“We Need Mothers Who …” Mother’s Day All Over the World

Countries and cultures all over the world celebrate Mother in some way.
It may be a healthy way. It may be a distorted, ritualized, or even an unhealthy way.
Perhaps it’s the personal mother who is celebrated. Perhaps it’s the idealized mother who is celebrated. Perhaps the normalized mother. Possibly it’s the essence of Mother we need.

Our mothers have an impact on us as individuals and on us as a society … whatever society we live in. Both consciously and unconsciously, our mothers have an impact on our personal lives, and an impact on the life of our planet.

There is no perfect mother. We are all human, and we all make mistakes. If someone pretends to be perfect, she teaches her children they have to be perfect. Because they never can be perfect, she teaches her children they can never be good enough. She also teaches them there is no process in life or human relationship. The mother who is human – imperfect but a good enough mother in all the ways children most deeply need – teaches her children it is possible to make mistakes and create a repair for the mistakes they’ve made. She does that with them when she makes a mistake. She helps them do that when they make a mistake. This deepens their trust with her, with themselves, with process, and with life itself.

When have you seen that from a mother in public life? From a mother or a father in public life? It is sorely lacking. Especially in these times.

Just as important as that acknowledgment of a mistake and the repair that needs to follow, is the mother who realizes she has made a mistake out of her own wounding, acknowledges it, and gets the help to do her own inner healing work instead of continuing to act out her wounding with her children, family, and others. This deepens her own and her children’s faith in real repair – for their relationship with mother and for their ability to do the same. It is a profound and wonderful role model for everyone in her life who witnesses her in the process of healing inside and out.

When have you seen that from a mother in public life? From a mother? From a father? It is tragically lacking in our world. Especially in these times.

But … I remember a time not long ago, reading about two public figures who did acknowledge – to themselves and apparently to others – that the work they did in the world was an acting out of their defenses against their wounds. It was a good example of the possibility that we may do important work in our outer world, yet it may unconsciously be a way to hold at bay the pain of our wounding as children that is still alive in our inner world.

Gloria Steinem acknowledged that “being a social activist can be a drug that keeps you from going back and looking at yourself. You keep trying to fill up this emptiness.”* How courageous! How honest! How real! And what a model for our world. Was anybody listening? Did anybody get it? She was acknowledging out loud that she invested herself in a cause in the outer world to avoid the pain still alive in her inner world.

I once led a workshop called Conscious Activism from the Inside Out on the topic of outer activism as a defense against inner activism. As people explored how they used social and political activism to hold their inner world at bay, I was also helping them realize that it is possible to do the inner healing and also help in the outer world. And that it was of great concern how frenzied and distorted the outer activism can become as a defense against the inner. All we have to do to see an example of that is to look at the political scene in the United States today.

Betty Friedan offered an acknowledgement similar to that of Gloria Steinem in a later edition of The Feminine Mystique. She wrote about her hatred for her mother, and then admitted, “It was easier for me to start the women’s movement than it was to change my own personal life.”

These were the “mothers” of the women’s movement. Their acknowledgments don’t discount the actual good done by and through the women’s movement. But they may explain the roots of some of the harms. Here’s a perfect example of no mother being perfect. But by their taking responsibility for the deep roots of their unconscious intentions, these mothers of the women’s movement … freed themselves to do their inner healing and offered a profound model to those who came after them. Who knows how few or many of the “daughters” and “sons” of the women’s movement welcomed and utilized that model in their own lives and their own activism? This brings to the foreground the understanding that the unconscious intentions of avoiding their own inner pain contributed to the unsustainability of many of the outer successes they achieved.

For example, if each of them had first worked with the young pain of not having choices over their own minds, bodies, hearts, and souls … they would have modeled for all those who worked with them and came after them to do their own inner work and then the outer work.

How many other women have made these acknowledgments? How many men have done the same? How very different our political scene would be today if both women and men did their inner work before bringing their energies to such important arenas in our outer world!

But back to mothers … and a deep hope that more mothers – both in private life and public life – will do their own inner healing work for their own sakes, for the sake of their children, and for the sake of our world.

This is my Mother’s Day wish.

This is my Mother’s Day prayer.

© Judith Barr, 2016.

* from the synopsis for the HBO documentary, “In Her Own Words,” https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/gloria-in-her-own-words/synopsis.html

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP KEEP OUR WORLD
SAFE FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Whether we are mothers or not, whether we are activists or not, whether we are men or women, old or young, single or married … we all need to very carefully explore and heal the wounded currents within us that affect our lives, our relationships, our world.

This Mother’s Day, make a commitment to begin that crucial healing journey. Or to take that next big step in it. As you reflect on your own relationship with your mother – past and present – allow yourself to feel whatever arises within you … committing not to act out on those feelings but rather to feel and explore the roots of those feelings. What are the earliest feelings you can recall in relation to your mother? And … when in your here-and-now life do you feel those same feelings? About whom in your here-and-now life do you feel that same way?

When exploring, we may find we need the help of a skilled, caring therapist to truly heal many of our deepest feelings about our mothers. Even to bring into consciousness for healing feelings we can’t remember or don’t consciously connect with our relationship with mother. Commit as well to find that help when you need it.

