Yesterday I was walking over the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and passed a man carrying a baby in a baby carrier, with a mobile phone held close to her ear, playing trickling water sounds. It hurt my heart, and some of you reading this might know why and others may not know why.
It hurt my heart, because when I was a young mum, I was just like that man, as most of us are as parents. We fall for one of the biggest lies in history; that it is our job to stop our babies from crying. That babies aren’t meant to cry in public. That our job is to distract, and fix and play music and bounce our babies around, and never ever just stop, hold them close, and just let them be and fully feel and express their emotional state.
We got sold a confusion between babies crying to express their needs, and babies crying to express their feelings, and most parents are never ever taught the difference. I was so lucky that I did learn to discover the difference via a book called The Aware Baby By Aletha Solter, and the work of a wonderful organisation called Hand in Hand Parenting. I trained with them as a parent educator and wrote a book about crying, Tears Heal: How to listen to our children. The ideas that I learnt centred around helping parents heal their own emotional wounds, so they didn’t get so triggered by their children’s crying, tantrums, and ‘mis’behaviour. To learn that misbehaviour only happens because of emotional wounds. To learn to set limits kindly without needing punishment and reward. Because when every difficulty is understood as having an emotional root, there is no need to manipulate a child into complying with what you want them to do.
I started off as an instructor with an ambition to tell the whole world about these parenting tools that simply when we reframe how we think about crying, everything falls into place. I didn’t realise at the time just how much our world is rigged, and just how strong the forces are that want to keep people wounded.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been going through an inner dialogue in my head, worried about ‘offending’ people, and how to say what ultimately feels like the wrong thing to many people in the most gentlest possible way. I was accused of joining a cult, of being divisive, of being all kinds of things, and then suddenly something occurred to me. It is only divisive because of our wounds. We are like tinder boxes full of hurt and pain, ready to spark off at any moment because somebody says the wrong thing. If it wasn’t for our wounds, we could tolerate talking about hard things without it having to get emotional.
I spent years working on myself, and healing those wounds, building connection with other humans, and to have a safe space to express feelings and catch up on the crying we didn’t always get to do as children. I’ve seen people around me grow and evolve and be able to meet others with more compassion, and I’ve tried to do the same.
Yet I still find myself full of pride when someone tells me I should write my posts this way, and should instead tell them this, and I think to myself, ‘’how dare they?’’
I still get triggered, I still find some people annoying, and I still need boundaries when it gets too much.
Because the healing work never ends. When I first learnt about these ideas around crying. I thought that it was like a well of tears, that one day would be drained away and I would come out sparkling new and fully healed. Now I think there is something missing, when we search for healing, and leave a certain someone out of the picture. We can only get so far without Him. Because we are born with a God-shaped hole inside of us, and unless it gets filled, we are on a hamster wheel of endless healing, while someone is standing at the door, offering us another path.
This message angers and offends so many, but I know I have to share it because there are hundreds of people like me, probably thousands, who have spent many years and time, and money trying to ‘work on ourselves’ and while we have grown and evolved, while we have received many benefits, life is so different, when you bring God into the picture. I can’t put it into words, but even my mum, who cannot fathom why her rebellious daughter became a Christian, told me that I am calmer.
If you’ve been on that journey, ever since you were a little baby and just wanted a mama to understand the healing power of tears, and if you are still searching, and feel like you have tried everything, then this is an invitation, to try Jesus. ‘Those who sow in tears will reap with joy,’ and he is here waiting with an offer to listen to your tears, and that offer is open today, or tomorrow, but many say that the hour is getting late, so if I were you, I wouldn’t leave it to long.