On the precipice

An essay on parenting. Yourself.

Ahead on the trail, there was an opening to the sky. Below, the water washed over the rock and down the falls. Ahead, the notch opened up in tiers of blue peaks.

Above, my elder son and three other teens that I love beyond measure stood on the crown of a boulder cantilevered over the ledge, casually perched above a fall that would almost certainly be fatal.

So I took a deep breath, and gritted my teeth, and walked back down the trail.

.

From the time my children were very young, I looked for the edge of what felt scary to me, and went just beyond it. Every time I watched my five year old cross the street alone, or saw my seven year old ride his bike down the road, I was struck by how small, how fragile, they looked against the giant backdrop of hurtling cars and distracted adults, and the evil that walks in the world and preys upon children.  

But I knew that some day, it would not be my choice, or even my business. I knew the day would come when they would drive away, for the afternoon, for the night, for the weekend, forever, into the rain, into the snow, into the world.

And I didn’t want that to break me, nor did I want to break them with my worry. So I knew I had to learn to bear my fear quietly, to study it inwardly, to ride it as a wave and attempt to descry the destination.

Just after we moved, when my kids were 5 and 1, my former neighbor’s son was paralyzed when he was thrown from a car driven drunkenly into the barn across the street from his house.

I remember knowing, as young as my children were, that neither fear nor logic would be effective tools at preventing such a possibility; after all, my parents had used both, and but for the grace of God I would be dead several times over from the decisions I made as a teen.

There’s no part of the perils of multi-faceted states of inebriation on railing-less rooftops that had not been communicated to me, or of which I was unaware, to pick an example at random.  

And yet, surely there had to be a means of helping them generate, internally, the mechanisms of self-respect and preservation that were impaired in me at that age, as well as reducing, externally, the factors that contributed to my self-destructive habits.  

At every opportunity, I asked myself, how can the answer be yes? And if it was “yes in the future,” or “yes and it scares me,” or “yes and I don’t know how,” or “yes but I can’t watch,” then all of that was the answer.

Because there is always a way in which the answer is yes.

The hike was part of a recent camping trip with their closest friends; friends they love like siblings, friends they will have for life, friends whose children will be as close to theirs as they are to each other. These relationships are not conditional, and they are not destructive; I have watched every one of these kids choose wisely for themselves as much out of their own inner guidance as out love and respect for each other.

.

What part of yourself is that young person careening towards disaster because the answer was so often “it’s about me, not you,” even when that didn’t match the words?

And what part of yourself is the parent lying, to themselves, to you, about the real reason, out of fear, ignorance, or conditioning?

What if the answer is yes, and then you figure it out?

What if you need to grit your teeth and walk that fearful you back down the trail, and let the part of you that never was allowed to know their own path venture forth, right to the edge, and see the view?

And what if it never gets easy, but it gets intuitive, until you cannot turn away from what you know you must do?

That’s when you’re healing.

Click HERE for your FREE Embark on Healing call, if you’d like to learn more about my Navigating Your Healing Journey shamanic coaching program of homeopathy-driven healing, growth, and self-discovery, and how you can gain greater access to your intuition and true path.

I am offering you the Irresistible Invitation to Surrender. Will you accept it?