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My young adult daughter is one of the participants in a program where I teach adults skills of how to reparent themselves, as an antidote to chronic self-abandonment.

Several years ago, I would have been mortified if anyone found out that my children needed to learn how to love themselves.

I know I’d have felt shame that I somehow failed as a mother.

To confront the truth that my children are bruised from my mothering is probably the most difficult thing for any mother to face.

Luckily for all of us, I have spent many years unlearning the judgmental environment in which I grew up and which I fully internalized.

While I was unlearning to judge myself, I’ve also been learning to love and to reparent myself.

Thanks to these efforts, I can stand at this point in my life, no longer feeling ashamed for being human.

Teaching my daughter what it means to re-mother her inner child, as I step into my role of the elder, becomes especially meaningful, because it transcends generations.

I had never felt more meaning, more healing, more connection to the sacredness of my role as a mother.

In the last 10 years—as I was reevaluating everything in my life—I have also confronted a profound sense of grief and pain, confusion and conflict in my role as a mother.

I have felt much regret that, despite doing the best I knew how, I was somehow failing my children.

Observing how my relationships with my daughters have been transforming thanks to my inner shifts, I understand that the mother which was failing my daughters was the woman who (for generations) tried to survive under patriarchy.

She created adaptations to police other women to stay in line, to self-sacrifice, to self-hate, and to devote all resources to condition her offspring to become perfect addicts, consumerists, and conformists to societal systems and family expectations.

Failing as a mother who was supposed to get my children to behave, obey, and follow a specific timeline became a blessing.

As I free myself from the one-size-fits-all box in which I stuffed myself as a woman and a mother, I now free my daughters.

I free them to take up whatever shape is most natural to them, to follow their own inner drumbeat, to follow what fills their heart with passion.

I am teaching my daughters the most precious wisdom: how to mother their own inner child.

I see how my advice is most appreciated when I speak as a wise woman and an elder, not from the subjective possessive view of their human mother.

This also means that I can hear their words without judgment or taking offense. I provide a safe space to speak out loud things that my parents could not tolerate without retaliation.

I validate my daughters’ feelings and experiences as a neutral wise elder. There are no bad or wrong feelings. There is no shame in being human.

As a result, I feel as though we are connecting on the soul level. And the most beautiful sacred truth emerges: My job here is done.

As my girls become adults and go through life guided by their heart and their own inner knowing—I know they will be okay. They’ll be more than okay.

They are evolving from the need to conform in order to survive, to finding freedom so they can thrive!

I am endlessly grateful for the unexpected twists and meanderings in my life plot. After a lifetime of trying to keep it on the straight and narrow until I shriveled up, I now allow life to have its way with me.

And I wish my children and yours the same.

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