Whether we are parents or not, we all need to do the inner work necessary to explore and heal our inner wounding…for the sake of our families, our communities, and the children in our world – and the adults they will someday become.

Haunted by … Ghosts and Goblins and Our Own History

Halloween is a time when ghosts and goblins are turned into fun. Haunting and being haunted are transformed into entertainment. But every other day of the year being haunted isn’t fun at all … especially when we are haunted by our own history. Haunted by our own histories personally. And haunted by our own histories communally.

We are haunted by our own histories when we carry the wounding we experienced long ago consciously or unconsciously into our adult life, and act out what we suffered on those around us. In this way we impact our partners, our children, our friends and neighbors, those with whom we work, and others with whom we come in contact close by and far away. In this day and age we can have an effect globally through the internet without even leaving our homes. For example, cyber-bullying can hurt people right next door, beyond country borders, or across the earth.

Bullying* is a helpful, though painful, example of how we’re haunted by our history. If we were bullied as children, it is traumatic. We struggle with the experience of the bullying and how to respond inside and out. We also try to repress the memories and feelings they evoke in us, often succeeding in pushing them away or numbing ourselves to them until someone can help us safely face them and work through them inside ourselves. That pushing away of the experience can save our sanity or even our lives originally. But there is a consequence: we will re-enact the original bullying experience within ourselves and with others. We may bully ourselves internally and sometimes even silently, or right out in the open. We may criticize or even shame ourselves inside ourselves or aloud for those around us to hear, perhaps never realizing we are saying to ourselves what our parents (or some other bully) said to us or even felt about us – as their parents said to or felt about them, and their parents before them, too, back many generations.

As we unconsciously draw to us or re-create the original scenarios in our current day lives, we may find ourselves bullied by others again and again, subtly or blatantly. Or we may become a bully and do to others what was originally done to us, whether in dreams, fantasy, or in our day-to-day reality, almost imperceptibly or audibly, visibly, and ever-so-palpably.

All of this can happen in our private lives right in our own homes, or in our public lives. Some but not all … spouses bully their partners … parents bully their children … teachers bully their students … clergy bully their parishioners … doctors bully their patients … police officers bully those in their communities … government officials abuse the citizens they are governing. And all of this because they are haunted by their own experiences from long, long ago.

Last month’s blog article gave examples of how presidents and presidential candidates may have been haunted by their histories – affecting themselves and others nationwide and even globally. Many of the posts in PoliPsych show how this occurs and discuss how to heal the haunting. Without the healing, we will keep being haunted, not only on Halloween, but every single day. Without doing the inner work to heal our past traumas, we will keep being haunted ourselves and we will keep haunting those our own haunting trauma impacts, both up close and personal and far, far away.

George Santayana’s wisdom could inspire and help us all at this time in history.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”**

Please join me in the work of remembering and working to heal your own past that is still alive inside you, whether you’re conscious of it or not. Your own personal past. Your own familial past that gets passed down generation after generation. Please join me in healing your individual past and in so doing, join me in healing our communal past … the communal past that is showing up right out in the light of day, as well as the communal past that lives invisibly in the communal unconscious (also known as the collective unconscious.) ***

Every time we do our own inner healing work, we change our own inner lives, our own outer lives, the impact we have on those around us, and the communal unconscious itself.

Will you join me in healing the haunting we live with day by day by day?

Will you join me in healing the haunting that escalates until we finally heal it?

Will you join me in healing the haunting that is not fun at all – the haunting that multiplies itself until we finally heal, resolve, and transform it?

© Judith Barr, 2015

*To learn more about bullying and its roots, see Judith’s home study course for laypeople and professionals: https://judithbarr.com/portfolio/healing-bullying-to-the-roota-unique-approach-to-a-painful-epidemic/

**George Santayana (1905) Reason in Common Sense, p. 284, volume 1 of The Life of Reason.

***To learn more about the wounding and how to heal the wounds that haunt us, read Judith’s book, Power Abused, Power Healed, Mysteries of Life, 2007. (Available at www.Amazon.com and www.PowerAbusedPowerHealed.com.

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP MAKE OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

This Halloween – and all year ‘round – you can begin or take the next step in the journey to heal the haunting within yourself … and help heal the haunting in our world.

You can read and reread this article … letting it help you find examples of being haunted by history in your own life and examples in the life of our world.

You can read other articles in PoliPsych that explain in even more depth and give even more examples of the haunting and the healing.

You can read Power Abused, Power Healed to understand and experience even more deeply and thoroughly the causes and the healing of the haunting.

You can find a therapist with the integrity, skill, and heart – someone who has done the healing of his/her own haunting and continues to do so – to help you go through the process of healing your own haunting.

You can help heal the haunting … for your sake, the sake of those you hold dear, and the sake of our world.

On Mother’s Day – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

As we approach Mother’s Day, it is crucial that we recognize the power that Mother has, the impact that Mother has, the potential effect that Mother has not only on her individual child, but also on the entire world.

