Teach your children well. Crosby, Stills and Nash called it. Everywhere you look, you can witness products of parenting…good or bad. What we notice most are the outcomes of lack of teaching, or even horrific abusive situations.
I’ve been drawn to the latter my whole life. How can I help them? To break through that wall.. so sturdily built by them? What can I do to make them see and feel? What were the circumstances that catapulted them into such a dark and damp place? Maybe if I said this, or I do that…they will snap out of it? They will magically get part of their soul back.
So many friends throughout my life have experienced not so “normal” upbringings. Abuse, parents with addictions, lack of general care, and even more desperate situations of suicide or murder amongst their families. I’ve felt for them so deeply, wanted to take it all away for them. I can’t. No matter the empathy I feel for each and every one of them, it’s their journey. I can walk on the path with them, beside them..striving to reach the sunlight…I can point to it, show it to them…but, I can’t MAKE them see. No one could make me see when I wasn’t ready. No one.
It’s daunting.. watching the process sometimes. I’ve witnessed it repeatedly. It’s a definite pattern in my life. I have to wonder what my role is in all of these relationships, especially if I feel I haven’t helped. That’s the hardest thing to face. If I haven’t helped them..what was the purpose?
Sometimes it’s like I can actually feel what the other person is feeling. I can feel them, the horrors they have experienced, their emotions. Their energy lives in me. I have no better way of explaining. It happens with strangers as well. Within five minutes of meeting someone, I can feel the energy surrounding them. Sometimes, it’s just passing someone on the street. I know if they are depressed, anxious, sad, hurt. It’s an automatic thing. I don’t have to think about it. If I get to know the person after that…I usually find out..that I was right. Maybe, God gave me this sense..to be their sponge. I’m a sponge. I just realized that.
Maybe I take some of that negative energy from them, by listening, being there for them..helping them heal by talking about it. I soak it up, they get to get rid of a little. It takes me a while to ring it all out of myself. That’s the difficult part. Some of it tends to stay trapped inside those little holes and crevices. I really do try to squeeze it out and let it go. The attachment I feel to this type of person, makes it a little hard to get the sponge clean again. Is a sponge ever really clean though?
Sponges. Parenting. Children. Need I say more? Children soak it all up….and throughout their lives…the dirt that parents have thrown into that sponge, sticks. We need to try to be so careful with what we fill our child’s sponge with. They will spend the rest of their lives.. trying to ring it out.
singlemomlife 