giving up our stories is hard to do

Can you notice when you are acting due to a thought or story you made up about your child, rather than acting in response to what is actually occurring? Particularly when we are at our limit, we can begin to believe the storyline over things as they really are. The more you can notice when you do this, then take a breath and reconnect to what is happening, actually happening, the easier things become. Even when they are hard.

My children were sick all weekend. My husband was working. He has been working every weekend the last month, as well as late nights. I am at my limit. And I was at my limit tonight when they both repeatedly asked me for comforting, at the breast and with snuggles. I just wanted to get dinner in the oven. I didn't have much to do, I hadn't been able to attend to anything else all day outside of playing with them and snuggling/nursing them, changing them, caring for them in the many ways we do when they are ill. I just needed five minutes to get one thing done. They needed me. They felt bad. They needed mama's touch, mama's milk, mama's lap. I didn't want to give it to them anymore. Their cries that they felt sick, that their tummies hurt, that they wanted me - it all felt like way too much. Instead of taking a breath, and acknowledging that indeed, this felt like too much, and working with the energy of that, I began to go off on a storyline, voicing my frustration and resentment. I began to exaggerate in my mind, project my own fears and sadnesses onto them. And I began to speak to them out of that muddled dream. Luckily, I noticed. I heard my words and saw my little ones' faces. But it took a few minutes.

It took a few minutes. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it takes a few days. With some storylines and emotions, it can take a few years, or more. The important thing is that at some point, you notice. You stop. You take a moment to look, and you see that what you thought was true, well, it really isn't. "Life is always kinder than the story we tell about it." I know I am always mentioning that Byron Katie quote, but my goodness, it is apt.

It is only when we can let the whole thing go, watch the shadow unravel, that we can actually stop perpetuating suffering, both our own and others'. The important thing is to notice. Then you can open back up to things as they are, really are. I always say to my meditation students that even if they just notice one time during a meditation session that their attention is not on the breath, and then bring their attention back to the breath, even just once, well - they have meditated. It just takes one time. Over and over and over again.

So. Tonight was one of those times. Noticing that I had allowed myself to be carried, once more, on the wave of story - carried away from the present moment, and into my projections. And behaving badly because of it. I noticed. I came back. I picked up my two crying boys, and I apologized to them. I got warm cloths, and laid them on their tummies. I held them. I nursed them. I hugged them. I asked my husband for help when he got home, even though I knew he was stressed and tired as well. I realized I couldn't attend a meeting I had been planning on going to this evening. That commitment, nagging at the back of mind, had also fed my little tirade. I let go of what I had planned and embraced what needed to occur.

The boys are sleeping now, as is my husband, who is also sick. My kitchen, no, my whole house, is a mess. The cats need to be fed. I need to wrap a birthday present for my youngest and finish a felt crown for him, as it's his second birthday tomorrow. I feel that I am about to come down with this illness too. But still so much to do here. It's ok. And it's hard. I can just acknowledge that, and not add any of the other stuff to it. I don't need to write a whole story of how it should or could be, or why it is hard or whatever. Just breathe. Just be here. Then it isn't hard, or at least, not so hard, anymore.

opinions don't help our children

It is only with the heart that one can see
rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Sorry for my absence. 2012 has gotten off to a bit of a rocky start - some juicy challenges and opportunities have arisen, including attempting to purchase our first house, and these things have kept me busy. But the parenting path doesn't pause for obstacles, it just intensifies, doesn't it? There is so much I have been contemplating, so many things to write about. What has been on my mind this week though is opinions. Specifically, the opinions we harbor about our children. And how these get in the way of having a positive relationship with them.

"Is she a good baby?" This is a question we hear often, sometimes from the moment our child is born. The question is asked by strangers, friends, close family, in-laws. I always respond with "every baby is good." People take this response in different ways. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they say, hurriedly, "oh, of course!" And other times they explain further: "oh, I just meant does she sleep. I just meant, does he eat well. I just meant, does he do what you say." And so on. People respond to us when we say, no he/she is not sleeping much, not eating solids, not potty learned - "oh, that's bad. What are you doing to change that?" I guess what they really mean to say is, "is she easy? does she conform to your wants and needs, rather than to her own?"