William Ross Wallace acknowledged this aptly and poignantly …

“For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.”*

Reflect on the mothers who have been nourishing, supportive, inspiring, honest, kind, compassionate, loving, who have been what I would call “Truth and Love woven together” – mothers who have helped their children become their True Selves.

And reflect on the mothers who – out of their own wounding and the wounding in their cultures – have been less than that, even the opposite. Mothers who have either not protected their children or mothers who have been indifferent, neglectful, or even cruel to their children … often under the guise of their “rights” as mother or “for your own good.”

Ponder the mother whose child became a leader of a country or even an empire. What was the impact of that leader on his or her country? What was the impact on our world? Was the leader damaging to the people, to the earth, to him/herself? Was s/he damaging under the guise of “goodness”? Under the normalization by a culture that accepted such damage and the guise justifying it? Was the culture that of an empire, a country, a business, a family?

As a member of many cultures, we each have the opportunity and the responsibility to affect how our leaders are chosen and how they lead. Are you claiming and acting upon your opportunities and responsibility? And are you doing so in a way that is healthy and woven of Truth and Love?

As a member of many cultures, we each have the opportunity and the responsibility to be a leader in our own way. Are you claiming and acting upon your opportunities and responsibility in your cultures – whether the culture of your family, your school, your church, your workplace, your community …?

Reflect upon how the patriarchal cultures of our world have impacted the experiences of our mothers, their mothers, and the mothers before them. Reflect upon how the individual mother impacts the culture, and the culture impacts the individual mother …and each of her children, and then generations to come. It is a vicious cycle, or a maze as I teach my clients. We need to find our ways out of the vicious cycle … individually and culturally. It takes our doing our personal inner healing work one by one by one. It takes our educating people in our cultures. It takes our reweaving the fabric from the inside out.

Wonder about your own mother. Seek to find, beneath the surface, in the very depths of your being – the impact your mother had on you, on every fiber of your being, on every one you touch … on you as you impact our world.

If you are a mother, wonder about your own mothering. Are there things you can discover about your mothering that you still have a chance to heal – for yourself, for your children … for both of you … and for our world?

*****

It is with Mother that we first have the opportunity to attach, that we first have the opportunity to bond …in healthy ways needed for us to become all we have the potential to be.

It is with Mother that we first have the opportunity to experience in the outer world the essence of the Divine.

If we don’t have a mother with whom we have these crucial experiences … everything else is awry for us until we do our healing. And this impacts not only us, but the world around us and the world as a whole.

As we approach Mother’s Day, let’s go beneath the surface possibilities of the day. Let’s go through the experience deeply and fully – in Truth and Love – discovering and working with what is calling to be healed from the inside out … personally and communally.

© Judith Barr, 2015

*From his poem The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand That Rules the World (published 1865)
https://emp.byui.edu/satterfieldb/quotes/Hand%20that%20rocks%20the%20cradle.html

A New Look at Independence: True Independence

As another Independence Day has come and gone here in the U.S.A.,  I have been called again to speak a deeper voice, a deeper truth about what independence is and isn’t.  All through the weeks leading up to July 4, I kept hearing in my heart … shall I feed the illusions about independence that so many of us believe and live in? Or shall I pierce those illusions and help people part the veil to see where they are not really independent?  My life, my work, my heart is always to find the truth, to teach the truth … even though many may run from it. So this year, in the afterglow of July 4,  I am offering the truth about independence to citizens of the U.S. and citizens of the world, as well. We all need to understand true independence.

Many people believe that if they rebel against their parents, they are free.  And many believe they claim their independence by doing just that – rebelling.* But look at the dynamics beneath the outer action. Look at the dynamic that sets up for the children as they age and for the relationship over time.

Sharon’s mother wants her daughter to be “a good girl” and do what “mommy says is right.”  First of all, what is mother teaching Sharon?  Is she teaching her wonderful values? Is she teaching her to discern the truth for herself? Or is she teaching Sharon not to do anything that will trigger mommy? If the latter, what will little Sharon do? She may comply with her mother and do only what mommy wants, defending herself against mommy’s triggered reactions. Or she may rebel against mommy and do the opposite of what her mother wants, however triggered mommy gets. This may develop into consistent oppositional attitudes and behavior – overt and covert – throughout Sharon’s life, in her relationship with everyone and everything, even life itself. (We’ve seen a lot of this in our Congress for the past many years.)

Sharon may believe that complying with mommy’s wishes takes away her own young independence, while also believing that rebelling against mommy’s wishes and doing the opposite of what mommy wants gives her freedom. This reveals the underlying dynamic that so many of us – all over the world – don’t want to see. Rebelling against does not make us independent, does not make us free, does not make us grownups.  Complying with and rebelling against are both in reaction to “the other,” meaning another person.  Neither is an individuated action in behalf of one’s self.  Once you understand this, you will never be able to see independence, individuation, freedom the same way again.  You will never again be able to see someone in an adult body and be sure if that is a grown up – if that is a grownup standing in individuated truth, or if that is a child in an adult’s body rebelling against mommy and daddy.

