Gentle + Conscious Parenting

Written By Sophia Z

How we raise our children has a profound impact on how they experience the entirety of their life. Of course they have their own natures, but how we interact with their nature can influence its expression or suppression.

As mothers and fathers we have the ability to build up and nurture or to degrade and traumatize. And of course, as a loving parent, you want to do the former.

Yet so much of what our culture has taught us about parenting, and what we learned from our own parenting as a child perhaps, is a broken example.

Perhaps you were spanked, and now have a fear of violence. Maybe you were given prolonged time-outs, with no help to process your big emotions, and still deal with feelings of abandonment. Or maybe you were made to be silent as punishment, and now you still struggle to find your voice and to speak up, and you may even have thyroid issues that are now physiologically hampering your voice as a physical manifestation of your childhood trauma from having your voice silenced.

We often don’t connect our current dysfunctions and struggles to the patterns that were put in place from our first moments in the womb, through birth, and on through the entirety of childhood (but especially in those first seven years…șapte în de casă).

We’re probably even less likely to connect our current physical experiences as being in any way tied to our previous emotional, mental, and spiritual experiences.

But we as human beings are psychosomatic beings.

That is, we are soul and body, body and soul.

Both our soul and our body are unique and unrepeatable, and they come into existence in the exact same moment, at the beautiful and mystical moment of our own conception.

We aren’t disparate parts, but rather integrated beings. Or we are meant to be, at least, and we can work towards greater integration if we find ourselves severed in some way.

Thus, what affects the soul affects the body, and what affects the body affects the soul.

This is true for you.

This was true for your mother and father.

And this is true for your children.

Even if what came before was disintegrated and traumatizing for you, you can work to heal and to not repeat those same patterns in your own children. And your own experiences can galvanize you in your resolve to do better, to be better, for the sake of your children.

Even if you were crushed, you can raise up others. Even if you feel broken, you can learn to love. Even if you experienced force and aggression, you can plant the seeds of peace, freedom, and resilience in your own child’s heart through respecting them as beautiful, holy, blessed, sovereign beings, even if still interdependent and interconnected (as we all are).

How we birth and care for our infants creates neurological and emotional pathways that imprint of them for life. This is why birth must be gentle, without trauma to mother or baby, and without force, coercion, or the presence of strangers.

This also brings in the topic of circumcision, whereby a newly born boy experiences genital mutilation and a form of sexual violence from his first days, which can impact sexual self-perception for life, if only subconsciously. As with so many areas of life, especially those pertaining to our bodies and their ability to thrive, we’ve been told lies about this procedure and its (ever evolving) necessity.

We are free to choose a gentler way for our children, even if their father didn’t have that gift from his youth, and even if their mother was mistreated (even in societally “acceptable” ways) from childhood.

We do not need to traumatize others to justify or normalize our own abuse.

We can break the cycle and restore humanity to our relationships.

And even if we have regrets about mistakes we’ve already made in our parenting journeys, we can ask forgiveness of our children (even if they are not speaking and are tiny), and reorient ourselves to act more in alignment with Beauty, Goodness, and Truth in the future.

Your good effort and intentions will be blessed. ❤

But where to start?! And what does this look like?!

I want to share a few resources that are poignant and inspiring, that will hopefully nurture your path towards gentle and more conscious parenting. Some of these resources are not actually about parenting, but can inform way of being that will overflow into an awe of life, a wonder for your children, and a gentleness towards yourself and others.

I will probably add more as time goes on, but these are all portals to their own deep dives, which you can explore as you’re able with an open mind and heart.

May you love expansively and parent gently!

Sophia Z
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