The view we carry is that all beings are primordially, fundamentally good. Goodness is their, and our, essential nature. But even on a relative level, children and babies are good. The behavior we tend to label as "bad" is merely behavior that does not conform to how we think things should be in that moment. Maybe our child (or, ahem, our friend's child, or, even worse, our grandchild) is not sleeping as we think they should, is not eating as we think they should, is not speaking, playing, listening, interacting with others and on and on, as we think they should. On the flip side, when they behave as we think they should, we praise them for being good. "You ate all your dinner - what a good boy." "You didn't come into mommy's bed all night - what a good girl."

This habit of putting our opinions on our children, of labeling their behavior, does them and us no favors. It allows no space for growth and no space for compassion. It closes down connection between us, and creates in its stead disconnection and a feeling of being judged, of not being accepted. It also makes it harder for us to teach and guide our children to behaviors that are helpful for them. It is hard to see what would really help them learn when we are coming from a place of making them wrong or right.

An example of this is how we relate to our children's emotional outbursts. In the vajrayana buddhist tradition, emotions are considered to be energy. Emotions are neither good or bad - although they do have wisdom. Anger for instance - anger has the wisdom of clear seeing. We lose that clear seeing when we constrict the anger into aggression, when we add the story to the anger that we are right about something or someone. When we can open to the energy of anger, to its wisdom of clear seeing, and drop any story line we have attached to it, well then we can act skillfully, responding accurately to what we have seen with clarity and compassion.

Whether or not we are able to work with our emotions so that we can access their enlightened aspects and express their wisdom rather than their neurotic qualities - this all depends on how we relate to them. If we relate to our emotions in unskillful ways, then we behave in neurotic ways that harm ourselves and others. To behave skillfully begins with accepting whatever we are feeling without judgement. In order to teach our children to access the wisdom of their emotions, we also have to accept them (their emotions) without judgement. Then we have to take the additional step of accepting their behavior without judgement as well. Whoa - that sounds like I am giving them an excuse to behave in any way they want and do whatever they want, right? No, not at all. Our job as parents is to help our children relate to their energy in a skillful, compassionate way. In order to do that, we need to drop our opinions about it.

We tend to label behavior as being "good" or "bad". Can you try to see your children's behavior as just behavior? As energy expressing itself? Sometimes the energy is brittle, tight, and unhappy. Sometimes the energy is joyful and free flowing. Sometimes it is loud and overwhelming. Sometimes it is sharp, and wants to jab at us and the world. Sometimes it is quiet and soft, and needs warmth and gentle nurturing. It is all just energy. It isn't personal, though it can feel that way, and we often respond out of that personal sense of hurt or displeasure, embarrassment or resentment. When we can see their behavior as energy expressing itself, then we can respond to it cleanly. We can provide boundaries so the energy does not harm them or others. We can teach them how to self-regulate when they are upset. We can notice when we make a bigger deal over something than is helpful. We can notice when our expectations of what should happen are getting in the way of accepting what is. We can cultivate gentleness. We can stop telling ourselves and them that something is wrong, we can open to what is right. We can accept that whatever is happening is already a passing dream, changing and impermanent. Once we make sure they and others are safe, we can also practice just sitting with their energy.

Sometimes, when our children's energy is very wild and chaotic, like in a tantrum, it can be very hard to just sit with it. It is scary for them and for us. We have a tendency to just want to make it stop - and who can blame us? It isn't pleasant to be around a tantruming toddler. Sometimes both my toddlers tantrum at the same time, and well, part of me just wants to teleport the hell out of there. But when I notice my own discomfort with their emotions, I can relax and just open to them, hold them, just be with the raging until it passes. The calmer and gentler I can be with them, the more quickly they tend to calm down. The more I acknowledge what they are feeling, rather than try to convince them they are feeling something else, or that they shouldn't be feeling that way, the more they are able to just release it and move on.

We have to model this ourselves. When your own energy of anger gets sparked, how to do you relate to it? What do you do? What do your children see? If we have the tendency to yell at our children, we cannot expect them to speak gently to us. If we hold onto our emotions, stuff them down, judge them - our children will eventually do the same.

