Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
– Yoda

It took me a while to come up with a tag line for this blog site. The memoir’s subtitle is Discovering Motherhood After a Loss. But the blog was born out of living a polarity, publishing essays about raising a little person while living with the teenager she is today. One morning I joked, “I’ve done attachment parenting now I have to do de-tachment.” Ergo the blog’s first tagline: A Parenting Journey from Attachment to Detachment.

Over the past few months, I have been adjusting to my daughter’s increased need and desire for autonomy. I’ve found that a lot of the issues reside not within her but within me. With each step she takes, I typically go through stages of insecurity and fear, followed by education and discovery, and then I integrate what I’ve learned into practice. It’s not always neat and smooth, but normally I gather a glimmer of clarity just in time for her to change again!

At some point in her little-girl-hood, G grew to understand my learning curve, “I know you, Mama, you’ll take some time, but then you’ll get it.” This kind of compassion on her part is in short supply these days, but my process of doubt, discovery, and integration remains intact.

I’m stepping back, waiting to be consulted while still trying to maintain consistent boundaries. The tension between us is less, although it is still there, an IED that we can trip at any time. What I’m practicing is not exactly detachment. It is more like the Buddhist notion of non-attachment.

Surrendering attachment.

Admitting I am no longer in control of the outcome is an act of humility. I can guide. I can advise. I can pray. But her choices are her choices. Her pain is her pain. Her life is her life. This is so deeply humbling that I am praying more than ever to compensate for my ineffectuality on this human plane. We are at a divine gateway: the construction of her independent self.

In this round of discovery, I note that I do not always behave like an adult. Now that my heart is open wide, I can be emotionally dependent. I act out of anxiety that I will lose love. I fear abandonment. I dance to reconnect at too high a price.

Now is no time to perpetuate this. Like so many other stages in G’s growth that awakened me to my own self-discovery, I am being called to clean up my house so she can do her work. The goal for both of us is her successful separation.

As an exercise, I stand up. Literally. I visualize myself as an adult. My first thought is an oak tree, but as my feet secure themselves to the ground I hear a whisper: stand well. I am in Tadasana or Mountain Pose, nothing more (or less) than standing with consciousness. Arms by my side with palms turned outward, shoulders back, neck long. This is something we do in yoga, but I never have connected it to parenting.

I am working on a response system to my uncertainty. These are the steps:

• Acknowledge my negative thought; I’m ___ (i.e.: hurt, vulnerable, anxious)
• Adjust my position to Mountain Pose
• Breathe deeply
• Visualize something of beauty or peace
• Affirm with a mantra (i.e.: her struggle does not belong to me … I am at peace with what is … trust in the way)

No one knows I’m doing this, but a sense of space is created between the action and the reaction, helping me surrender my attachment to the moment. I let go of the desperation to fix it, solve it, dissolve it.

I am no longer the Mama who can stop tears just by being there. I cannot be attached to the outcome of G’s world.

The Dalai Lama said, “Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering.” (Naturally, he was not speaking of parent-child attachment that is a hallmark of healthy development.) In this definition of attachment, happiness is relative, affected by the well-being of others, based on duality. The source of my struggle today.

In non-attachment, “happiness is not defined by anything outside of me.” Selflessness arises because “the self is no longer inserted into every situation.” (zenthinking.net) Cultivating such equanimity in response to conflict means not being attached to the outcome.

I am at step one: intent. At the base of the mountain, looking up.

Like our dog lying hopeful by my feet for a misbegotten crumb, I yearn for a breath of connection. Repeatedly I fall into the well-etched paths of the past. It seems only minutes ago she needed me to survive; how could she not need me now? There is so much unconscious resistance, letting her go. Resistance that feels primal and protective yet also fearful and lost.

How do I know she will fly, she will be safe, she will survive?

I don’t.

This is my practice. From attachment to non-attachment. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

 

SOURCES: www.dalailama.com, www.zenthinking.net, www.spiritualrelease.com