Dear Readers,
Mother’s Day brings with it a quiet ache and a quiet awe. Whether you are a mother, have been mothered well, or are still healing from the absence of it—this day touches something tender in us all.
This week, I’m sharing something close to the bone. A reflection on the sacred, invisible work of releasing those we love into a world we cannot control. Especially our children. Especially when everything in us wants to protect.
May this serve as a gentle reminder: that faith is not the absence of fear, but the choice to trust anyway.
In everything we trust,
Sylvia
Questions
Q
How do I hold space for my children as they continue to grow? I know I can’t protect them from pain, but the world is so much more complicated and filled with unknowns than when I was young.
A
This is the mothers prayer.
There is an excruciating tenderness in loving a child so deeply that you would do absolutely anything for them—and yet, you must release them to the world. You’re right: the world is complex and fraught with danger. So the answer to your question is a spiritual one.
We, as mothers, must prepare ourselves to release our children into the intensity of life. Releasing them is an act of faith. In this act, we surrender the reins of control—beyond what we can hold as mothers—into the larger frame of the Divine.
This means we become willing to set down our judgment of what is a tragedy and what is a blessing, and hold faith that—perhaps—everything, in the end, could be a blessing. We surrender our children into the unknown, even though deep down we know that there will be many difficult moments ahead. A human lifetime is fraught with difficulty. And yet: can we, as mothers, trust the Divine enough to surrender them to the difficulty—for the benefit of their own spiritual growth and awakening?
Another way to say this is: begin to parent to the strength of your children and not to the fragility.
Parenting to the fragility of our children is the essence of helicopter parenting. It is believing that our children are not capable of facing the adversity and challenge of life itself. And so, they soak in an environment shaped by our fear-based consciousness, and they learn—by osmosis—to fear life too.
Parenting to strength is different. It is parenting to competency. It sounds something like this:
“I know this is hard, but I believe in you. I don’t know how you’ll find your way through this challenge, but I trust that you will. And I hope, on the other side, you’ll bring back the wisdom you gathered from the journey through difficulty—and teach me what you’ve learned.”
So, on this Mother’s Day, I offer you what has worked for me as a mother: to trust in my children’s capacity and strength to face this complex, difficult world.
To trust their immune systems to meet the toxins of the world.
To trust their nervous systems to navigate the overload of input.
To trust they will thrive beyond my lifetime, into a world that I cannot even imagine.
To trust that they will be ready for whatever comes—because I, too, have lived my life by that same trust.
I pray that on this Mother’s Day, wherever you may find yourself reading these words, you will join me in this mothers prayer:
Releasing our most precious treasures into the mystery itself.
