Walking through you.

Someone once told me that you have to allow your children to walk through you. Both intellectually and cerebrally, my logical brain readily understood the concept.

“Walking through you” means allowing your children to move unhindered as their most authentic selves, in their strongest voices, in the world. It means conscious parenting; not standing in their way but allowing them to live the fullest version of their intended lives, as opposed to a stunted version of yours. It means dealing with your generational trauma and not standing as roadblocks or unnecessary speedbumps to their progress. It means understanding that they are their own independent beings whom you have been, however short-lived, privileged to nurture on their own independent journey. It means letting them pass, unhindered, through you.

So, yes. Intellectually, I understood the concept, albeit abstractly. Today, however, was the first time I experienced it emotionally…

Motherhood was the one thing I promised myself that if I ever did, I would give my best to do well. And for me, that meant courageously tackling my trauma and seeking healing. The road was bumpy. In fact, I still have the battle scars to prove it. But it had to be this way.

It took years to begin the process to heal my own wounds; to recognize that the voices that had shaped my childhood and early adulthood did not have to inform and control my parenting. It took counseling to understand that I could be a wounded healer, riddled with unforced errors that however, no longer define me.

And so I set out to do a good job of mothering. That is, until I recognized that that special relationship with your child, not a marriage, is the one which affords you an opportunity to bring closure to all that you thought was behind you.

Motherhood unearths your deepest fears, regrets and shortsightedness. It reveals your disappointments, your shame and your heartbreak. It is when you start to finally recognize that your own mother was not riddled with fault but her own emotional limitations. It offers you eyes of compassion. And for the first time, you are opportuned to turn the brittle pages of your past; to close unfinished chapters; to finally heal.

And so with those eyes of compassion, you start your own journey to shape and mold and pour into another. You start to shield and protect and cover. Until the day comes that they are prepared and ready to walk away from you because your time to do so is done.

And on that day, you must let them pass through, unhindered. Because you did what you were called to do. And now, we must trust them to do the same.