I teach my clients this in many different ways.  For instance, if you want to truly individuate, that occurs in the context of the relationship.  It requires a relationship in which a child experiences he can have both himself and also his mother (or father or both).

An example: If the parent sets up the relationship so the son, Sam, cannot have, be, develop into the self he is at essence … Sam will give up himself to have the parent. Or Sam will give up the parent and risk abandonment or abuse on many levels. Or Sam will vacillate between the two options one way or another – perhaps out in the open, perhaps in his own mind and heart, perhaps beneath his own consciousness. And often Sam, like many other children in the same situation, will fantasize the time when he grows up and can get away from the parent … run away from the parent … and at long last be free. Note again, that this is not true freedom, for Sam is getting away from his parent, running away from his parent.  That may be the only way Sam, with his child’s mind, thinks he can become himself. And perhaps he’s right that he will never become himself in that particular parent-child relationship. But, if that’s what Sam is living with, if that’s what Sam is growing up with, if that’s what Sam decides is the solution … deep inside his own psyche and soul, then Sam will be as tied to his parent if he runs away as he will be if he stays.  He will act this out both within himself and in the world outside … somehow … even if other people can’t see or know it, even if he himself isn’t aware of it. And he will not be able to truly individuate – become his own person inside and out — until he finds a therapeutic relationship in which he can heal the wounds that prevent him from both being himself and “having” the other person. This, of course, requires a therapist who has done his or her own deep healing work with individuation and independence.

The person who rebelled to try to get away from her parent as a way of attempting to be independent – to be her own self – will approach the crossroads of working through the childhood dilemma with as much – maybe even more – fear and defense as the person who complied and submitted and never rebelled at all.

This is all to bring us back to the truth: Are you really independent? Or are you just deluding yourself to keep from experiencing your own early pain?  And your own early longing for a parent who has done his or her own work and can both be their full individuated self while at the same time supporting you to become your self?

Sadly, what people will do – as individuals and as groups — to try to avoid this pain, while at the same time pursuing this longing, is mind- and heart-boggling.  They will abuse themselves and each other. They will abuse the earth that is our home. They will try to control others’ hearts, minds, souls. .  . and, of course, bodies. They will submit or rebel against. And while doing these things, most of the time they will be claiming, to themselves and others, that they are independent.  Most of the time asserting that they are free. Most of the time pretending they are in power, or fighting to be the ones in power.  Anyone who gets power that way isn’t really in power. Anyone who lives that way isn’t really independent.

How can people be truly independent unless they do their own work to resolve their issues from the inside out.  How can people be authentically independent if they have no willingness to be interdependent in the most healthy way?  Look out into our world and ask yourself … How much true independence do I see? Not much. How much true interdependence do I see? Not much.

How are we going to become truly independent from the inside out unless we do our own inner healing work to the root?  We’re not. Don’t be deluded or seduced into thinking otherwise.  Don’t be fooled by distorted new age spiritual teachings, or old-age traditional ones, either. Don’t be duped by personal growth leaders who haven’t really been trained to do the deep work with another’s psyche and soul, and even worse, haven’t done their own deep healing to the root.  Don’t be hoodwinked by the quick fix treatment of symptoms by techniques that may help you make believe you’re independent because you can function again, while just hiding the deeper cause and root of the symptom.

Don’t be deceived. Our real independence – individually and communally – rests on our own healing one by one by one.

These truths about real independence are reflected not only in the minds, bodies, hearts, souls, and lives of individuals, but also in those of couples, families, organizations, communities, countries, and our world at large. How often have we seen violent rebellion in which the rebel faction ends up enslaving the populace as much as the old regime did? How many times have we seen rebellious action on the part of a portion of the populace only to have their ideals and goals disintegrate, or the changes they want to enact, however lofty, fail to materialize, or even materialize and then fail to be sustained? This is a reflection of the need for each and every one of us – even the activists amongst us – to do the inner work necessary to truly make change…not out of “rebellion” against past or present authority but from true, conscious longing and commitment to heal ourselves and to heal our world.

We cannot afford any more to delude ourselves. To pretend with ourselves or others. The rich and powerful are not necessarily any more truly independent that those in their employ or those who are impacted by their actions, who are poor and oppressed.  If you have to amass limitless resources to feel secure, how independent can you really be? If you have to use your power over others or at the expense of others, how truly free and independent can you be?

Don’t be deceived. Our real independence – individually and communally – rests on our own healing one by one by one.

© Judith Barr, 2014

*I am not saying that children who are being abused – or adults for that matter –shouldn’t find their way to safety.  But there are more grounded, more truly effective ways to do so than rebellion.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP MAKE OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

As we go about our daily lives – both in the afterglow of Independence Day and all throughout the year – we need to explore within ourselves how independent we truly are.

As you go through your day, explore what your early experiences with independence were. Were you encouraged to individuate, and to truly be who you are, with gentle guidance and teaching? Or were your attempts to be your true self stifled? Or alternately, were you given “free rein” with no guidance at all?

And, how did you react as a child? Did you try to do everything you could to please mommy and daddy, in spite of who you truly were? Or did you perhaps rebel against everything, the consequences be damned?

