Do you respect your life? Do you respect its phases?
Watch this week’s video to find out!
Let me tell you a very quick story:
My family on my Mom’s side is huge so I have many cousins and they now have many kids. In our family, there are people of all shapes and sizes, absolutely all ages, and different points of view, of course. It’s noisy and great because I get to see how each generation behaves, how things changed for the best or not, a human analysis really. I like to observe.
There’s something happening with my cousins, the little ones coming into their teenage years: They don’t smile, they don’t play, and they’re always grumpy. My cousins on the other hand are adults who most of the time behave like kids.
What I realized is that with every generation we try to anticipate the end of childhood when it comes to how the world sees us and we postpone growing up and becoming a responsible human beings on the inside, in all the things others can’t see with the naked eye.
That’s why children behave like adults and adults behave like kids.
My mom dedicated her life to raising my sister and me and I have to tell you that she understood something very important: Respecting childhood years fills the child with very important knowledge that will make all the difference in the future. So we were raised very differently from the rest of our family and I understood I wasn’t born to be like everybody else. I was made to be as I pleased.
She managed our life so we could be just kids and taught us how to play, be free in nature, dream, create things, be colorful and experiment. She also taught us to mix and mingle with people of all ages, so we learned to LISTEN to others’ experiences. We loved to sit at the table and engage with elders, young adults, new parents, people from all walks of life, and different life phases. What she did was pretty much the opposite of what I see parents do today. She created a bubble of love and light and protected us from “the real world” for many years. Later when we became teenagers she slowly offered us glimpses of what the world was really like and little by little stopped managing our routine and began transferring the responsibility to us. It worked. It made a huge difference. I can feel the difference and everybody does too even when they can’t really put their finger on exactly what is different.
Let me give you a practical example: My sister and I were playing doll until I was almost 15. I had kissed boys already and still was allowed to be a child when I wanted. I stopped playing with toys literally because I lost interest. No one ever told me: This is not for you anymore. My parents respected our natural flow of life much more than others.
For you to have an idea, people would say that my sister should start being all cute and laying on the sand like ladies because playing with our boards and being in odd positions was too sexual and men wouldn’t like that. My parents protected us and allowed us to be playful anyway.
Do you know what that gave me?
- The ability to learn from others’ mistakes and thrives
- Ease to connect with people of all ages
- Education to be welcomed everywhere
- A solid foundation over which I built my life
- Understanding what each phase holds for me
- The feeling of being very comfortable in my body
- Knowing that I was what my little cousins are now and will be what my grandparents are now.
Because of my upbringing, I’m responsible but don’t feel the need to be all stiff, put together, serious, and desperate for others to see me as an adult. I bring to my routine the playfulness of my childhood and I can see that it helps me go further than average because my days are lighter. The ability to imagine something greater and better and the experience with elders helps me face challenges at ease and be ok because I’m sure that nothing will last forever and things change with time. I know that time is a precious thing. I know so many things that most of my friends don’t simply because my mother allowed me to be a child.
Sounds so basic, but I’m telling you for most people it’s not obvious.
Nowadays people stick to theory and they listen to humans who are mostly the same age as them and they speak like philosophers that know much about life when they’ve tried nothing yet. Truth is that everybody learns things two times:
- once in theory
- once in practice
And when you open up to diversity inside and out of your family and give others a chance to talk and you surrender and listen, life becomes so much better and so much easier! Because people one way or another tell you exactly what’s coming your way and exactly how to deal with it. Some even show you how NOT to deal with it. Lol!
People are getting to adulthood so unprepared and so lazy, not wanting to make an effort or be defeated. Life’s so hard and if we don’t have a strong foundation is so much harder. I’ve seen time and time again that people who don’t respect life’s natural phases become adults too fast and when crisis come in their 30s, 40s, 50s, they go back to being children and teenagers to fill a gap that was overlooked before. It’s such a gift to be able to be a child and if you’re a parent, let your kid be childlike but not childish.
I hope it helps!
Much love,
Cá – The Cape Witch