You Are Your Own Best Parent
Welcome to Aquarius szn!
Let me tell you, I love Aquarius szn. I also deeply love Aquarians. My dad is an Aquarius as is my brother and as are some of my favorite people in my life. They really are aliens and I mean that as a compliment of the highest accord.
When we step into Aquarius szn we begin to find some more ease around moving from the deep trenches of what my friend Alex highlighted in a recent conversation as: the western ideology of Descartes: “I think therefore I am” and the Western idealization of rampant individualism.
So then, what are we shifting to?
We are shifting into more embodied conversations and actions around what is best for the collective and not just the collective that is limited to your immediate friends, family and co-workers….. although those matter as well.
When I say collective, I mean the collective of humanity.
So what does this have to do with the title of this week’s blog post? It has everything to do with it because one of the core ways in which we know how best we can show up and serve the collective for the greater good is through the lens of the individual and how we show up for ourselves.
Again, I am not speaking of the lens of the individual that we are rooted here in West - one where the futures and dreams that we often (**not always**) have mostly serve our best interest (and perhaps the interests of a few of our close friends and family) and the interests of capitalism: i.e are generally extractive to people and the planet itself.
I am speaking directly to individualism as personal responsibility.
In terms of numerology, for 2022, we are in a 6 year (2022 = 2+2+2). What this translates to is that as a collective we are learning what it means to take personal responsibility for our lives; discerning what it is our responsibility and what is not ours; examining the ways in which we have and have not shown up for ourselves; the impact that has on our relationships and the world beyond us and the ways in which we need to course correct.
I highly recommend listening to Brionna Ned’s explanation of the 6 year here for more context and how it might translate for you personally.
When we hear these words: personal responsibility, it can sound……honestly it can sound intimidating and just flat out not sexy. But I promise you it’s probably one of the sexiest things you can do for yourself and for humanity.
Why? Because we are all interconnected.
In our conversation, my friend Alex also highlighted a term the beloved and recently departed Thich Nhat Hanh coined which is that of Interbeing: “In Buddhism there is no such thing as an individual. There is no such thing as a separate object, event, or experience, because no any part of the world can exist apart from all others……Everything (object, event, idea, experience) is made up of other things. Everything is interconnected to everything else. All phenomena inter-exist.”
What this means for us is that the more that we can focus on ourselves in healthy and productive ways, the more we will actually begin to shift what is happening on a collective scale because we ourselves will begin to show up differently. We can stop draining ourselves with the perpetual trap that the problem is somewhere “out there.”
What I’ve come to realize in the last couple of months for myself and for a lot of my communities is that the core of personal responsibility is the ability to re-parent ourselves……which to me is the ultimate version of #SelfCare.
So many of us, especially Highly Sensitive People (I’ll be speaking more about this in future newsletters), did not get what we needed in our younger years. Most of our parents did the best that they could but we all have wounds of abandonment, not feeling seen or heard, not feeling safe and if you are highly sensitive you most likely have a very dysregulated nervous system.
Alongside our reading and math, what we really should have been learning as we grew up was how to be our own best parent. Instead, we often look and depend on the outside world to validate us and make us feel seen, heard and loved. We look to the outside world for a sense of safety and are perpetually left feeling unfulfilled because we are either pulling from the wrong wells or just empty wells all together.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with getting support, validation and love from the world beyond us. In fact, that’s actually an inherent human need. The problem arises when that is our *only* or *main* source. To be our own best parent takes on the notion that we actually know what’s best for ourselves; that even though we may not have gotten what we needed before, we can learn what those needs are now and give them freely.
We can begin to self-soothe; to acknowledge our pain (even if others don’t), tell ourselves what we needed to hear back then and what we need to hear now; to be our own best cheerleader and the love of our own life. We begin to cut the cords of co-dependency and in that release, we can step more consciously and fully not just into our own power but more into Interbeing.
When we can show up fully for ourselves, we can show up fully for others. When we can gently dismantle what is oppressive and harmful within our own psyches and bodies, our personal worlds and the world beyond us begins to shift to match. This does not mean you have to heal alone - in fact, I have found healing in community to be one of the most nourishing aspects of my life right now. It just means it is your personal responsibility to know your own internal workings and needs.
This is what it means as individuals to show up for the collective and it is the work of our lifetime.
As you go out into your days in Aquarius season, in 2022 and beyond, I invite you to reflect on the following:
Placing your hand on your heart, what is your inner child currently communicating?
What are some words of comfort you can tell them?
What is one action you can take to make them feel seen / safe / loved / heard?
And as some additional support, you can check out the tapping video below.
Sending you much love, patience and courage.