Reclaiming Little Shoshie

My daughter, Shoshana, reminds me of me when I was young. Same curls, similar walk, sensitive, more introverted than extroverted, loves art, animals, and (she doesn’t realize it yet but) mountains too!

She is also so sweet. She has this quirky personality that is funny and easygoing, and yet she is a deep thinker. She far exceeds what I knew when I was younger.

This week, she and my other daughter experienced a very big shooting threat in her new high school. As I frantically drove to my daughters’ school, all I could think about was their safety. You can imagine the panic and stress.

When we got her home, Shoshana said, “Really, if someone wants to shoot kids up in a school, all they need to do is show their school ID and walk right in. It’s that simple.” This sentence brought me to tears because it feels so true. 

What do you say to a young person as she awakens to the realization that sometimes life is scary?

Oh, Mercury Retrograde, I am so trying to honor your planets in misalignment, causing a nice amount of chaos!

While there are many answers, and I tried to give the best mom answer I could muster, I will give a better answer here, and maybe when she is a little older, she will understand. 

Part of walking this spiritual journey, the 5D, introspective path we are all walking, is to figure out how to live in this world and see the sacred, the holy, right in the middle of chaos and challenge. We long to connect to the mystic inside of us, communicate with Spirit, receive messages and guidance from above. Many women I work with are yearning for oneness with the Divine. But we often get stuck when chaos happens because it doesn’t feel sacred; it just feels scary.

One of the ways in which we can start to embrace some of the messiness of life is to embody our humanness. What if our mistakes, chaos, and losses are important aspects of our radiant self? (Although I am not condoning senseless crime, obviously). What if in spite of the appearances and circumstances of human life, we all have the inherent capacity to experience joy, wholeness, and divine love?

It begins by fully accepting ourselves as we are —all of our humanness and our sacredness— as divine.

But how do we do this when times feel chaotic and messy? 

Here’s the secret…

Reclaim your five year old self. 

Sounds so easy, right? Sounds like a simplistic answer to a difficult question. 

To respond to my daughter's question of safety, I chose a version of this: Yes, life is sometimes scary and yes, there are bad people out there and bad, hard things happen. We only have so much control, which is a very challenging concept to understand.

So I told her to remember who she was at five years old. After rolling her teenage eyes at me, she told me she was quiet but funny, happy, joyful, life was fun, she loved animals, she loved her family, she felt serene, safe, and comfortable in her little body.

And that answer from my smart fourteen year old, is what I will offer you.

When we stop abandoning our younger counterparts, when we stop telling them how scary the world is, when we stop shaming them, or pushing them away, then we can step into our mystic self. 

When we give our five year old space and time to feel scared, mad, sad, or shameful, she comes to us and feels safe. When we let her rest, play, and escape some of life’s hardships, she nestles inside of us and finds joy. When we parent her the way we always wanted to be parented, she can handle life’s messiness, knowing that you are right beside her.

This is what it means to be in co-creation with the Divine. Giving our younger self permission to be seen and felt, to play and rest, gives her the opportunity to feel comforted, safe and secure, even when the world doesn’t feel that way.

Reclaiming the lost pieces inside of us doesn’t mean we are lost. In my meditations and healings, I consistently see Mother Earth creating a nest inside of her, holding and loving all of the pieces of us that we are not ready to reclaim as our own. When the time is right, one by one, she hands our little ones over to us through our root chakra and our little one nestles inside of us, ready to finally come Home.

My prayer for all of us is this:

Dear Spirit, I pray and I ask that you keep our children safe and healthy and strong: those inside of us, those still nestled in Mother Earth, and those children that carry a piece of our hearts outside of our bodies. I ask and pray that you help us teach ourselves and our next generations, and even the generations before us, to honor all parts of us; the unlovable parts, the shame parts, the shy parts, the lonely parts, the joyful, the sacred, and the mystic.

Perhaps if we all reclaim our lost parts, our world can be a safer place for generations to come. Amen, A’ho