Who loves you?

I believe that teaching our children to love themselves unconditionally is the most important, empowering and loving gift we can offer, because when a person truly loves themselves, and I am not speaking of narcissistic love which is rooted in low self-esteem, but true love; grounded in self-acceptance, self-worth, self-belief, and a deeply ingrained knowing that you are worthy of love and kindness, it gifts them the capacity to honour their truth, maintain integrity, feel empowered and own the confidence to strive for big and exciting dreams, while making healthy life choices, and responding to self and others with care, compassion and kindness. Living in this loving way awards our children the greatest potential for good health, happiness and a deeply fulfilling and joyful life, regardless of what happens on their path, because in the presence of true love, there is core strength to hold themselves through trauma, loss and suffering and rise beyond challenges; true love is the root and the essence of great strength, courage, and genuine power.

 I have dedicated years to learning to love myself, and now, with the understanding and knowledge about the power of true love, why we lose it and how we can reclaim it, my focus is now on how I raise my young children in true love. I do not profess to know the answers yet, the purpose of my writing is to share my exploration and learning along the way, while giving focus to the power of intentional loving practice.

I grounded my intention to raise my children within a framework of heart-centred values through a blessing ceremony where I affirmed that I would uphold and model authenticity, acceptance, affection, compassion, empathy, empowerment, kindness, forgiveness, trust, and understanding, and with all good intention I set out to mindfully honour this.

The early days now seem like a honey-moon period, a time when I was caring for one little boy, with time to dedicate myself fully to him when I was with him, to sleep when he slept, and find a healthy balance with my work and new life as a mother. I did not need to think much about my loving practices because I was simply in love; loving him, responding to his needs with my full heart. Sure, there were challenges and many things I could not do the way I used to be able to do, and certainly not at the speed of my past, but in most cases I managed to embrace this in healthy acceptance, while my outer world I maintained a healthy level of security and stability which certainly supported our loving state.

Twenty months later my second son was born, and when I thought my first one had all my love, I discovered that love simply expands by its very own nature. Quickly, severe sleep deprivation, lack of time to sustain my business, and by now lack of resources to gain said needed sleep or give time to work took a heavy toll. The ‘honey-moon’ was over, and with no time to sleep or rest, I became emotionally reactive, and existed in a state of constant exhaustion, struggling to manage my life, while time to reflect and create solutions was confined to the dream time; my only ‘free time’.

There was no question about my love for my boys, and so at times I allowed forgiveness to settle my inner storm, but I could not keep forgiving the same thing; the repeated emotional reactions to their cries and screams because I was too overwhelmed and exhausted to self-regulate; from forgiveness there has to be learning, growth and change, otherwise the words lose their loving quality. I needed a moment to stop and breathe, to stand back and reflect to see what needed to be done so that I could return to being a loving mother, fully, in thought, feeling, words and deeds, because as much as I loved them, I was not loving them the way I wanted to love them and certainly not the way they needed to be loved.   Thankfully, a moment of financial respite when I needed it the most gave me some time and space to breathe, calm my nerves and explore solutions ...

‘Who loves you?’, a question posed by a mother of four children who entered my life at a much-needed girls’ night out; the first moment for myself in over six months; an evening on the beach with cherished friends and new arrivals. We caught up on our activities and holiday’s (for the lucky ones), we shared our work updates and learnt about our new friends with whom I shared my passion for empowering adults and children to learn to love themselves and why I believe self-love is the key to authentically loving others and realising one’s greatest power, possibility and potential in life. The conversation opened up; “Who loves you?” -  a phrase Lucy offered when sharing how she teaches her children to love: “It is what I say to my children at bedtime” she continued; “Who loves you? I love you… You love you… Daddy loves you…” and I thought how beautiful to offer teachings in self- love from the early years in such a simple and powerful way that can be so easily integrated into the daily routine and embedded into their mental programming to become their early emerging voice of love.

The conversation ignited and once recognition of raising our children in true love was established, we moved to the rather more challenging matter of how we love them truly? To say “I love you and you love you” holds power because it forms beliefs that can become powerful self-affirmations, but we have to make the words matter if they are to hold their power through the course of their lives, otherwise the words “I love you”, offered to our children in a realm where frustrated shouting happens in place of empathy, compassion and loving responses to children’s needs, becomes meaningless.  There is also a possibility that seeds of a deeper truth then become planted in a child’s mind, seeds that form beliefs about vulnerability not being safe, emotional pain and distress not being acceptable, their need for affection and loving kindness not met when they need it most, and that their pure authentic being is not okay, because they are simply too much for mummy to manage. Should such beliefs form, a child may learn to supress, shut down, avoid sharing their difficulties and challenges, and begin to feel alone, separated, isolated and unable to manage their own big world of feelings and emotions, which can lead to life long battles with mental and emotional difficulties, authentic presence and forming healthy relationships.

