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As we free ourselves from the shackles of judgment and shame,
we feel more at peace being right where we are on the path, even as we
embrace an idealistic vision of how we want to be.
parenting is less than ideal?
First, our culture doesn’t acknowledge
the healing gap. Once we realise
how things ‘should’ be, the pressure is
on to get it ‘right’ — NOW! There’s little
room for process in a product-driven
society. Even more, our culture’s competitive,
win-lose paradigm compels us
to hide our healing gaps for fear of being
tagged a ‘loser’. But such hiding actually
prevents healing.
Knowing that we all have our own
healing gaps can help us see beyond the
judgments of ourselves and others. The
gap is neither good nor bad; it’s a natural
aspect of healing, analogous to Maslow’s
second stage of learning — conscious
incompetence — a step forward that
seems like a step backward because you
become more aware that something is
‘off’.
Ideally, that ‘off’ feeling would simply
motivate us to develop a higher level of
competence, but often it merely triggers
feelings of shame and inadequacy. We may
feel ‘not “AP” enough’ or ‘not “enlightened”
enough’ as parents, for example.
Such feelings are the most important ones
to face: they prevent us from harnessing the power of the healing
gap to propel us forward. As we free ourselves from the
shackles of judgment and shame, we feel more at peace being
right where we are on the path, even as we embrace an idealistic
vision of how we want to be. We can be realistic about
how steep a learning curve (or ‘healing curve’) we can handle.
Defensiveness, blame, justification and other means of protecting
ourselves from feeling ashamed are no longer needed, and
this can free up a lot of creative energy to further accelerate the
healing process.
Another endeavour that can benefit from acknowledgement
and integration of the healing gap is ‘creating community’.
From parenting support groups to homeschooling coops
to ‘intentional communities’, nothing exposes the healing
gap as dramatically as our attempts to rise above the norm
of isolated, single-family life. We dream of belonging to a
modern ‘tribe’ in which parents are respectful and sensitive to
the children’s needs, children have easy access to many playmates,
and someone is there for you in times of need. Why do
attempts to create community so often go down in flames?
As ‘alternative’ parents, we are already challenged by
our individual healing gaps. We are accustomed to dealing
with that in the relatively simple context of the family, but as
we coalesce into larger social groups, the social complexity
increases exponentially. (Do the math: A nuclear family with
one child has only three interpersonal relationships: motherfather,
mother-child, father-child. In a group of ten parents
and ten children, the number of possible relationships rises
to 190!) This increased social complexity tends to bring individuals’
‘stuff’ to the surface, makes dealing with it more
complicated, and creates a collective healing gap — the chasm
between the ideal of the healthy, interdependent community
and the reality of our fragmented society.
In order to survive and thrive, a fledgling group or
community needs to be clear about its
shared ideals and it must acknowledge
and accept its individual and collective
healing gaps. With this clarity, group
members can develop a practical, compassionate
way of handling current realities
as they work incrementally towards
their vision.
As with most of life, the healing gap
is like a hologram in which the pattern
of the whole is embedded in each part.
There are healing gaps at the level of the
individual, the family, the community,
the nation and the world, and there is
an upward ripple effect from individual
towards global healing. You create this
ripple effect every time you embrace a
higher vision for your own expression of
parenthood, accept where you are now,
and let the gap inspire healing.
Scott Noelle lives near Seattle, Washington with his
wife Beth and their two daughters, Olivia and Willow.
A longtime advocate of conscious, holistic, instinctive,
natural parenting, Scott now offers telephone-based
coaching to support progressive parents worldwide.
His free E-zine, Transforming Parenthood, is available
online at www.scottnoelle.com.
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