Beginning Together, Again
Padma Gordon
I hope you enjoyed your holidays and feel rested as we enter into this new year. Our Rare Mothers in Relationships Workshop is off to a great start and I was struck again by how quickly we can go deep together. This is a container for you as a Rare Mother where you can be seen and heard, where you can come and share your experience of parenting a Rare child. It's a chance for you to reflect on the particular challenges and gifts in your partnership.
Being a Rare Mother means that you show up day after day to take care of your child regardless of how you’re feeling. There are many things you encounter over which you have no control. You are journeying in the unknown and getting to a milestone may take a very long time. One Rare Mother mentioned how important it is to “celebrate the heck out of the milestones because they are so hard won!”
Acceptance
One theme that came up in our conversation was acceptance. As a Rare Mother you are asked to accept your child’s limitations and daily health fluctuations. How can you embrace your child and your partner as they are? It takes practice and a commitment to open wider to what is here now.
It’s an opportunity to practice a form of radical acceptance, which is different from giving up. Once you accept your partner or your Rare child as they are, you can respond in new ways rather than according to your old conditioning. Acceptance sets you free.
Acceptance also means you accept yourself and have compassion for yourself. When we are compassionate with ourself, we can be more compassionate with others.
Be on the Same Team
As parents of a Rare Child, acceptance means you are on the same team and can support each other and work together as parents. You can hold each other when waves of grief arise, when you run out of medications, when a medical professional questions your abilities as a parent, or when you need to put in another G-tube.
These are moments to work together, to join forces to make the holiday times special because you don’t know how many more holidays you will have with your Rare child. You are immensely vulnerable as a Rare Mother and in your relationship because intimacy is vulnerable.
Being Present is a Practice
What helps make things easier? Presence. Being present takes practice.
Explore this:
Take 5-12 minutes each day to practice being present, accept the busy mind and return to your breath. You can also experiment with letting your thoughts drift away on clouds, one by one as if they were hopping on a sky bus and being transported to the stratosphere.
Find a safe place. This is time for you to do the most important kind of self-care. Silence is sacred. You might choose to use a meditation app like Insight Timer. It is a wonderful app where there are thousands of free offerings and where I have meditations available free of charge.
Join us
Come as you are. Your presence is a contribution.
Join the workshop here.
Enjoy your weekend and I look forward to being with you on Tuesday. Please reach out to Paige at paige@angelaidcares.org if you have any trouble entering the meeting or with any other logistics. I am here as your ally in love and life.
