12/24/2023 0 Comments Unreal world cultures locationsWhen I came home from school with something bothering me, she would stop what she was doing to help me gently hold my feelings. Reflecting on her words, I cannot imagine what it would be like to not enjoy sitting with Mom over lunch, discussing my work, or simply being quiet together.Īs early as I can remember, my Mother and I developed a special trust and openness with each other through Focusing. With envy, she said, “You mean you and your Mother go to lunch together? Wow! I don’t even like being near my Mom.” While talking on the phone the other day, my friend listened in amazement when I told her I had to hang up because Mom and I were going out to lunch. Many people tell me she has a wisdom beyond her years. I’d have to say that a deep trust in the habit of felt sensing has made all the difference.įor me, there’s an inner freedom and pride as I watch her listen, decide, and choose what is right for her. In fact this trust in felt sensing has changed the whole inner landscape into a habitual, welcoming place that invites anything that is real, home.Īn openness has developed between us, a quiet knowing that we are always there for each other, no matter what – not only during Elizabeth’s childhood and teen years but up to now, the post-college years. It promised, There is nothing that you can’t stay with in a Focusing way. It truly became a beacon guiding both of us, and over a period of time I could feel a deep living faith begin to grow in me and in her. I remember how a deep trust in both Elizabeth’s and my inner guide – our felt senses unfolding – was all I could hold on to. Feelings of responsibility, inadequacy, being a parent who couldn’t quickly make it better for her, all became invitations for me to learn how to let go of control. I learned I needed to first listen to my own anxieties in a gentle way before I could invite her to stay with herself. My helplessness to do anything for her frightened me. It even sometimes led to vomiting and feelings of being disconnected. I remember that as Elizabeth developed a sensitivity to listening to her own felt senses, whenever she became overwhelmed with school work and neglected herself, her body would be let her know in the form of a bad headache. Mothers want to make things OK for their kids. “How can I let them go?”, “Can I trust them?”, “Will they do the right thing?”, are the questions I hear on their lips, see in their eyes. I often hear parents talking about how difficult the teen years are, how when their children ask for more freedom, they panic. Now, years later, I want to describe what that decision means in the relationship I have with my 22 year-old daughter, Elizabeth. I wanted to become more emotionally available to them as they lived their own joys and challenges, pains, confusions, and hurts. I remembered 20 years ago, after my first Focusing workshop, when I decided to dedicate my life to listening to our three children in a Focusing way. “The felt sense of the question immediately drew me inside to an inner terrain that felt so familiar and inviting. Marianne wrote down what happened that day – what memories it triggered – when Ed asked us to ponder. She gave Ed McMahon and Peter Campbell the biggest gift one human being could give to another – trust in the discoveries they had made about how to develop human wholeness and authentic spirituality. She helped them to trust their own authenticity and to make decisions from that space inside themselves. She taught them to listen to their inner world. She parented them as though their emotions and feelings were important. Marianne Thompson had begun, 18 years ago, to parent her three children in a vastly different way. We went inside, many of us deep into our felt senses, looking for an answer that fit with our own unique unfolding, our growth from child to adult.īut one woman in the room knew the answer – for the next generation. He let us sit with that question quietly. “What would it have been like if someone had listened to you in a Focusing way as a child?,” Ed McMahon asked us at our Millennium Gathering. So she learned to pretend like the other people and fit in really well. But everyone around her wanted to pretend and slowly, slowly, the little girl thought that the only way to be loved was to pretend, too. She wanted to be able to talk about her feelings and not pretend she was happy when she wasn’t. She wanted to be listened to the way she REALLY was. One teacher even called her backward and lazy. They called her big-headed, a nuisance, dummy mouth. But the people around her didn’t seem to think that. there was a little girl who thought that everyone, including herself, was special. By Barbara Erakko Taylor, Elizabeth and Marianne Thompson
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