Passionate Parenting, Passionate Living!

 By Lori MacKinder, M.A.                   2007

I can remember back as if were yesterday when my two girls were little.  Time flies but painful memories sometime linger.  Although I loved the idea of starting a family, the reality of having two children under four was challenging and exhausting at times.  I felt as if there was rarely a moment to relax or do any introspective work on myself.  My standard answer to the daily question, “How are you?” became, “Great”. Simply because it stopped the questioning right there, knowing that I had not actually checked in with myself to see how I was really doing and probably would not like what I found in there if I did check in with myself anyway!  Where was the manual about what to do with a baby who cries all the time or won’t sleep or becomes sick often? You know, the manual for the overworked - overtired mother, I wanted.

The idea of parenting with passion or living passionately was totally foreign to me as a young and new mother.  I suppose if someone had suggested living a fully passionate life to me, I would have assumed they were speaking about something from a romance novel that my husband would certainly take issue with. Yet here I am now, with a 12 year old and an 8 year old suggesting just that… LIVE with PASSION! 

“How”, you ask me or perhaps more accurately: You demand, “How?!”

It turns out that we each have somewhere between 12 and 24 unique passions!  These are things that when we are doing them we feel energized, loose track of time and feel the big “YES!” of life.  They come from our highest form of living, from our true essential nature. For some people, a passion is being in nature, writing, or helping others.  For others a passion might be gardening, traveling or learning. 

There is something amazing about our passions.  They are unique to us and they point to what we are meant or truly destined to be doing.  Therefore it is not only O.K. to be doing the things you are passionate about but also, you are supposed to do them!  That is why you were given them.  They point us in the rightful direction of our life.  Somewhat like an emotional guidance system allowing us to feel good when we are on our truest path and allowing us to feel bad when we are off our truest path.

When I began to investigate what my passions were, I felt concerned that raising kids might not be one of them.  What would happen then?!  As it turns out, there are many passions possible around family creating, forming, holding, etc.  When I dug deeper into those things in life that I love, I found that I was trying to raise my kids using some formula foreign to me.  I had lost the connection to my own gut knowing around my kids and was trying to be the perfect mother according to what the books said and the play date circles recommended and so on.  But upon further searching of myself, I found was that I love to teach and play.  This was a passion and it could involve children; my children.  Once I found this passion in myself, my parenting style took on a whole new mode.  Instead of strict adherence to a prescription I allowed my own internal knowing to take over, my intuition.  Then slowly, and as you would expect, more play and natural guidance flowed from me to my children.  The environment this created for my kids was astoundingly positive, easy, and relaxed -- instead of tense, tired and edgy.  Furthermore, as I lived in one of my passions around teaching and playing, my children experienced me being authentic and lively, of course.

For one of my dear friends, her passion is around creating spaces to imagine.  She now uses this passion as a special connection with her children: imagination.  For a dad in our circle, one passion is making a difference and knowing that his work counts.  When he parents from this place of passion in himself, he is joy filled and abundant with love for his daughter and is a pillar of strength for his family.  Another friend of mine, whose son is now a teenager feels completely passionate when in conversations around speaking truth and being emotionally honest.  She and her son bond deeply in conversations about life, love and happiness. They both feel grateful for the openness and honesty regarding their connection.

    Passionate parenting and passionate living are tied up in what it is you love to do!  Find those things, all of them, and live your full potential….

    To uncover and dust off all those passions of yours, you could hire a Personal Development Coach who specializes in passion, or an accredited passion mapper to guide you, or you can do the work yourself following these simple steps:

“Your 12 – 24 True and Unique Passions”