Re: some more scandal

Hey NB --

I thought about a book I read called "The Spirituality of Imperfection" -- you might see if you can find a copy. Essentially it talks about the real growth that occurs around imperfection -- the importance of understanding that we will never be perfect, but that the journey we are on is one of growth in imperfection.

It stresses the importance to spiritual growth of shared experience -- the shoulder-to-shoulder path, rather than learning from lessons handed down by a church, authority figure, book, or another source that can provide information or instructions rather than a concrete "I had that problem too -- here's how I moved beyond it."

It's really important for me to keep those ideas in mind and at play when I am here on Curezone, and when I am taking part in many other real-time activities and relationships in and throughout my life. The biggest connections I have and the most I learn is from that sharing of experience, or of similar problems followed by a shared solution.

I didn't do raw vegan, but -- I am glad you brought up that example! I am a "recovering vegetarian" -- and also suffered from a pretty crummy veg diet. These days I cringe when my friends refuse to give their kids meat or eggs, although ten years ago I would have told you that a soy-protein veg diet was the only healthy one. How we change.

It can be really hard on Curezone because we all communicate with people we don't know via posts that cannot contain all the information at hand around any situation that arises on any forum. I have seemingly contradicted myself at times (and so you have some shared experience here, it's been cut-and-pasted and reposted to undermine me, too!) ouch! Who wants to go in to the wasted and miserable time of defending oneself to someone who is angry, when one is not guilty in the first place? It's a losing battle and I like to think I have a few other fish to fry around here -- like helping people who were as lost as I was when I arrived at this site. Helping, not lecturing.

The thing I try to keep in mind is that we are all sick and (hopefully) trying to get better. Around here it is mostly physical illness -- but people who have been plagued with disease and chronic illnesses can get pretty mentally unwell.

Sometimes someone will write an especially angry or vitriolic post at one of the forums I visit, and I will say that it does not matter how physically ill we are -- it's our spiritual health that really matters. How we connect with others and the world around us. (Which, of course, affects our physical health.) You can do all the flushes and eat all the raw and pull all the oil and supplement with all the Iodine and so forth -- but what good is it if you are bitter and resentful? I think the real power at Curezone is a spiritual one -- the shared experience, service, commun9ity -- rather than the very important health-related stuff that goes on here.

I admire you for remaining calm and having patience throughout this discussion, and
I assure you that even if the very worst of anyone's fears came true around your daughter -- let's say she got hit by a bus and was paralyzed -- that your honesty and balance would serve her well and help her in whatever she faced. I think you're right that your real problem here is you (just as my real problem with my girls is me, just as anyone's real problem with anything they don't like or which confuses them is none other than they themselves), and your need to achieve real balance around your mothering. Where you are OK -- not feeling guilty about not being with your child, so that you can really enjoy being with her -- and where you can let her be herself, rather than a child with a tired and unfocused mother stuck in a perfection trap.

Part of the reason I am so careful around AP or any of those parenting theories books is that they all seem to be written by men -- Spock to Sears for instance (the books about raising kids written by women all seem to come down to "do whatever works for you" -- which is not an expression of giving up, but one of hope that we will all find balance with our children). I think mothers give more ambiguous advice -- rather than the here's-how-the-theory-works, follow-it-to-the-letter because we know that the world does not exist in black and white, but in fact is a big gray area. Rigid thinking (black/white, right/wrong, good/bad) is the way we think when we are perhaps embarking upon a spiritual journey. We need to cling on to things that are very concise and clear because our minds aren't flexible and we don't have the ability to see how anything less than the rigidity could possibly be OK, or how we might possibly be OK when people don't agree with us, or have different experience and information, and so forth. That's also why I don't like to hear a lot of parenting advice or lectures from non-parents who have not had to enter that Big Gray Area called Having Kids -- non-parents can have a very rigid idea of How Things Should Be (although they have been children themselves, and that can be extremely helpful...), whereas a lot of fellow parents I know, whether due to exhaustion, enlightenment, or both, have the experience and the flexibilty of thought to be helpful, offer solutions, and be supportive.
I hope you'll keep posting both questions and answers around here. I have to say that my take-home lesson from this thread really comes from a) your initial honesty and candor about a subject of concern to you -- a subject most might not have the guts to bring up -- and b) your conduct during the inquisition that followed. I hope you did get more clear on its being OK to do some letting go around your daughter, too -- we have had a babysitter come in for a couple of hours a week in the past month or so, and it's made us all so much happier as I can give them that attention without feeling pulled in so many directions that I am nothing to any situation.

And I hope that those who have reacted with judgment, ugliness, and disapproval can find a path to spiritual fitness that works for them, so that they might be truly of service to others. I know from experience that a) being trapped in the prison of one's feelings and opinion is a miserable place to be; and that b) it's often hard to know how miserable one is, because it just feels normal. I'm not going to hold my breath or bet the mortgage that one of your detractors or another is going to post something along the lines of, "Gosh, No_Biz -- I see how rigidly judgmental I was, and I am sorry if it only added to your confusion. What can I do to make that right?" -- although I will say a prayer that such people might get to that realization at some point. There are some smart people around here (though intelligence won't get you far if you are always in collision with people -- actually the spiritual sickness will take over and obscure the intelligence as people will start to tune you out or be scared of you, so you can't and won't get honest respect or regard from anyone -- I have both had this happen before with me, and seen it with others....).

Anyway -- I hope you'll take steps to get the structure and balance with your daughter. It doesn't feel very great at first, or didn't for me -- I don't like schedules, authority, and so forth -- but it has been a really good experience to implement it. A couple of years ago I would have called what I am doing now "putting a lot of distance between me and my kids" -- anathema to me then -- but I have come to realize the hard way that they probably need some distance from me, rather than vice versa. We spend and have always spent a lot of time together -- so much so that I think I've not helped them, ultimately, by exposing them to other people, places, things. I mean, here is a question for all Attachment Parents -- what if you get hit by a bus? A really important part of parenting, I think, is to teach your children that others can care for and love them, and I've seen a lot of mothers fall deep into the practice of being the one and only for their kids (take this outta context and it's going to piss many off, but I'll run that risk...). I really believe that children are highly evolved spiritual beings and that we are supposed to learn from them. I also believe that they have their own relationship with a higher power who will take care of them -- that's a different conversation entirely -- but I do think it's an important idea for all mothers, whether or not they like it.

Best to all,

Laura
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