Child Mind: The 500-Word Project / Week 14
2013
He walks toward me across the park, feet dragging and head bowed. Flopping into my lap, he folds himself in sideways and lays his ear against my heart.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He sighs heavily. “Nobody loves me.”
I’m glad he can’t see the surprise my face undoubtedly betrays, but he can surely feel it in the sudden rigidity of my body. This day was coming, I knew, but I didn’t think it would come before he’d even turned five.
I pause, resting my cheek on his head as I dig within myself for a response. “Is that really true?” I say after a moment.
He nods his head, certain.
“Let me ask you something,” I say, feeling around for the tools that have helped me and trying to formulate a way to share them with him. “Do you notice how when you think that thought, it’s sort of like a voice in your head saying something to you?”
He waits for a moment, maybe testing it out. “Yeah,” he says finally.
“And you see how you can notice that voice?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says shakily.
“Well, that part of you that notices is the real you. The voice isn’t the real you. I know it feels like it is, but it’s not. It says things like that sometimes, because it gets confused and because it wants to protect you. But it doesn’t always know the truth.”
He thinks for a minute. “How do I know the truth, then?”
“You feel that part of you that notices? The part that hears the voice?” I ask. He nods. “That’s really you. Does that part of you feel that no one loves you?”
He pauses. “No,” he says after a moment. “You love me.”
“I really do,” I say. “And can you also feel that in your body?”
He takes a hand, still fleshed out with a slightly baby-ish chubbiness, and places it on his chest, fingers splayed wide. “Yeah,” he says. “Here.”
I smile and let my nose find his hair, inhaling its scent of sunshine and boy sweat. He sighs and settles into me more closely. “So, when you hear a thought from that voice and then you feel tight and sad, now you know that it’s not true. What do you think you could do at a time like that?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Maybe you could notice it, and ask yourself if it’s true?”
“Yeah,” he says. “And I could feel in my heart that it’s not true.”
“You could, yeah. It will probably say things like that again, and other things too. If you need help, you can always come to me and we’ll look at it together, okay?” I say, squeezing him tightly.
“Okay, yeah,” he says, his attention turning away from me now. He stands and wraps his little arms around my neck, swiftly kissing my forehead before he runs off to whatever’s next, feet kicking up tufts of dirt in his wake.
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Beautiful and wise and always
xxx
Beautiful Paige. I am going to share it with my 13 yr. old daughter Emma.
XO Helen
*love* you are such a wise mama!
The process–taking the time to listen and work with it and transform it so that it is transformed!!! Wonderful!!!
Imagine if we’d all been parented this way… What a lucky boy. And the part of you that is now saying “Well, I lose my patience sometimes/I’m not a great mom/etc,etc,etc” is just the voice… 😉
Thanks very much for your thoughts and kind words, everyone. I’m so glad if it strikes a chord.
And, Jessie, how could you possibly have known the voice was saying that? 😉
LOVE THIS!! what a gift