Notice when you label your children. Notice when you label yourself and your own emotions and behavior. Through cultivating mindful body, speech and mind around and with our children, they will learn to work with their own emotions. They still will not always do what we would like them to, or behave in the way they "ought to", but neither will we. It is part of the joy and pain of being in this human body - we make mistakes. If we can embrace those mistakes with acceptance and love, we will all flourish.

painful reminders

We can stop looking for some idealized moment when everything is simple and secure. This second of experience, which could be painful or pleasurable, is our working basis. What makes all the difference is how we relate to it.
- Pema Chodron

I had the painful reminder today that when I lose my temper with my little ones, it is so very, very rarely about what they are or are not doing. Instead, it is most often the result of me carrying the past and/or the future into the present moment. My worries, my story lines, my fears, my hopes. I am caught up in all that when suddenly, one of my children acts out or does something that is upsetting. Or like today, when my eldest got a pricker in his finger and refused to let me help him in any way, but instead screamed in pain, complaining that it hurt him, for five entire blocks, then in front of our apartment house, then up the stairs as I carried him to our apartment, both fighting me from touching him, but refusing to go up the stairs himself.

I shouted. I told him "to walk up those stairs." I told him, "no, we are not going to just stand outside here and scream." I said, "I am very frustrated right now, because I want to help you and you won't let me." I suppose I could have said all of the above gently, but I did not. I was angry. I was angry because I have been having one of the worst months I have had in years and years, a month full of obstacles and threats. Challenges and setbacks. I was angry because I was looking forward to going to the library storytime with my little ones, which we have not been able to do for quite some time due to several of the aforementioned obstacles and setbacks. I was angry because on the last three outings I have taken my children on, they have either gotten hurt or had a huge tantrum that forced us to leave said outing often almost as soon as we had gotten there. I was angry because I am worried about where we are going to live. I was angry because I am worried about getting food on our table. I was angry because my mother is dying. And so on. It had nothing to do with my poor little boy and his very uncomfortable finger.

And it is at times like these, when I totally lose it, that I just can fall so easily into despair. It is so easy to use an outburst like this as evidence of what a failure I am as a mother. But instead, I can use a time like this to be more gentle, kinder to myself. Pema Chodron says:

Openness actually starts to emerge when you see how you close down. You see how you close down, how you yell at someone, and you begin to have some compassion.

If we can see how we shut down and yell, then we can begin to understand how others can yell too, or how they can hurt us or others. It comes from their own suffering, just as those moments when we do it comes from our suffering. So again, we are presented with the choice - close or open? Touch that tender, broken heart of our's or pretend it isn't tender at all, and wrap ourselves in duality and aggression? In being right?

So, I began again. I apologized to my son for shouting. I got a bowl of warm water, and had his little brother splash in it. This helped my eldest relax enough to try putting his hand in it. We were home again, stuck inside on a beautiful day, story time a lost event, but he was calm again, and the pricker floated out, as I knew it would. His younger brother, who had been very upset at having to leave the library, played happily with some blocks. I got some support online from caring friends, who have been there, in that same kind of painful, raw moment. Things changed. I had to let go. Let go of my worries. Of my story line. Of my hopes for the day. Of my little one letting me help him, even. The letting go was the opening up.

I haven't been writing here often because of all the obstacles my family is facing currently, but you are all in my thoughts. I hope you and your little ones are able to relax into whatever moment is arising, and let go again.

a helpful post

Read this post today when a friend linked to it on Facebook. What a wonderful blog and what a thoughtful teacher and father.

Lately, I have been struggling with using gentle, respectful language with my two boys when they are engaged in behavior that frightens or embarrasses me, like hitting, pushing, biting, throwing toys etc. My buttons get pushed and I tend to react with aggression rather than making it into a teaching moment. Today, we had a friend over for a play date, and my eldest greeted him and me (I was ushering him in through our door) with a barrage of thrown, heavy metal trains. I kind of freaked out, readers. I raised my voice (a polite way of saying I shouted) and told him I was angry. He shrank.

I ended up being able to catch myself and hug him close, while explaining that he had hurt me with the trains and almost hurt his friend, and that it had scared me. I am not always able to come down so quickly though from the anger high. In any case, this is a helpful post. Teacher Tom: "Spoiled Brats"

you deserve love

"Treat yourself as your own beloved child." - Pema Chodron


I wrote a letter the other day to my mother, who is slowly, slowly dying.  She has a very hard time speaking now, so we can't really talk on the phone.  I have been wanting to write her a letter for quite awhile, before it is too late to tell her that I love her, that I am grateful for the nurturing she gave me, which now runs like a thread to my own little ones.