To give power to "you love you", children need more that echoes, they need meaning and context; they need to see it lived so that they can copy us loving ourselves. The question I had to ask myself then was, 'Am I loving me?' No I wasn't because I was not doing all within my power to honour loving practice. 

It became clear that I had to find a way to better regulate my emotions, in the name of true love. I already had the tools; mindfulness and effective emotion management responses, what I really needed was sleep, so that my brain could function well enough to apply them! My priority action became clear: I have to find a way to get more sleep, so that I can teach my boys the most important life lessons; that they are beings of love, accepted, valued, wanted, that their needs can be met, their emotions embraced with loving responses and that they are truly loved. Getting more sleep meant loving myself enough to do everything I could to attain this.

When I  did finally begin to rest a little more, my nervous system calmed, and in the calm it became clear that my need to apply self love was not just about a need for sleep, but a need to reclaim my life because I had given it all to my boys, which was right for me in the early days, but now it was time to find a new way of living and being as the mother I had become.

The truth, which took me a little while to acknowledge, was that I had not yet accepted being a mother, and this was based on the fact that I still expected myself to operate as I did before I was a mother; as a highly organised and efficient muti-tasker who was able write books in the morning, see clients in the afternoon,  run workshops on Friday’s, steadily grow my business, run a community network, maintain an active social life, stay fit, support others and have time to study, paint and rest on the beach when I choose. I wanted to be able to do it all and be a really great mother, but that is quite simply a delusion!

I needed to reclaim my life as the mother I had become, within the realm of my reality and in alignment with the true values of my heart, so that I could to say to my boys, in full authenticity: “I love you and I am going to show you all the reason why this is true; when I am with you, I want to be fully with you as you need me to be, and I want to be the peace, the love, the safety, the security, the reliability, the steadiness, the voice of love and the person you can fully trust, always". When I actually deep-dived into the full meaning of my words it became apparent that a radical life change was needed if I was to be the mother, the woman, the daughter, the business owner, the author and the creative spirit that I have become. 

My radical life vision was fairly easy to define, because it had been there all along, what I have needed is some propulsion to bring it to life; my dream to channel my passionate meaningful life purpose through my writing. It comes with a certain amount of risk, change, uncertainty, and a different and better kind of stress, but what I am realising is that risk taken in the name of love is not really a risk if whatever happens you get better at loving those that matter the very most.

The possibility and potential of taking a little ‘me time’ to rest and better self-regulate, while putting my career focus onto realising my greater vision, which greatly aligns with my core heart values and the way of living and being I want to create for my family, may lead to a calmer and happier mummy, due to the nature of the pace of my writing work and prioritising of sleep, it will most likely also mean that the sink piles high sometimes, the white sofas (don’t ask) take on the resemblance of Jackson pollock paintings, because mummy is letting go of reacting to mess with such speed, we will surely be late to some meetings and events, because mummy is letting go of urgency when it is not needed, it may also happen that clothes may not match as well as they used too, because mummy is letting go of ‘perfect’, and we might leave the house with paint on our hands because mummy is more focused on what matters most. The gift is, we will all be calmer, happier and feel the presence of true love in our lives so much more, I hope!

We have to love ourselves so that we can love our children the way they need to be loved.  This means prioritising our most important needs and striving to fulfil our beautiful, exciting and extraordinary dreams so that our genuine pursuit of true love forms waves of love that by their very nature radiate from us and embrace our children in all of the love they deserve.  The life we had did not end with motherhood, as mothers we simply grew our being and our capacity for experiencing and generating great love

Self-love is not selfish, a luxury or an ideal, self-love is essential to raising our children in true love and right now, self-love for me means taking time for sleep and taking a risk in the direction of my exciting heart-centred dreams because I truly believe this choice will grow our lives in new a beautiful ways, and I will be authentically living it; my truth, my love, my passion, my faith, my trust, my courage, and I want my boys to learn to do this for themselves. 

​Copyright  Antonia Behan 2024