I will have an easier time staying connected. It's a practice worth doing daily.