There is also a thread of neurosis that runs through to them, from my own mother and father, and their parents, and their parents, and on and on down the line to the very beginning, wherever that may be.  It's up to me to continue weaving the thread of compassion and nurture, and cut that of neurosis, again and again as my children grow.  It's very hard some days.  Other days, it is easier.  I am calmer.  Clearer. More present.  I can see when the  taut thread of aggression, shame or resentment begins to peak out.  And on the hard days, the thread seems to slip from my mouth, and there I am, centuries of habitual patterns pouring out onto my wee ones' heads.


Then I need to regroup, think "fresh start" and begin again.  Come back onto the path.  Regret, remediate and renew my aspiration to transform.  Notice I don't say "to do better". I think this whole "doing better" business just hurts us.  It seems to reaffirm our doubts about ourselves - that we are somehow messed up, flawed, damaged, need improvement.  It's not that we need to improve - we need to uncover.  We need to stop believing the stories we tell ourselves.  We need to see through our confused thoughts and rest in the basic goodness, sanity, joy and wisdom of our true natures.  We need to believe, really believe that basic goodness is who we are.  All that other...stuff...it's temporary confusion.  Like the clouds in front of the sun on a rainy day.  The fresh wind of insight or compassion blows - and there is the sun again, brilliant and strong.


When I really get stuck in "needing to do better" or too tangled in that thread of neurosis, I need to rock myself in the cradle of loving kindness.  I need to treat myself, as Ani Pema says above, as my "own beloved child". It is so hard to be patient, kind, loving when we are unable to be any of that with our own, dear selves.  One of things I wrote in the letter to my mother was that I have always had a very hard time loving myself.  And I thanked her for loving me, despite the many challenges I presented her with, despite the many times I must have been really, truly hard to love without reservations.  We all deserve that kind of love.  Most of the time, we look to others to give us that all encompassing, compassionate, non-judging love.  We look to lovers, to parents, to teachers, to friends, even, sadly, to our own children.  No one else can give it to us.  We need to give it to ourselves.


I am still learning how to do that.  It starts, I have found, with gentleness.  With compassion.  With forgiveness.  With knowing that falling off of the path is as much a part of it as walking it straight and strong.  The important part is getting back on.  The important part is knowing that every other human being has felt and thought and probably done all those things you think only you are bad enough to have felt, thought or done.  The important part is knowing that there is no such thing as a perfect mother or father.  That we all do the best we can in every moment.  That children are resilient.  That to aspire to transform that thread of neurosis is the first step to transforming it into nurture.  That just to notice that thread of neurosis is the first step to liberation.  That your basic birth right as a human being is goodness, joy and sanity.


My mother is unable to hold me in her own arms - not because I am too big, but because her's are too weak.  She is unable to tell me she loves me, because her mouth and throat muscles don't work anymore, or at least not very well.  So, I working on holding myself, rocking myself in kindness, whispering sweet words of love.  It seems that after I do that, it is even easier to do the same for my own children.  The thread of nurture seems to grow so much stronger, truer, lasting.  I can see it spool out, into their hearts, carrying centuries of compassion and gentleness.

easing back into things as they are

"Reality is always kinder than the story we tell about it."
 - Byron Katie


Well, I made it through two weeks by myself with the wee ones.  I sadly neglected the blog during that time, but I had to let a lot of things go, in order to really be in accordance with things as they are, rather than in constant conflict with reality.  Which meant that while my little ones got lots of adventures, and kisses and hugs, and stories and games and yummy food, they also got lots of ice cream, some late bedtimes, some videos and a very, very messy home base.  At two different points during my husband's absence, my entire living room was covered with clean laundry that the boys had taken from the laundry bag and strewn everywhere.  Laundry covered every inch of floor and every piece of furniture.  A few times I forgot to feed the cats.  I think a colony of ants may have taken up residence under the living room sofa.   In the meantime, we were at the playground or the firetruck museum or at a friend's house, playing in their pool.  


