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One night many years ago, while I sat in my comfy chair writing a blog post as my little boy slept, my older son stumbled out of bed to tell me he felt scared. This was hardly a new communication; he had felt scared more nights that I could count since he had turned five. But because I happened to be writing about teaching kids how to respond to fear, I decided to apply the lesson in the moment:
“Everest, do you remember how we’ve been talking to Asher about his Monkey Brain and how he can boss it back? Well, let’s see if you could try that now. What would you like to tell fear?”
“Go away, fear! You’re lying to me! There’s nothing to be scared of in here!”
“Good, now let’s see if you can say it with a little more power in your voice. Do you know how you yell at Asher when he’s in your space or touching one of your toys? Let’s see if you can talk to fear with that same voice.”
And he did. We had done this exercise many times before, but using the reference of how angry he feels when his little brother messed with his stuff seemed to connect him to a stronger part of himself.
He walked back to bed and I continued to write.
A few minutes later, he stumbled back over to me and said, “Mommy, I don’t feel scared anymore. I just feel sad. Could you please give me some comfort?”
So I snuggled next to him and held him close. I scratched his back and told him how much I loved him. I thought about how often it happens that when the fear is unveiled, what lies underneath is sadness. In other words, he thinks he’s scared of snakes, but as soon as he bosses his fear-mind into place, the sadness emerges. Why do we gravitate toward fear instead of the core feeling of sadness? I imagine it’s because fear is a more defensive and, thus, a falsely powerful emotion whereas sadness renders us vulnerable, like a soft sea-creature without its shell. Unless we know that we can handle the sadness, fear creeps in as a protection. But eventually, as I see with my clients every day who were anxious as kids, the unfelt sadness mutates into anxiety as adults and demands attention and healing.
A few minutes later I asked him what he felt sad about and he said, “I feel sad that everything’s always changing. I feel sad that the soap bar is getting worn down. I feel sad that the Shrinky-Dinks change in the oven. I feel sad that my Pooh-Bear is losing his shape. And I’m sad because I know everyone is going to die one day.”
Oh, my sweet, sensitive boy. There were times when he was young when he just broke my heart. How many kids think about the fact that we’re all going to die one day? (I know from working with a highly sensitive/anxious population that it’s more common than we think.) At that age, he lived with an exposed heart, aware of the fleeting nature of life and the noble truth that things are always shifting, changing, dying. My husband and I often remark that, although I’m Jewish and my husband was raised Catholic, Everest was born with a Buddhist soul. He lives this quote from Pema Chodron daily:
“All anxiety, all dissatisfaction, all the reason for hoping our experience could be different are rooted in our fear of death. Fear of death is always in the background… Trungpa Rinpoche once gave a public lecture titled ‘Death in Everyday Life.’ We are raised in a culture that fears death and hides it from us. Nevertheless, we experience it all the time. We experience it in the form of disappointment, in the form of things not working out. We experience it in the form of things always being in a process of change. When the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, that’s death in everyday life…”
And, as his parents, we were left with the awesome and, at times, overwhelming responsibility of teaching him how to relate and respond to the sadness without being overtaken by it. I would remind him that with every death, with every loss, comes a rebirth and a new beginning – that it’s through experiencing the sadness as fully as possible that the joy is released.
“What can you do with the sadness?” I asked that night. as I often did.
“I can be with it,” he responded.
“Let’s be with it together. Let’s take a deep breath right into the middle of that sadness.”
In another era or another culture, he would have apprenticed under a shaman and his sensitivity would have been honed and utilized as medicine to his people. But this culture is nothing short of brutal for the sensitive souls among us. We devalue feelings, especially emotional boys, and regard a sharp intellect and “normalcy” with the highest praise. If he had been in school, there’s not a doubt in mind that he would have been bullied into believing that he was a “sissy” by the kids and a “problem child” by the teachers, and his self-esteem would have been in the gutter in about five minutes.
Within the homeschooling model, we were able to preserve his spirit and self-worth, and help him tend to his incredibly beautiful, sensitive heart. We made sure there was plenty of unstructured time in our days so that boredom could give rise to creative impulses and scientific inventions. And we supported his emotional intensity in every way that we could, with love, acceptance, and reverence for his brilliance, and his challenges, honoring the unique path that he came here to follow without attempting him to fit him into the narrow societal box called “normal”.
A few weeks ago, Everest turned fourteen, and a week after his birthday he soloed in a glider for the first time. It astounds me now that the child who was afraid of everything and who felt sad about the shrinking bar of soap is now afraid of virtually nothing. He still feels deeply about the world, and will be the first to carry a mosquito, or any living creature, outside instead of swat it. He still doesn’t like pulling out weeds and would lay down his life for those he loves. But through learning to meet himself exactly where he was, he’s grown into a solid, capable, resilient, vulnerable, courageous young man, his heart open, his mind awake, and his spirit shining bright.
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Previously published on Conscious Transitions and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock