Being a Mother Tip #8 - Take care of yourself. 

    
     Focus on transforming yourself into the parent God wants you to be.  As a parent, you have to feel good enough about yourself to be emotionally available to your child.  Your window of tolerance needs to be able to handle any emotion their child brings to them.  You need to be a secure attachment figure for your child.  God calls us to be in a state of love for our children.  You are the best and most likely agent of change for your child.  To do this you must be in the process of resolving your own issues.  I believe this calls for a heart change.
 

Read January 2011 Love in Action Newsletter “Being Transformed” for additional support.

Being a Mother Tip #7 - Be present and mindful.

     Challenges make it difficult to be present and mindful with your child.  Fear causes us to regret the past and obsess about the future.  Ever done that?  All of us do.  As human beings we live our lives largely in memory and imagination. We are either remembering the past or imagining the future.  Physically our bodies are present, but our minds are elsewhere.  Take a few deep breathes and focus.  Try to be fully present in the moment.  Try to be fully mindful.  This can be very difficult to do.  It has to take place a micro second at a time.  That is why the skill of emotional regulation and clearing your mind is so important to develop.   Dan Siegel explains the neuro-psychology aspect @ http://bit.ly/skvVSt.  This is an important concept to understand.  It is just as important to understand the spiritual aspect of the process of connecting in relationship.  When two or more are gathered a spirit is created.  This is found in Matthew 18:20.  “For where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am with them.”  I don’t fully understand it. This is a mysterious thing that we probably don’t fully understand.  However, the phenomenon of a spirit created by people who are present is a powerful thing.

 

Read more about the spiritual aspect of being present by reading “The Power of Presence - Being Mindful” @ Ken Thom’s Articles.