I had to surrender to a certain level of chaos in order to keep us all rested enough to be joyful in our days together.  I had to let go of my agenda again and again.  It was often funny and a little bit painful to notice how much I wanted to hold onto it, creating so much unnecessary stress and aggression.  Why exactly was I trying to rush my two toddlers out the door just now?  Where did we need to be so urgently?  Oh, at the firetruck museum?  Where we were meeting, um, nobody?  Which is open for the whole day?  Why now was I getting so very frustrated with them, and starting to get more and more tense, on the verge of shouting or tears?  How interesting.  Let's just let that go, shall we?  Breathe in and breathe out.  Connect to my feet on the ground, to my little ones' faces.  They are laughing getting their sandals on together.  Can I open to that sweet moment?  Nothing else has to actually happen right now.  Just this.


A wise teacher once told me that wanting things to be different than they are is inherently aggressive.  I have chewed that one over in my mind often over the intervening years.  It arises again and again with my children.  Noticing when I want things to be different.  It is a daily occurrence.  Noticing, and letting go.  Touching the emotion underneath - the sadness, the exhaustion maybe, maybe even some anger?  And always underneath it all, the fear.  The fear of space.  That is why I rush them out the door.  I somehow cannot rest with this space in the day, the lack of a place I must be, a thing I must accomplish, other than simply being with my children.  Being fully present with them.  All this open ended space, while they explore and grow and learn.  I have difficulty trusting it.  So I have to come back.  Come back to my breath.  Come back to them.  Back to gentleness and compassion for myself, for the children, for my partner.  Noticing the story I have been telling myself and believing in, instead of what actually is.  "Reality is always kinder than the story we tell about it."


Yes, it is.  Always so much kinder, gentler, nuanced and open than the tight little tale we weave and weave again.  So this is the path for me right now.  Noticing the story.  Dropping it.  Holding myself with gentleness so I can hold my little ones with loving kindness.  Welcoming my husband back from retreat.  Laughing at the clean laundry on the floor.  Admitting to my two year old that I am tired, and so I am going to just sit in my rocker for a bit and read a book if he really doesn't want to nap.  Not forcing him to, but just letting him know, gently, that I need to rest even if he doesn't, so I am going to, while still staying with him.  And the very next day, shouting at my little ones after a sleepless night when they knock over all the shrine bowls full of water onto my favorite baby pictures of them.  Then taking a breath, touching my tiredness fully, not making myself wrong for feeling it, or even for getting angry, but coming out and apologizing to them for expressing it so unskillfully, hugging them, and asking them not to do it again.  Up and down.  Back and forth.  On the path and off.  But still, always kinder, gentler than the story I tell about it.


Wishing you all gentleness and a full embrace of reality instead of the story this week.  It can be hard, even painful to let it go.  But I promise you, it really is so much kinder.

I found this article today and it helped me after several challenging days of trying to relate skillfully to transitions with my little ones, and falling flat on my face a few times.   Yes, that was me losing my mind over there with my two year old who was refusing to nap after tandem  nursing with his 16 month old brother for an hour.  Sigh.  Anyway, it was a good reminder to lighten up and let go, rather than bring things to a painful point.  Wishing you all playfulness!

more tips on working with anger

Hello friends - I may be offline this week due to moving our computer to another part of our apartment in order to create a separate bedroom for our little boys to share (yes, this is part of me trying to solve our sleep riddle, as they currently both sleep with me in a rather small bed). In the meantime, I read this very beautiful and profound response in a wonderful advice column to a mama's question about relating to anger towards her small children. The response is poignant, genuine, thoughtful and helpful. Would love to hear your thoughts about it as well. You can read it here. Wishing you love and joy this week.

trying to control things as they are

This is a great little teaching, by the wonderful teacher Sharon Salzberg, about fear and anger. Fear and anger share the same root: aversion to things as they are, aversion to space and losing our ground. Often under anger, we can find our fear, and under that, our good, tender hearts.

sometimes you just get angry

"Whenever we’re challenged, there is opportunity to open to the difficulty and let the difficulty make us more compassionate, more wise. Or the opposite, which is that when things are difficult, the chances instead of it making us more afraid and therefore more vulnerable or more subject to being able to catch the anxiety in the atmosphere and spin off...and the tendency for aggression to escalate and violence to escalate under challenge is much greater."
- Pema Chodron

I get angry sometimes. I get angry because I get hooked by someone or something. I get hooked because I am human. The problem isn't necessarily in the getting hooked, although I am working on that as well (ha!). It is what I do once the hook is in - do I bite on and keep going, or do I relax, feel it, and then let it go?