Then…as you experience authority in whatever form you experience it today, take note of how you feel. Is the feeling familiar? Can you trace that feeling back to your childhood experience? Is the feeling similar to your own childhood feelings, as best as you can recall them, in response to the authority of your parents or other adults?

We all feel the need to make change in our world … a world which so desperately needs change. But in order to make true, sustainable change, we need to explore and heal the wounds which prevent us from truly being independent.

IT’S APRIL FOOLS’ DAY

It’s April 1st – April Fools’ Day . . . And do we have a lot to talk about this month! So much, in fact, that I’m going to do this month’s newsletter differently from usual. I’m going to touch briefly on a number of themes, planting seeds for you – and for us together – to nourish and grow.

*****

It’s April 1st – April Fools’ Day . . .

People are so afraid of being seen as a fool. The result of horrendous shaming, ridiculing, and humiliation which have been normalized in our world culture – both subtly and outright. As part of this normalized shaming …if people feel the pain of being shamed, their pain is discounted and responded to with contempt. They, themselves, are blamed for being able to feel the pain: You’re too sensitive. Toughen up! I was only kidding. Well if you hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t deserve this. Is it any wonder people don’t want to be seen as a fool?

Yet, the deeper meaning of the fool, as in the tarot card, The Fool, is innocence at the edge of new beginnings with unlimited potential and limitless possibilities. If people are afraid of being the fool, they will withhold themselves from this path. They will block their knowing of who they are. They will not let themselves be who they are, even if they know. They will not choose any of the possibilities to which the path leads. Or they will force themselves to pick one, but not let themselves know the one – or the next one – to which they are truly called. Or they will choose one but not commit to it. And so they will leave it when it seems challenging, difficult. Leave the possibility or even the path itself … leaving themselves in the process. Or if they commit to it, they will not follow through with their commitment … lest they appear to be a fool.

Do you interfere with your own unfoldment into your fullest potential … to keep from appearing to be a fool?

*****

Recently …
I led a new workshop on parenting.

Although I’ve worked with people on the consequences for them of their parents’ parenting of them … And although I’ve worked with people on the impact of their parenting on their children … this was different. This was an expansion of that.

My intention was to help parents give their best to their children in a different way than parents usually hear about. My vision was that if parents knew they were being triggered by their children because of their own childhood wounds; if they were helped to know the signs of their being triggered and the impact on their children; if they were shown and even experienced in the workshop that it’s possible to find the root of the trigger and heal it – for both the parent’s sake and the child’s sake … that more people would do their own deep healing work and it would help everyone … from parent to child, to family, to community, to the world as a whole. In any group I’ve ever led, there has been a kind of magic that occurs. People do their own work and witness each other’s work … and it multiplies, and the healing effect multiplies and grows exponentially. And this was true with my recent workshop.

Participants’ responses throughout and after the workshop were so touching and so powerful! My heart flew open again and again to each of the participants, to the group as a whole, and to the possibilities that could come of the afternoon’s work. My heart also flew open as the inspiration came that this parenting workshop might be yet another doorway through which I might help people both individually and also globally. After all, everyone has parents – citizens and leaders, healing leaders and tyrants, heroes and terrorists – and every parent has an impact on his/her children. I’m reaching out to let you know about my soul’s calling to find people who are called to help in this endeavor … to either attend such a workshop or to organize such a workshop … or maybe who have an already-existing group that would like me to come give the workshop to the members. I’m imagining it might be a lay group, a professional group, or even a group of clients working with a given therapist – perhaps the therapist would like me to come give the workshop to his or her clients. (I’ve done the latter on numerous occasions before.) Or perhaps help in some way I cannot yet imagine. I welcome whatever inspirations and help you can give with this.

*****

Leaders were once children, too!
Another lens through which to look at parenting!

The impact of parenting from one generation to the next is more significant than most people realize. Two parents, unaware of their own deep wounding as children, frightened of becoming aware, afraid of feeling, will pass their wounds onto their children … even though they may love their children whole-heartedly. If the children also choose to remain unaware of their wounding, and if they also are afraid of feeling, they will pass the pain onto their children. And so it goes from one generation to the next. Generations of parents who yell at their children; generations of parents who don’t set boundaries for their children; generations of parents who are incestuous with their children on many levels of being; generations of parents who neglect their children; generations of parents who tease and humiliate their children; generations of parents who discipline their children in harmful ways; – from subtle to blatant; and so on…

Parents are impacted by their parents. Their parents were impacted by theirs. And each generation of parents both impacts the culture and is impacted by the culture. It’s a two-way street. If your parents hit you and told you that was love … and if other parents in your culture were doing the same both because their parents did that to them and also because it had become normalized in society at the time … the back and forth between the individual and the culture becomes very clear.

Some parents try to help their children be empowered in their lives, both as children and as adults – often not being aware if there are any ways in which they may send a double or mixed message. Some parents frighten their children out of being empowered and taking action when it’s needed, the parents preferring to be the ones in power and control. Other parents embolden their children to take power in harmful, destructive ways. Still other parents have children who both copy them in using power destructively and also take revenge against them (the parents) … both personally and individually and also communally. And yet other parents sit on their power, not using it actively, but letting it come out in passive ways. They teach their children to do the same by modeling, by messages … and it affects everyone’s lives destructively.

