Doing Your Best

Lunar Eclipse in Virgo

Ready, Set, GO! 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️🏃🏽
Join me for the free online Aries Retreat on Sunday, March 22 at 1:00 pm Pacific / 4:00 pm Eastern/ 8:00 pm UK/ 9:00 pm Europe/ 7:00 am (Monday) Sydney. You can always watch the replay later, but join live if you want to dance 💃🕺💃

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Some things are impossible.

Take, for example, the idea of being a perfect parent. The parent who gleefully maintains a state of orderly domestic bliss amidst the entropy of play; the parent who emanates a comforting sense of calm in the face of screaming chaos; the parent who always meets their children with open arms and a warm smile no matter how they feel on the inside.

I have been passionately in love with the idea of being this parent, of being this perfect. The flames of this love are stoked by the stacks of parenting advice that float around me, persistent little taps on the shoulder showing me how I can do it better. These tips are almost exclusively focused on the welfare and well-being of my children, with perhaps an occasional nod that reminds me I have permission to eat and (if I really need to) sleep so that I don’t die on the job.

It can be even more pernicious on the psychological front, especially as we become more aware of just how much our experiences in early childhood shape every single aspect of the way we live as grown-ups. Parenthood is no longer just about giving your kids a home and a meal; it’s no longer just about supporting your kids to learn and grow; it’s now also about keeping your kids free from detrimental thoughts and dissonant emotions.

As an example of where this can take you, I recently learned a wonderfully effective new energetic release technique that involves holding your brain in three places.¹ As you do this, you invite your mind and body to take you back to the very moment you experienced a trauma, the root cause of your present pain.

Unsurprisingly - especially for the big, unpleasant lifelong patterns we so often want to shift the most - this will almost certainly hurtle you back to a moment in your tender years. It might be that time your overwhelmed father refused to cut up a piece of fruit for you, that time your frustrated mother yelled at you to stop drawing on the tablecloth, that time your cousin yanked your favorite stuffed animal from your arms.²

In that moment, you make a decision that shapes how you live your life. Perhaps you decide that you can’t have or do what you want, for instance, and then you spend several subsequent decades sabotaging yourself from achieving the success you so deeply desire.

This makes conscious parenting a minefield. I know that what I say, do, think and feel has a HUGE impact on the people around me, most of all on my children who are essentially living in a state of hypnosis.³ And because I am also responsible for my children’s wellbeing, I take my presence in their lives to heart. I want to give them a clear chance to be the best possible versions of themselves, and that means keeping their subconscious slate clean.

The only thing is, that’s impossible.

Sometimes I’m crabby. Sometimes I snap. Sometimes I shout. Sometimes I snatch. Sometimes I storm out of the room. And sometimes I don’t want to pick up my kids from school because I want to be on the top of a mountain alone in complete silence where nobody will ever find me.

Even writing this feels horrible to me because it is so clearly NOT the description of the perfect parent. It is exactly the kind of parent who creates traumatic experiences for their children, the kind of parent who has kids that get in their own way and fuck things up. And if I follow this line of logic to its inevitable conclusion, I have no choice but to acknowledge that I am laying the ground work for my kids to fuck up.

I know that I am not alone in this solemn condemnation. Parents regularly joke about how they are fucking up their kids, and my own father has repeatedly offered (in good spirits) to pay for my therapy bills.⁴ It’s because they understand this: your kids are going to experience trauma, and they’re going to experience trauma because of things you did, said, thought and felt. That time you gave your daughter water in the clean blue cup instead of in the dirty green cup like she wanted? Well now she’s getting divorced from the love of her life, and you might as well burn in hell.🔥🔥🔥

I jest because as much as this revelation has brought me to tears multiple times this week, I also see the humor in it. There is a world of difference between intentionally fucking up your children and barking at them to put on their shoes.⁵

So as I look up to today’s Lunar Eclipse in Virgo, I remind myself that divine perfection is not the rigid construct in my head. Divine perfection is openness to learn, and openness to grow, and openness to be present to more of yourself. Maybe you are just doing your best, maybe you are always doing your best, maybe everyone is.

The peace this brings to my heart tells me that it’s true. And I hope it brings peace to your heart, too, to fall out of love who you thought you were supposed to be and fall back in love with who you actually are. Self-love is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the final answer to the equation of our existence, the magic wand that wipes our minds and bodies clear from the trauma we experience.

So maybe it’s okay that I’m not the perfect parent. Maybe it’s enough that the last thing I tell my kids every night is that I’ll love them forever, that they are perfect just the way they are. And maybe I could start telling myself the same thing, too. Maybe we all could.

Love,

Patrick

PS: When you’re ready to step into more loving relationships - including the one with yourself - you’re welcome to join me for one of the most straightforward and powerful clearing exercises I’ve ever taught. You’ll learn to give people back their opinions, and - if my experience is anything to go by - you’ll be amazed how quickly your perspective can shift. The live activation will run for an hour on Monday, March 9 at 7:00 am Pacific / 10:00 am Eastern / 2:00 pm UK / 3:00 pm Europe / 1:00 am Sydney (Tuesday), and the replay will be in your Inbox promptly thereafter. Sign up as a contributing subscriber and the Zoom link will magically appear below 🪄💫