I always thought of myself as the mama who never yelled. Or at least, that was my aspiration. My mother screamed constantly throughout my childhood. And it was awful. I vowed at a very early age to never do this with my own children. Ahem. But last week, I yelled not once, not twice, but a few times at my two year old. Now, my first instinct is to want to explain. Explain that we are all operating on very little sleep, with my toddler and often my 10 month old unwilling to nap and not going down to sleep at night very easily. And constantly waking up. Anyway, we are all very tired, and at times, extremely cranky with one another. My husband has been working late each day and on weekends, trying to finish some mandated reports he must do in his job as a social worker. So, it has been on my shoulders to care for the little ones all day and often all night, with no help until perhaps the rare Sunday. I am good and truly tired.

My toddler can be quite aggressive with his younger brother. This is what has been eliciting yells and, at times, shrieks from me - his constant harming of his little brother. When I am more rested, I can respond with gentleness and firmness, get resourceful, distract him, and so on. But when I am tired, and it is the hundredth time that day that he has made his little baby brother cry, and given him yet another welt, well, I have been losing it. And once I have lost it, I find I then become triggered by lesser things as well, like normal two year old mess making and mayhem. Because when I am tired, I begin to get caught by the content of my thoughts, by the stories I find I am whispering to myself, and have a harder time just dropping them. I have a harder time pausing when I see I am getting hooked, and just feeling the anger. So, I find myself yelling, and then instantly regretting it.

What I have had to do, in addition to the usual regret, remediate and refrain tool, is try and really, really accept my anger. I wrote before about bowing to our pain, to our lineage of dysfunction - but we also have to bow to our own anger. Anger is, ultimately, just energy. If we can work with it as such, it begins to lose its power over us. Anger becomes a problem when instead of simply feeling its energy and letting it flow through and dissolve, we either suppress it or act it out - therefore harming others. In both cases, we are solidifying the energy, rather than just letting it arise and cease. The first step to working with it as energy is to acknowledge it. To not suppress it and to not reject it. But to just admit that it is there, working in us. Again, it helps to use our awareness to notice we are angry, and to feel where that anger lives, physically.

Once we have noticed it and acknowledged it, we can bow to it. Bowing to me in this sense means accepting it, "I see you anger. I am angry." Keeping it to "I am angry" is potent. I think it is more helpful to keep it to that, and not spin out into "he made me angry" or "this makes me angry", which solidifies it. Then, bow. What does that mean? You could really, truly bow. Or you could close your eyes, and just breathe. Respect your anger. For me, when I bow to my anger, I often find something else underneath it, hiding under the anger. In addition to my physical tiredness this past week, I was sad about the death of a close friend. And I had been worrying about several other matters. I find so often with my children that although their action is the trigger, there are so many causes and conditions leading up to that incident that have so very little to do with what just happened in the moment. When we are caught by our anger, our world gets so tight and narrowed, and we lose all sense of vastness. Just feeling our anger, accepting it, can create the gap where we can touch back into the spaciousness of basic goodness.

Sometimes bowing to our anger is not enough. Sometimes we need to leave the room. Sometimes we need to take our little ones outside. Sometimes we need to call a friend on the phone and cry. Sometimes we need to have ice cream for dinner and go to bed with our baby at 5:00 in the afternoon. But that is, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, "taking care of our anger". Sometimes we need to do that. It is a practice of compassion, taking care of our anger.

