Our 31 days to the inner rhythm of the heart, the root foundation of a house of peace, is in progress.  In the vein of those who are setting a New Year’s intention with “one word”, I offer the word of today to you:  building.  Read on for more…

So far, our words to help us on a journey to a calmer, more peaceful home include open, reconciliation, attentiveness, reverence, courage, love, relentless, and unity.  Today we are considering building.

Building is often defined in a dictionary as putting together or assembling a structure.  If  family is  thought of as a structure, a sheltering gesture for the protection of those within, how do we build that?  I think we must identify what is already positive within our family culture and find ways to draw attention to that so it can be repeated in different situations throughout life.  It is the building of something that seems perhaps intangible at first, qualities and character, but really turns into a tangible energetic reality within the home!

Sometimes this exercise seems so difficult for mothers.  If we are mired in negativity and feel as if we are on one side, and our children on the other, then the home and family becomes a battlefield of angry emotions.Many mothers I talk with are all too eager to tear themselves, their spouses, and their family down because they are not living up to some idealistic, beautiful picture painted on some website or blog.  So please allow me to say it again:

You are an amazing mother.

You have wonderful children.

You are doing this “right”; whatever “right” means.

There is no perfection in parenting.

This is real life and real life is wonderful but also messy.  It can be grey, it can be challenging, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful.

You can change and you can grow.

You can be joyful about family life.

If we recognize the positive things that are already happening in family life, we can build on that together.   Celebrate those positive things!   Positive begets positive.  Children really have positive motives, if we can only see them.  Look for them.  If we see the positive, and we remark upon these positive things to our spouse or partner and our children, only good things can come from that, including the opportunity to feel like a cooperative team within the family.

I do feel a simple way to move from opposing sides to cooperative team is to spend more time together as family, not less.   If we want to learn a foreign language, many have remarked the best way to do this is through immersion in that language!  So, in this vein, I want you to think about immersing your children into your family with more time.  Your children will be modeling after you, the adult, rather than through peer orientation and typically seems to  reduce arguments in families where the children are apart from the parents.   Spending more time together often means slowing down, which also brings a great calmness to the family.   Together, all of these things provide opportunity to bring your child closer to you and build your family together.

Many blessings,

Carrie