Wielding Power Well
Powerful means one who is strong, one who is able.
ALL parents are powerful to their children.
Even if you don’t have much control in much of your life at the moment, your position as parent is powerful.
The parent position has authority and power within it that can make your children’s lives better and make your home a place of safety and joy.
If you doubt this truth just think for a moment on your own childhood.
How your parents lived, how they treated you, and all of the choices your parents made as adults, affected you powerfully.
When you were small your parents had the power to make your life a living heaven or hell by all of their choices.
The choices they made about how much they valued you and how they treated you impacted on you powerfully..
No matter how confident you feel or how much money you have, YOU have that power!
YOU can make choices that can make your child’s life feel wonderful.
Your choices affect your child’s life powerfully, for good or bad because your child is totally dependent on you.
Every choice you make as an adult has impact on them. You have enormous power in their lives.
In life we rarely get this much power to affect another human’s wellbeing. In parenting we can affect the entire self and future of another human being.
Powerful Mother Resources: Strength, Wisdom, Power.
The Power section of this site aims to assist you to use your power well and to expand it through skilled use over time.
Power is about:
1. Using the choices you have,
2. Getting your choice back if it was damaged or harmed in childhood, and
3. Constantly expanding your capacity to choose well.
It is about who YOU want to be and how YOU want to raise your children.
This can begin simply by knowing that you want to nurture your children so they are happy and secure.
This is the perfect beginning.
Once you are clear about what you want the strengthening of your capacity becomes achievable.
Think back to your own childhood.
If your parent/s had been entirely focused on treating you kindly, appreciating you, attending to your needs and ensuring your life was safe and supported, even if they were poor, would that love not have created a wonderful world for you? A good childhood?
If you were lucky enough to experience this you know it is true.
If you were not you can experience it step-by-step as you learn to wield your power for your good and the good of your children.
If a child is deeply and fully loved their physical living conditions are only a secondary impact, not the primary impact, on how they feel.
POWERFUL CHOICES:
If you are currently parenting based on the habits, compulsions and ideas that were driven into you by your parents then you are not choosing for yourself.
If your parents’ habits and parenting patterns were strong this is not a problem!
You will find parenting easy, your relationship with your child will be one you enjoy and know how to develop, and you will know how to handle most situations confidently. Why?
Because these were gifts your parents gave you.
If you were not given these gifts take heart, you can develop them.
This takes time because development is a step-by-step process.
The advantage of it taking time is that the time allows you to develop confidence in your instincts and knowing.
Power is something we must be comfortable with in order to be able to wield it skilfully.
Just like the Light Sabers on the Star Wars movies power takes time and practice to achieve mastery.
Powerful Mother Strength – bears the Load over time.
“Do or Do not, there is no try,” Yoda.
Your parenting journey can begin with you having NO confidence or very little confidence that you can create what you want…and end with you KNOWING that you can!
It can begin in anxiety, fear and worry and end in calm, strong confidence.
It can begin in anger, rage and frustration and end in the capacity to be a kind, safe caring parent.
It can begin in addictions, compulsions and bad behaviour patterns and end in strong, sustainable healthy ones.
It doesn’t matter where you are beginning, whether you have done a great job to this point or even if you have harmed and damaged your children.
What matters is where it ENDS!
What matters is that you begin right where you are today.
Your first step is deciding to use your choice power well: to nurture, tend and defend your children.
You don’t have to BE someone else to begin this process.
Just yourself, just where you are at this point in time.
Begin to practice nurturing, tending and defending as best you understand it now and you will have begun the processes that allow power to grow.
Take heart.
All seeking of power for the purpose of aiding another results in strength.
You are on the path to becoming a Powerful Mother.
With care,
Dr. T
Photocredits (Top Photo): c. Depositophotos/ Top Photo/Avesun; Pregnant woman/Dragonimages; Cuban woman/Diego_Cervo; Mexican woman/MxBest2012.