Think of how Hitler took revenge on his father by acting out the horrific torture of his childhood on innocent people … just like he once was. In other words, Hitler was once an innocent child. He had parents – a father who tortured him and a mother who didn’t protect him. And culturally, the society was one where what was called “child rearing” was really child abuse normalized. So the wounded children grew up to act out and re-enact their own childhoods … for example, frightened children joining with the abusive parent in attempts at self-defense. Or frightened, angry children growing up and joining with the abusive parent and torturing others to act out what was done to them and find a way to act out their rage at what they had experienced.

Who knows what child will grow up to be a leader? Who knows what parents will give birth to and parent a child who grows up to be a leader? Who knows what the childhood was like of each leader in our world today? Who knows how that parent-child relationship affects the lives of all of us here on earth today and tomorrow and the tomorrow after that?

As Putin has been making his moves in and around the Ukraine and the world at large, how come we aren’t all wondering what his childhood was like? How come we didn’t think of that long, long ago? How come his countrymen and countrywomen didn’t think of that long, long ago? How come somebody didn’t wonder how the culture would create fertile ground both for him to take power as he has and also for the country people to support him?

We could and need to be looking at every leader and every society through this lens … the lens of the psyche developed in the children. It is deeper by far than any lens – social-political-economic-religious – people have looked through before.

*****

In honor of Alice Miller

This month will be the one-year anniversary of Alice Miller’s death. Of all the people I’ve ever studied, or even read … Of all the people I’ve ever known, personally or through their work … she, more than anyone else, understood what I am talking about here. She understood and wrote about the impact of parenting on an individual child’s future and on the cultural and global future, as well. At the same time, she understood about the parents’ resistance to doing their own work, finding their own childhood memories, feeling their own early pain. And about the crucial need for them to overcome, work through, heal their own resistance … for their own sakes, for the sake of their children, and for the sake of our world.

Alice Miller’s work was empowering for us all in ways that are vital for us to become aware of. I am so thankful she was present on this earth! I am so thankful for the support her knowing and teaching offers me as I follow my calling and my knowing … to help in the healing so deeply needed in our world.

© Judith Barr, 2014

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP MAKE OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

There are so many healing avenues for us to explore this month … and all year long. This April, I’d like to focus on two opportunities to explore and heal.

This month … explore your feelings about “looking the fool.” Are there times in your life when you may have resisted an obvious calling, or resisted being your true Self, for fear of looking foolish? Or in your fear, have you resisted giving your full commitment to a calling? Be aware of the feelings you have when you are inspired by your calling … When have you felt these feelings before in your life? When in your childhood have you felt this same way? Commit today to truly heal those wounds from your childhood that are “holding you back” from fulfilling your true calling – from being who you really are.

As you do this exploration, become aware also of how your own wounds have impacted not only your life, but the lives of the children in your life. Can you trace back – to the root – the feelings you have during your interactions with children – whether they be your own children, the children in your family, friends’ children? Do you know the roots in your own childhood of the feelings you have about children? Commit as well to explore and heal the wounds inside you that affect your children and the children around you.

And … to help bring the much-needed healing out further into our world … if you have an inspiration about how you can help bring my parenting workshop to a venue that would welcome it, please contact me so we can explore the possibilities. Together, we can help heal our world, from the inside out.

As We Make Passage From 2013 to 2014 . . . My Prayer Is This . . .

That more and more of us will realize . . .
actions in the outer world –
even the kindest and best of actions –
may help for a time,
but not long term,
because they will not get to the root
of what needs to be healed
in ourselves, our society, our world.

That more and more of us will recognize . . .
prayer in our hearts, on our lips, in our song, in our step –
individually and communally –
even the most genuine prayers . . .
will not alone help,
because they will not alone get to the root
of what needs to be healed
in ourselves, our society, our world.

That more and more of us will truly comprehend . . .
the truth of the painful experiences children have
at the hands of parents –
even those who intend to be loving –
parents who are denying and defending against the
truth of the painful experiences they,
themselves, had as children.

That more and more of us will become conscious of
the truth of the pain from childhood experiences
that lives still within us,
even as we grow older and older —
pain from childhood experiences
that drives us from beneath our awareness,
that drives us to take actions in our lives
and to avoid taking other actions in our lives
that are not good for us, not healthy for us,
individually or communally.

That more and more of us will comprehend
that the pain living still within us individually –
the pain we deny, bury, and defend against –
the pain that drives us in our individual lives
beneath our awareness . . .
that same pain drives us culturally and globally,
and the defense against that same pain
sadly becomes a normalized way of life,
not only by individuals but also by society.

That more and more of us will take a leap of faith,
and yet another leap of faith,
into the healing so needed in our world.
That instead of defending ourselves against
our own early pain and trauma,
and then acting that out upon ourselves,
our children, and others in our lives . . .
we will find the help we need
to build our capacity. . .
to face, feel at last, and heal what still lay within us . . .
in our own inner underground . . .

