Day 3

I really appreciate the Age of Reason and how it has evolved our world beyond magic/mythic/conformist belief systems. The downside however, is that in valuing individuation over group conformity, we lost sight of the powerful need to bond with others.

I was reading Jean Liedloff's book The Continuum Concept when I was around 30. She lived for a year with a tribe in the Amazon and wrote how different their children were from western children. They were more relaxed, at home in their bodies, in way she hadn't seen before. What she witnessed is the mothers of infants never put their babies down, they were held or in a sling all the time...constant human contact. It wasn't until the baby started pulling to be on the ground would they put them down, only to bring them back up into their arms when the baby was done. The physical sense of well-being it gave a child was tangible.

Then I read the sentence that brought it all home (if I still had the book, I'd quote it, but I don't)...it was Liedloff's suspicion that behind much of western addiction was this lack of touch, this lack of "in-arms" time as an infant. As I read that, I experienced my third-eye opening up and the word "Truth" surrounded in Light. I knew in that moment that was how I was going to raise my baby.

Thank You God for bringing me Jack who has been so supportive in this way of raising Julian. When Julian was an infant, we always held him in our arms or he was in the sling, he never slept in a crib, we hardly used strollers and he nursed until he was 3. It was strange enough for the people around us that the "attachment parenting" group that I attended was a life saver from feeling like a totally whacko.

Interestingly, most of the negativie comments I received were based on the fear that by holding Julian so much, we were going to create a dependent child. That's when I realized how intensely we value independence and how much - in general - we fear/reject/detest dependence. Though I appreciate the need for people to individuate, it is extreme when we feel we need to train infants and toddlers to do this from the start. Both an infant's and Mom's natural biological instinct is to touch, to hold, to nurture...disassociating from this biological instinct doesn't serve the child's independence, but rather creates an even greater longing to get that need met, somehow, someway.

I am so grateful we did this attachment parenting with Julian as he has become exactly what the mothers in my attachment parent group promised...independent and caring about others.

At the same time, I also found that this parenting style of the past is not easily translated to modern times. Unlike the tribe in the amazon, I was mothering alone, I didn't have sisters, cousins, aunts, grandparents all holding Julian, it was just me (and Jack when he was home from work). I felt isolated and exhausted. I remember one woman from the islands telling me she and her sisters would give each other a break, nursing each others' babies. That blew me away, that feeling of community in raising children.

And that's why I brought this up today. The women in this tribe in the Amazon also participated (i.e. "worked) in the tribes life, but they could do their work with their children right there, playing. That is much of what is inspiring me now, how to live in harmony with Julian's schedule and needs, while fullfilling my community calling (ministry).

I have talked to many mothers who have felt like I have, guilt that when we're working we're not doing something for our kids and when we're with our kids, we're doing as much for our work as we could be. Either way, it's never enough and it feels split, not as one great whole working together.

Behind this is, this lack of peace, we're striving all the time for perfection, yet forgetting the beauty, harmony, flow, abundance (!), of the Isness of Being. Ever notice how nature -ususally referred to in the feminine- moves so much slower than "man-made" time?

Do we recognize the Infinite Peace in our homes while we work so hard to raise happy, fulfilled children? Can our children know happiness without peace? Peace...it's the quality I find I long for in my daily life as Mom, but often miss it in my striving. What about you?


Oh and...why don't professional sports teams line up and high-five the players of opposing team after games?