As a mom to three teens, I often find myself wondering how I, as a mom, can raise my daughters to walk life spiritually healthy.
I think that we often forget that our children and teens are on a spiritual journey, just as we are. We can explain this forgetting to ourselves in many ways. Sadly, some justify forgetting as a necessary part of adapting and learning how to become functioning human adults.
However, once our hearts recognize that we are more than our physical selves, the realization that everyone else, including our child(ren) or teens, is also more than their physical selves is inevitable and, at the same time, also possibly confusing.
As a child, I always knew there was something beyond. The clarity came to me in a near-death experience (NDE) I had during a car crash when my three daughters were still babies.
For a long time, I struggled to make sense of my experience and its implications for motherhood. I needed to bring order to the new heart understandings I tried to walk.
Embracing our spiritual nature opens us to greatness and possibility. It enacts the agreement to walk our true nature, or at least to allow our higher self to inform us on our journey.
Accepting ourselves as more than our three-dimensional selves ripples out to all aspects of our lives. The first people to encounter these nourishing energies, possibly along with our confusion, will be our close family members: our partner, child(ren), or teens.
Their meeting with our inner processes takes place not in complete awareness but through energetic ripples, connections, and exchange. We grow, and so do they. They grow, and so do we.
If we walk alongside the newly arrived teachers on Earth—children, grandchildren, or other significant little ones—they will be among those with whom we wish to share the spirituality we embrace. We will find that regardless of whether we share with full awareness, our child(ren) observes our expansion and searches and learns from the example we offer.
As years have passed from my NDE, and through my work with other families, I find that walking aware of guiding questions helps us navigate and share the spiritual piece of our human journey with our child(ren), teens, and also others.
Although these guiding questions, like everything on our path, are part of a whole, I find it helpful to divide these questions into two categories.
(a) Questions that focus on how we perceive spirituality and its meaning to us, and (b) questions about the ideas and gifts of our soul journey.
Guiding questions on the meaning of spirituality
Spirituality is a broad and often vague term. We use it to describe many aspects of our lives. A few years ago, a teen I had been working with asked me what spirituality is. I found that I couldn’t really explain it and was surprised to acknowledge my own lack of clarity.
For some individuals and families, their spirituality is about religion or traditions. For others, it is about exploring and changing these traditions.
For some, spirituality is about transcendence. Practicing meditation, yoga, breathing, or other modalities to become better humans, better souls, embracing the love we all are. For others, spirituality may mean embodying and manifesting their spiritual essence, the love that we all are, in the very literal physical earthly life—offering the gifts they brought with them in the literal reality. Often, it is a combination of both.
I find there is no “right” answer. Each family finds its own delicate weave of what ‘spiritual’ is for them and what portion of the whole is filled by daily spiritual practices or is guided by a spiritual belief or inner knowing.
Questions to ask yourself:
- What gives you/your child(ren) meaning and purpose?
- Do you sense and trust your intuition/knowing/gut feeling? In general? As a parent?
- Do you encourage your child(ren) to recognize, explore, and trust their own inner knowing/intuition/gut feeling?
- Do you engage in spiritual practices such as meditations or gratitude? Why?
- Do you share your practices and experiences with your children? Do they share theirs with you?
Our spirituality is who we are. Spiritual beings. Creating space for related questions in our thoughts, our parental choices, and in communication with our children opens a door for shared exploration and growth.
Soul-Journey guiding questions
Usually, once we realize that we are more than our physical selves, we become open to the understanding that we are on a journey.
Then, we realize that if we are on a journey, then others must be on a journey as well. And if others are on a journey, then what does this mean for our child(ren)?
While this idea may seem simple at first, it is not an easy idea to fully embrace.
As adults, we slowly gather our power back to us, make choices about how we wish to walk life, and walk toward becoming the co-creators we came here to be.
Children are no different. However, as they are very dependent on us, acknowledging that they are on their own journey and that they arrived with their own soul choices can be very challenging.
Additional questions to ask yourself:
- What does being on a journey mean to you?
- What emotions, thoughts, or reflections come up for you regarding the idea that your child(ren) is also here as a soul on a journey?
- What makes you happy? What makes your child(ren) happy? Deep happiness often reflects that we are on our path.
- Does your journey and that of your child(ren) merge, and if so, how? How do they relate? Nudge one another? Can you recognize the invitations or teachings your child offers you?
Embracing our spiritual self
As spiritual beings, nourishing and empowering our child(ren)’s spiritual essence is part of what they need us to provide. To do so, we must embrace our spiritual essence as well. Explore and walk our spiritual journey, and create the conditions our children need to walk theirs.
Bringing the above questions into our conscious, aware walk with the ones we love most, and then branching out from them, expands our shared dance and takes us one step closer to the possible.