So that the acting out will cease –
the acting out of and against our pain –
and the healing that occurs within
will help us weave a new fabric
for our lives, our communities, our societies, our world . . .
from the inside out.

That more and more of us will realize that
calling people’s acting out evil or even mental illness
is yet another way to normalize, deny,
defend against the real truth . . .
and will never help us get to the root of it,
will never truly heal it.

That more and more of us will recognize
we have been raised – most of us – in cultures that do not teach us how to feel safely,
express our feelings safely,
and learn how to utilize our feelings for growth,
for health,
for deepening connection and fulfillment
within ourselves and with each other. . .
And that as a result, we are crippled.
As a result we are crippled in ways
we could resolve and heal . . .
if only we didn’t deny them . . .
if only we didn’t defend against them . . .
if only we didn’t normalize the crippling as health.

That more and more of us will commit to recognizing
and healing the crippling in our lives –
caused by our fear of and inability to feel and express our feelings safely and healthily,
individually and communally.
And that more and more of us will not only make that commitment
but also follow through on it . . .
all the way through to the root.

As We Make Passage From 2013 to 2014 . . .
My Commitment Is This . . .

To continue to help more and more of us realize that what we call normal is really an all-too-accepted defense against that within us which is crying out to be healed . . .
To continue to help us learn how to healthily respond to that within us which is crying out for healing . . .
To continue to assist in the healing – the individual and the communal healing –
in whatever ways I can . . .
To continue to help us – through our healing –
reweave the fabric of our selves individually and communally  . . .
from the inside out.

Many deep healing blessings
to you and to all of us
in our passage from year to year
and in the year to come.

© Judith Barr 2013

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP MAKE OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

This year, as we make the transition from 2013 to 2014, instead of making a resolution . . . instead of only resolving to try to make changes in the outside world . . .  make a real commitment to help in the healing of our world not only through outer action, prayer or good intention, but also through true inner healing.

Commit to find, explore, and heal within yourself those wounds from long, long ago in your past which cause you to act out, no matter how much you resolve not to, and which prevent you from creating sustainable change in our world – no matter how much you intend to create that lasting change.

Commit to see the truth and speak out about it, rather than normalizing dysfunction in our world. And commit to spreading the word about the real possibility and the importance of healing to the root.

As we transition to the new year, limitless healing is open to all of us – individually and globally. It is my prayer that you join me in committing to do what you can to help truly realize that healing.

FOR THE HOLIDAYS AND NEW YEAR: YOU ARE THE GIFT

Far too often in our world, children are socialized according to how Mom and Dad want them to be. Children are thought of as “wild” and “bad” if they don’t match what the culture wants them to be. Children are thought of as demanding and needy, if they need what a child would naturally need. Children are treated as objects and made to function . . . not helped to be their true selves, not helped to more and more deeply become their true selves.

What we see in our world today shows us a mirror of this truth even now. Adults who still abuse children in cultures that normalize the abuse, even perhaps while also appearing to fight against it. Adults who still use children as objects of sexual gratification, even while hiding it from others. Perhaps even while bemoaning the sexual abuse in our world. Adults who treat children as slaves, to do whatever work the adults wish. Adults who – perhaps even while believing they are being loving – force, train, prompt, or even encourage their children to become too-too-busy, on-the-go little robots. In order to function. In order to succeed. In order to go to college, to get a job, and so on. I’ve worked with mothers who start taking their children to 2 and 3 activities a day every day of the week beginning at age 3 or 4, or perhaps even younger.  No time for these budding little ones to be. Or to become. Only to do.

We too often socialize our children, make them function, to alleviate our own anxieties . . . instead of working through our own anxieties in order to help our children be themselves. We too often didn’t have anyone help us to find and be ourselves, so to try to help our children would bring up our own early wounding and painful feelings . . . feelings and experiences too many of us do not want to remember, let alone feel. So in order to leave our painful memories and feelings buried within us, we create painful memories and experiences and feelings for our children. It is a generational issue. It will continue until, individual by individual, family by family, culture by culture, some generation stops it by doing its own healing work.

Even some therapy in today’s day and age contributes to this. Many therapies get the patients or clients to function . . . and no more. Driven, in part, by the insurance companies and finances, therapy is too often limited to a search for functioning, or a search for socializing . . . and no more. It is too often limited to a quick fix – “slap on a band aid” mode of treatment, instead of helping a person through the wounding, through the suffering, to the root of the wound and to the self who was originally wounded. And of course, if the therapist doesn’t do this work for him or herself – as too many therapists don’t – helping someone else do it will bring up what the therapist doesn’t want to remember, re-experience, or feel. This contributes to the therapist being driven by things like insurance, finances, new and old theories and techniques that will take the therapist away from assisting clients to find their true self.

Thank goodness . . . there are some therapists who are able and committed to helping people journey through the dark within to find their true selves; and there are some therapists who do their own work ongoingly so they are able to be with others in this deep, courageous journey.

