According to Their Path: The Divine Work of Holding Each Child
My husband and I recently returned home from a summer vacation that covered multiple continents. We spread across the world, as he and our daughter flew East while my son and I flew to the West. Our older boys stayed in Israel, unable to leave the country due to them being yeshiva students at army age, staycationing and camping with family. This choice wasn’t easy to make. We felt like fish swimming upstream, trusting an inner knowing that there was a purpose waiting for us on the other side.
Every family has their unique ways of raising their kids, doing what they need to do to keep each person in the family unit motivated and nourished. We use vacations as prizes, and two of our children were up for their turns. We had planned on traveling early in the summer with each on their own so that we could vacation together as a family during bein hazmanim (the three week summer break that yeshivas take), but the war that took place between Purim and Pesach changed our travel plans, like many of our fellow travelers. Besides for the other atrocities that took place in that war (may it be the last one), our airport was closed and all the schedule changes had pushed travel plans off, so we had to work with what was available.
We decided to put our priorities in order, and that was to fulfill our promise to our kids, that they would get their well deserved prizes from their hard work during the school year. After many discussions, it was decided that we would move forward with the plans and move the prize trips to the main vacation period, and that each child would have their one on one time with each one of us in order to ensure the atmosphere they needed.
Raising children takes inner wisdom, courage, deep love, prayer, commitment, and a lot of faith in Hashem. Shlomo Hamelech says to raise your child according to his or her ways, and that means getting to know who that child is and what way works particulary well for them, considering personality, birth order, strengths and weaknesses.
This is the same for our inner children. Our emotions are called inner children in Kaballah wisdom, and as we know, healing requires getting in touch with our emotions, and letting ourselves feel again with compassion and acceptance. Then our blocked and suppressed feelings get expressed and then integrated into our daily lives, creating space for love, our natural state.
Around the time my youngest child was born, I left my career as a graphic artist and owner of an advertising design paper and signed up for a professional Judaica art course, returning to my love of creating art using my hands. I loved owning and managing a business, but I knew that I had to give up this business in order to find myself.
My youngest child’s birth and post birth was a time in my life that brought up old and new traumas, and eventually led me to whole body health as a way to return to my body and mind, and live authentically and in line with what Hashem wanted for me and my purpose. An outer child mirrors an inner child. It’s emotions will trigger your emotions, both positive and negative, and show you clearly what you need to work on if you want to evolve and grow in this world.
When we respond with love, care and attention to our children’s needs, they thrive.
This past summer my husband and I chose to spend extra time and money on two of our beloved children, listen to them and give them what they needed - attention. It wasn’t a simple decision, and definitely not the norm, but we returned with happy thriving kids who are ready to take on the new year with an extra amount of unconditional love and care in their emotional piggy banks.
The wondrous thing about paying attention to and being present with your outer child is that it heals your inner child.
