The more I experience life the more I believe to my core that when someone is obsessing, addicted, acting combative, or feeling very upset about something trivial they are most likely not addressing an emotion that needs to be felt.
This morning my daughter surprised me by getting abnormally angry at me for not packing enough marshmallows in her snack for school. It seemed like completely ridiculous behaviour as I thought she would be pretty impressed that I put ANY marshmallows in her snack. I was red-hot mad.
When the anger cooled, we had a chat. As she spoke, she emotionally revealed a friendship issue she had been having at school. She was deeply worried that her and a friend were leaving another friend out. Because she remembered the pain of being excluded by her friends in the past, she wanted to ensure she would never inflict the same pain on someone else.
There it was. The truth. After our chat, she felt relieved. She was no longer dancing around a bubble of fear that was trying to emerge. The bubble had come to the surface and released its pressure.
Marshmallows – ha! I felt stupid for my red-hot anger. My daughter wasn’t superficial or addicted to sugar, she was just scared she wasn’t being kind. What a good kid.
The sun and cloud metaphors from my children’s book, The Girl and The Sun, were clearly at play in this story. Fear is felt in the body. The cloud in my daughter’s mind was scared to feel this fear and so its voice became very loud, yelling obsessive thoughts about marshmallows. As she listened to the thoughts, she was pulled out of her body where fear resides and lured into her mind. She had escaped from the fear but was now stuck in her negative thinking.
Our honest conversation helped her connect with the sun in her heart. Her sun, being much more powerful than the cloud, allowed her to pull away from the cloud’s beckoning thoughts and instead attend to the feelings in her body. The sun is like a loving parent who supports her through all her emotions. Her fear was then felt, the need for distraction gone, and the obsessive thoughts faded away leaving her to enjoy the rest of her morning feeling understood and connected to her mother.
I promise you, these situations don’t always end with a beautiful, honest conversation. This was a good parenting moment. Some parenting moments are messy, or confusing, or red-hot mad, or bursting with tears, or “shoot, I didn’t handle that well at all!”. This morning, I will celebrate the good.
The sun, cloud, and rainbow metaphors that make up the story in my children’s book The Girl and the Sun were molded piece by piece from my own pain and subsequent drive to overcome it. I use these metaphors every day to parent myself and my children. They are not my own ideas. They come from many teachers along the way: Anita Johnston, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Jeff Foster, Tara Brach, Marianne Williamson, and many counselors and colleagues who guided me along my journey. Through The Girl and The Sun I can now share them with the world. Please visit www.ashleyandthesun.com/free-handouts-parents-and-teachers for free handouts and www.ashleyandthesun.com for a thorough explanation of the sun, cloud and rainbow metaphors.