I invite you to suspend your beliefs for a moment and allow your mind to open a teensy tiny bit. In that opening I’d like to plant the seed of a thought. Now this thought isn’t dressing up as ultimate Truth. It isn’t even trying to pass itself off as the right way of thinking. It’s just an idea. It doesn’t have to be right. It doesn’t have to be true. All it requires is a moment to exist. As you read more about this idea, I want you to ask one question; is this idea helpful? Don’t worry about whether this idea is true or untrue. Wonder instead if holding this idea in your heart is helpful to you in any way? Does it improve your life? Does it cause you to look at the challenges you face in your relationship with your daughter in a more productive and peaceful way?
The idea I’d like you to entertain is the idea that your daughter, and each child you parent for that matter, is your path to evolution.
I’m not saying your daughter is more evolved than you or more intelligent or more anything than you. I’m suggesting that if you knew your daughter before she was born, if the two of you had sat across from each other soul to soul working out the terms of your earthly arrangement, your part of the conversation may have sounded something like this…
“Thank you so much for allowing me to be your mother. I’m so honored and excited but you realize this isn’t going to be easy, right? You realize your job is to push me past my comfort zone? Your job is to force me to stretch and grow and I might hate this. I might not want to do it but you’ll have to continue being you and you being you will push me to grow regardless of whether or not I want to. If I fight it, our relationship will suffer. We’ll get more and more distant from each other and this will hurt both of us. Are you still up for sharing this spiritual partnership with me?”
And your daughter’s half of the conversation may have sounded something like this…
“Thank you for allowing me to be your daughter. I am so honored and excited also but it’s true this won’t always be easy. You may cause me such great suffering that I may not remember how to forgive you. I may blame you and no longer want to be around you. I may expect you to be much different than you are. I may secretly wish you were so many things you are not. You will continue being you despite how much it triggers and upsets me. It may get so bad, I may only visit or talk to you out of obligation. I’m up for this crazy ride if you are but let’s hope we choose to evolve so we can enjoy each other more than we push each other to grow.”
If you imagined this agreement took place, you would see that every time you experience tension, unease and disharmony in your relationship with your daughter, it is a sign you are refusing to evolve in some way. I’m not saying this is always the case. I think there are many times when this wouldn’t be an accurate way to perceive what is going on but what if, before you decided the tension or disharmony was your child’s fault or your child’s immaturity, you took a moment to consider how you are being pushed to change, grow or accept something new? A new idea perhaps. A new way of looking at things. A new perspective. A completely new way of responding to life that was actually better for you and would lead you to receive more of what you really wanted from life.
What if the tension or the disharmony with your daughter was happening because somewhere inside you there was a place that required some sort of evolution or healing?
What if your immaturity, spiritual, emotional or otherwise, was as much to blame as hers?
I believe that embracing the idea that your daughter is your spiritual guru could be amazingly beneficial. And this way of looking at the relationship can be useful whether your daughter is a newborn baby or a sixteen year old woman asserting her independence. The guru’s role is to help you evolve past your ego after all. Who better to push your buttons or cause your inner wounds to surface better than a daughter or mother? It’s a brilliant move by the divine if you ask me. Here you place two people together whose bond can never be broken. The relationship can break but the bond itself is indestructible. Regardless of what happens in the relationship the bond will exist. One will always be mother and the other will always be daughter. This everlasting bond allows for the potential for never-ending spiritual growth opportunities. Wow! It’s like a built in passport to your evolution, should you choose to look at it that way.
When you look at it this way, you see that the relationship between mother and daughter will never experience lasting harmony and peace until each woman has spiritually evolved as much as her soul set out to evolve within that relationship.
If this is true then perhaps your daughter (or your mother) is the divine keeper of your soul’s evolutionary wishes and perhaps your tension or disharmony is actually a really powerful divine opportunity.
Again, I’m not suggesting this is actually true. I’m not interested in debating whether or not souls really plan their families out and whether or not you chose everything you experience on earth. I don’t care if that’s true or not. I’m just asking you to play with the idea for a minute and see if it leads you to perceive the challenges you face in your mother-daughter relationship in a way that helps you move through them more quickly and gracefully. Does imagining your daughter as your guru help you in any way? Does imagining your mother as your guru help you in any way? If so, great. Keep toying with the idea and see how far it gets you. If not, let it go. It’s just an idea. You don’t have to play with it if you don’t want to.
But if you are like me and the idea drops you in your heart and causes you to see your mother or your child differently, then, when that person really gets under your skin, ask yourself, what does my soul want me to learn here? How am I being asked to stretch or grow? Is my two year old daughter’s temper tantrum causing me to feel insecure? Am I scared I don’t know what I’m doing? What if I stretched myself to believe I could handle this? Would I respond to her anger differently? Does my sixteen year old’s sexuality scare me? Are my unhealed experiences with sex rising to the surface? Would I respond differently to my daughter if my own emotional wounds were healed? Does my mother’s neediness cause me to neglect my own needs? What if I learned to prioritize my needs? Would I experience more harmony in my life? Would I respond differently in my relationship with her?
I believe that each and every time you seek harmony in your mother-daughter relationship you will achieve some sort of spiritual evolution. In order to move through whatever tension or disharmony you are experiencing, you will have to heal something or change your perspective in some way. Whatever gets you from disharmony to harmony in the relationship is where your spiritual growth lies. That’s why relationships are so amazing to me, especially mother and daughter ones. There are just so many spiritual opportunities to be found in that one magnificently complex but beautiful relationship.
If you’re stuck feeling tension in your relationship with your mother or your daughter, I’d love to help you find harmony. My 12 week Intuitive Therapy program is a perfect place to shift whatever needs shifting and grow wherever you are being called to grow. You can read more about it here.