What changed the pattern last week for me was bowing to it, and taking care of it. And taking better care of me - going to bed earlier, eating better, making sure we got out of the house every day. Talking to another mother who had been in the trenches a few years earlier also helped. And accepting that I get angry sometimes. And sometimes, even though I really don't want to, I am going to yell. And then I will move forward from there. I will keep working on coming back to the present moment, working skillfully as I can with the energy of anger. Touching into my basic goodness and the basic goodness of my children. As Suzuki Roshi said,
"Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement."

bowing as the cure for the pain

“The cure for the pain is in the pain.” - Rumi

We celebrated Halloween this past weekend at my parents' house upstate. My elderly mother is ailing from late stage, multi-symptomatic Parkinson's Disease, and is being cared for very inadequately by my elderly father. I haven't been visiting as often as I would like since my youngest was born this past spring - the four hour trip is hard for us, and it is difficult to care for my children while also caring for my mother and father, and vice versa. Whenever we visit, the house is in complete chaos: emotional, physical and familial. It is very hard to not get pulled into that chaos, and lose one's mindfulness. I find that the difficult circumstances often lead to the unfortunate flowering of seeds of aggression - there is just so much fear and sadness in the situation, that it is hard to open to what is. Especially when the ancient family dynamics and neurotic habitual patterns are in play.

Sometimes my awareness is strong enough that I am able to see the pattern and pause, step away, not engage in the old scripts we have been acting for so long with one another, exacerbated by my mother's illness and my father's overwhelm. But this weekend, I really failed at it. I engaged in silly arguments with my husband, my father and my sister who was present. I literally cried when my toddler refused to wear the Halloween costume I spent all week working on for him. I gave into exhaustion and despair. I felt totally undone by the reality of the situation and instead of opening to it, touching my sadness, I just behaved like a big, stressed out grump.

How appropriate that during the time of year when evil spirits are said to walk about, I was overcome by my own ghosts and demons. Lately in my parenting, I have seen so clearly the places where, if I fail to bring my awareness to them, the neurotic patterns I have inherited from my family rise up and get projected onto my own babes. I have seen clearly the places where I hesitate, an old fear gripping me, preventing me from being in compassionate action, and I have seen where I want to just vomit out all of my own stuff - my fear, my resentment, my rage, whatever- onto my little ones. It is in those really claustrophobic moments, when I feel all the karma from my own past and mind hurtling out of me towards my children, that I am beginning to just bow to it and to them. I literally find myself stopping mid-sentence, and bowing to my toddler. "You are my perfect guru" I tell him repeatedly. When I am feeling paralyzed by fear, I kiss my baby and say to him "You are my perfect guru" as I wipe his nose. Something in me relaxes when I voice this. Something stops running away from my own mind and turns instead and bows - bows to my stuckness. Bows to the demons and the ghosts. And the bowing leads to them melting away.

What I realized this weekend is I need to bow to my family of origin as well, if I really want to stop the flow of karma. If I really want to end this lineage of neurosis, and not inject my children with the old familial poisons, I need to bow down to them. I need to touch the pain. Open to it, even though I really don't want to. It is too scary, too raw and, it feels at times, absolutely devastating. Sometimes instead of bowing, I would really prefer to just be really angry and right about what a toxic environment I grew up in. But I realize, that is just a thought, a story, a delusion. It isn't so solid, so permanent and monolithic. The more I open to my pain, the more holes seem to grow in it, the more it loosens and I can see through the cracks the moments of basic goodness and nurture that my parents and family gave and give me. By bowing to them, I offer up my heart, and recognize their hearts as well. I recognize their buddha nature, their goodness. I recognize their struggles. I recognize that they suffer, greatly. Then I can help. Instead of arguing with my father, I can move the carpet that keeps getting stuck under my mother's wheel chair. Instead of arguing with my husband, I can help him roll that carpet up and bring it to the basement. Instead of snapping at my sister, I can apologize to her and recognize she is really sad about my mother dying. I can touch my own sadness about my mother dying instead of covering it up with all that aggression and fear. And I can begin to work with my tangled feelings around that, and begin to unwind them and let them go.

As the great yogi Milarepa wrote:
Previously, I was confused by delusion, And staying in the dwelling
of ignorant confusion,
I perceived gods who help and demons who harm as real...
With the realization that confusion is groundless,
The water that reflects the moon of awareness is clear of murkiness.
The sun of luminosity, free of clouds,
Clears away the darkness of ignorance from the edges.
Deluded confusion disappears.
The true nature arises from within.
The precious thought that perceives demons
Is the wonderful clarifier of the unborn bias.

Bowing to our demons- what a powerful practice for the Halloween season.