Even many coaches and personal growth trainers, while perhaps believing they are doing something helpful, make this same mistake. For example, those who advocate “finding your purpose.” The emphasis on your purpose being something you should be doing in the world with your life and life energy. But your purpose isn’t something you do . . . it’s finding who you are, being who you are, living who you are . . . the real you. Some people will settle for doing. Others, thank goodness, want to find their true selves.

Even the media now reinforces and imposes the functioning and socializing instead of the finding of your real self . . .  the CNN Heroes who do great giving things, the gifts people should give for those who have experienced trauma, the donations to be made so you can have an impact.  Mind you, there is nothing wrong with giving. There is nothing wrong with having an impact. But if it is a new way to socialize people instead of helping them find their real selves, then this too is distorted.  And if it is a way to defend against your journey home to your real self, then it blocks the way to our having a family, a culture, a world filled with not giving automatons but deeply authentic people – people able to truly give from the heart and not from a place of wounding. And if it doesn’t truly help a person with the inner healing needed, then it most certainly blocks the way to that healing.

Through this holiday season and in the year to come, instead of making the mad dash to buy gifts for people . . . instead of being seduced and dazzled and held captive by the gifts and the lights in the outer world . . . how about seeing the gifts and lights in the outer world as a mere mirror to the gift of you, the light of you deep within . . . and commit yourself to find the gift within your very self, the light within your very self.

You Are the Gift

Even if you weren’t welcomed into the world as a gift,
Even if you weren’t treated like a gift as a child,
Even if you buried the gift you were beneath your defenses
in a reflexive attempt to protect the real you,
Even if you have forgotten you buried the gift that you are . . .
You are still the gift.

The gift of you is still waiting for you
to come find and  dig him or her out . . .
to take the walls down rock by rock, inch by inch . . .
to fill in the moat, leaving perhaps a brook . . .
so you can allow others to come close while honoring your
boundaries . . .
The gift of you is still waiting for you to bring air and space and true nourishment . . .
to bring protection, not defenses, in a different more healthy way,
in a way that no longer need be life saving without being life giving.

There is a light within you
The spark of you
The essence of you . . .
It lives within the darkness in you.
You cannot truly access it
without going into the darkness within.
You cannot truly live from it
without going through the darkness within.
It is a challenging journey.
It is a unique kind of initiation journey.
It is a healing, transformative journey
Like no other.
It brings you home to you.
This is your purpose . . .
Unlike any other . . .
To journey within
through the darkness of
your own inner underground labyrinths . . .
Through the darkness . . .
Home to the essence of the real you.

That’s who you need to be.
That’s who you need to live.
That’s who you need to be in the world.
That’s who you need to give to life . . .
That’s who you need to give to the world . . .
For in giving your true self to life . . .
Everybody receives . . .
Life and the whole world get to receive the gift of you,
And
You get to receive the gift of being your Self,
Giving what nobody else in the whole universe can give . . .
Your true self.

© Judith Barr 2013

WHAT YOU CAN DO
TO HELP MAKE YOUR AND OUR WORLD SAFE . . .
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

This holiday season, and as you prepare for the coming year, make a commitment to do the inner work to explore and heal your inner wounds . . . and find your true self.

Don’t be content with just “functioning” or just “doing.” As you do your holiday shopping . . . as you prepare to celebrate . . . as you make passage into the new year . . . as you go about your daily life . . . notice ways in which our society discourages the journey to self.

Take note of and recognize the ways in which the media and our world in general focus on “doing” rather than “being,” on managing rather than healing, and speak out about this distortion. Help others in your life not to normalize the “quick fixes” that encourage us to settle for just being functional. And commit, during the holiday season and all year long, to heal your own wounds to the root, and to uncover the true and real you . . . to be able to offer the most unique and valuable gift you can: your true self.

WINTER SOLSTICE – A REALITY AND A METAPHOR

Today is the day of the Winter Solstice. It’s the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Today, December 21, 2012, it is also the one week anniversary of the tragedy in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Perhaps we can help ourselves, each other, and those who live in Newtown by looking at the healing process through the lens of the Winter Solstice.

The Winter Solstice is the darkest day. But when the little ray of light shines through into the deep darkness on that day, it is also the beginning of the light’s growing again in the days, weeks, and months to come (and in the case of a tragedy, years to come). At the beginning, the growing light is imperceptible. But even after it becomes perceivable, there are long, dark days of cold, of hardened ground, and of snow and ice to come.

The turning from winter’s darkest day to the birth of spring is a long, deep time within and underground. Nothing external can really hurry it. It has its own timing, its own pace, its own rhythm. If we allow ourselves to go through the process – instead of trying to jump out of it, go around it, rise above it – we, too will come out in a new birth of life . . . each of us in our own rhythm and pace, not compared to anyone else’s. It will be a different life. A life that has gone through a death and a rebirth. But if we commit to the passage and get the help in the passage, it will be a time of transformation with new strengths and gifts to live and bring to life.

It is my deepest prayer that each of us will allow ourselves to go through the pathway of healing modeled by our Earth’s seasons.

Many heartfelt blessings . . .
Judith