"Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be…"

I am not a mother.

I hear the voices who criticize me, for good reasons, who claim that I can't understand what it's like to be a parent. I completely agree. I don't understand parents- I understand children.

I guide them and work with them for many years. I know how they think; I understand their confusion, through their words and their silence. I know what they think about their parents and about how they are being protected of them. I know the love, the anger and their inner frustration.

Why am I not a mother? The opinions inside me are still conflicting. But the bottom line is, that I never felt the lack which leads to the desire. Even when I actually tried becoming a mother, because the clock was ticking and something in my head told me I might have regrets, it didn't work. When my doctor told me that instead of waking up at nights to take care of the baby, I would be waking up because of the nausea from the chemotherapy treatment, something inside me calmed down.

I am an aunt- by being. In essence, in doing. An aunt for my biological nephews, and for those who have gathered over the years. As you have realized from my previous post, I am not the usual aunt. I live a life full of paths, I choose every time what is challenging, and I see the physical and spiritual world as a clear and perfect unit.

Out of this experience, of being everyone's aunt, who has  always seen things through the eyes of children and didn't understand parents, was burn a parent guide. A parent guide who speaks and teaches from the eyes of children.

I still remember almost every age. My perceptions haven't changed due to the challenges of parenting; so I was able to teach and guide parents, who were brave enough to accept the simple fact that they are raising humans.

Since I never walked through the path of parenting, I couldn't understand, but only try and sympathize with my environment, which became an environment of parents.

We all grew up together. I remember their opinions, their openness and their dreams before they became parents: Nothing and everything has changed within them. The wonderful love, alongside fear and anxiety, has naturally changed their perceptions. Everyone felt that they're not good enough parents, at some stage or another. They all suffered from anxiety and endless worrying about their children and tried to do their best, and they all have found that that there is no magic trick, nor perfect parenthood.

A moment of reflection: Looking from a different perspective at what you created, try to remember yourself at every age; Not at what you did, but at how you felt; How did it feel like looking up at all the grownups, not understanding what they are talking about; How did it feel being confused, without getting any explanation from anyone, feeling there is a secret being kept from us and imagining the worst; How did we feel sometime deprived and sometimes less loved from our siblings; How did it feel like wanting to experiment with new things and being afraid of what will our parents think of us and what will happen if they found out; How did it feel like being judged by them and causing disappointment; How did we swear to be different from our parents, and all of a sudden, here we are, all grown, and we are exactly like them, using the same lines we didn't like. Phrases that we swore never to repeat, are now coming out of our mouths, as we think to ourselves:" Who the hell is speaking from out of my mouth?"

Your children look at you and feel you, just as you looked at your own parents and felt them – All though everyone does it in a subjective waybased on his or her experience.

Your children are not much different from you. They look for a way and a meaning, just the same way you were looking when you were their age. They will go through their journey just like you did; they will resist, love, kick, scream and touch your heart. They will hurt and get hurt, fail and succeed. They too will swear never to repeat your sentences and will repeat them. They are, like everyone, a part of a magnificent endless circle of creation. Like you, they need and will need tools to go through their journey.

The conscious and the unconscious choices that I made are who I am. I, like everyone else, am a product of the combination of events and environmental actions which defined our thought and decisions, alongside with the depth of our soul, our genetics, with which we are born.

Today, after many years of teaching and guiding others, who choose this challenging journey toward the simplicity of becoming a meaningful adult themselves, loving without limits without making judgments, and without conditions, while being authentic to my personal boundaries – I have learnt about myself that it was an unconscious choice, however incredibly liberating, to be an aunt, and nowadays a great-aunt, that is learning to love herself….

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