We have three beautiful daughters, ages 10, 5 and 1. When my husband and I are at work, they are looked after by our parents. We deeply appreciate this while knowing that both parents have a different way of parenting and taking care of the children. We accept this and also, in the years gone by, there were times where we agreed and times where we did not agree on certain things, but we were always grateful that they looked after the children.
We noticed that we did not always express what we felt. But what we have recently learned is that every experience is an opportunity for healing.
My youngest daughter always had trouble winding down after a day at my parents- in-law: we noticed that this occurred a couple of times and the intensity of her resisting to winding down went from bad to worse – she would stay awake for hours and scream when put to bed. If we would pick her up out of the bed, she would not settle but insist on playing. The last time it was very severe and I remembered Michael Benhayon talking to me about ‘reading’ the children – this simply means connecting with them and feeling what they are actually communicating, or feeling into what the child is trying to communicate when they are unsettled and see what is going on in them. So I asked myself the question; “What do you read out of this / what do you feel in this? … What is she trying to tell me?”
I could feel there was stress and anxiousness in her body and it seemed as if she felt suffocated. I communicated this to my mother-in-law and she started to think about what she could do to entertain her, like taking her out for a walk etc.
I felt that it was not so much about doing something, but more about how she was when she was with her granddaughter.
I specifically asked her if she enjoyed having her granddaughter around. She answered that she was always very afraid that something might happen to her and therefore she is very tense and restrictive towards her granddaughter. This is what the little girl is picking up on when she is around her grandmother and this is what she was showing us at home.
After discussing this with my mother-in-law, she babysat again at our home. My husband arrived home earlier and, after a little while, our daughter went out into the yard. At that moment my mother-in-law yelled out, “Ooh no, she is going out into the yard!” My husband said, “Just let her go, she is very capable of going outside.”
My mother-in-law literally stood stiff as she watched her crawl out into the yard. Nothing happened, she didn’t fall over and was happily crawling in the yard. My mother-in-law felt a huge tension drop down from her shoulders and felt for the first time that it was okay to trust.
Two days later she told me on the phone how she sat with what had happened and felt that, as a third child out of eight, she was one of the eldest who had to look after her sisters and brother. Every time one of them hurt themselves or started to cry, she would be punished by her parents for not looking after them well enough. This made her extremely tense around little children and when she eventually became a mother herself, she became over protective and even cried when one of her sons came home with a minor injury or something similar. Now she could feel that her childhood experience reflected to her an ingrained belief that she was not able to look after her children in a way that they would not get hurt and that she had somehow failed.
This was huge for her to understand what she had been carrying around for years. Her granddaughter gave her a beautiful gift by exposing this behaviour that was not honouring the loving, caring and responsible woman that she naturally is.
So now with that out of the way, she can develop a true relationship with her granddaughter, which also affects and heals the relationships with her sisters and brother, sons and other two grandchildren.
Letting go of the false belief that she is not capable of looking after little children makes her less tense around them and gives her an understanding that children can fall in the process of exploring what their bodies are capable of. It is still a work in progress, but she can be more relaxed around her granddaughter and enjoy being with her, connecting to a true way of taking care of the children that is already within her. And we immediately experienced the effect this has on our youngest daughter: she is not as tense as she used to be after a day with her grandparents.
For me to experience the simplicity of connecting and reading what is actually going on was very confirming, and I thank Michael Benhayon for his support and reflection.
By Diana Renfurm – Divorce Mediator, The Netherlands
Published with permission of my mother-in-law.
Further Reading:
Living religion: the magic in my connection
Loving Daily Choices and Healing Hurts
We Are Not Our Hurts
834 Comments
Communication is the key to understanding. A 1 year old with no speech is communicating volumes.
How much of what is given to us is true? Then as children there is always a way of shutting them down because there is no commitment to treat the youth as equals and when we do there are lessons for everyone so we all evolve.
Diana what your story clearly demonstrates is that there is reason behind everything, nothing happens randomly. This highlights for me the interconnectedness and relationship that we have with everything and everyone, all working off each other constantly.
Bringing anything less than Love to a child is felt by them and this can be a great lesson for all, as we can all react when we feel a loveless situation but the Truth is we can all learn to not react to being connected to in a love-less way, as True Love is a rare thing and what you have shared Dianne provides a simple way of how we can all return to Love.
The healing on offer to all the family through the loving exploration of what your youngest daughter was communicating is huge and amazing to feel how many times this could be replicated around the world if we were all open to reading situations and truly sharing with each other.
In the example you share in this blog Diana, it is indeed an opportunity for a healing, very beautiful, ‘We noticed that we did not always express what we felt. But what we have recently learned is that every experience is an opportunity for healing.’
What comes across is the understanding you were able to hold the mother-in-law in no judgement at all. Everything is a learning and everyone gains from the experience, especially the mother-in-law who gets to address some of the hurts she has been holding onto for years.
Yes, how you approached your mother-in-law was very beautiful, a curiosity and learning for all, with healing as a bonus.
Beautiful to feel the space that you offered your mother-in-law, with no blame or reaction towards how she was being towards your children – just the understanding for her to feel in her own time and space a deeper hurt she’d been holding on to, and to be able to let it go.
Parenting as with anything in life does not work if we keep it purely based on the physical. There is more to life than just what is physical and therefore reading beyond just what we see with our eyes is super important
Children have so much wisdom to share with us when we are open to listening and reading what their body is showing us.
Thank you Diana Reading this today I can see more clearly how looking after my brothers and other younger boys who were my parent’s friends’ children has had an effect on me. I have also been over protective which has meant that I have gone against what I know is true and pandered to others. This pattern is changing however it is great to see how it can hover in the background and influence the way we are with anyone to a lesser or greater degree.
What a beautiful lesson for you all and the opportunity for your mother-in-law to begin to heal what she had been carrying with her since childhood. It simply goes to show that the hurts and traumas of childhood stay buried within us until they are brought to the surface, often in very painful ways. But you also show it is possible to heal the inner wounds of the past.
It was great that you were able to read the situation and see first hand how the grandmother was reacting, all this allowed for a true healing to take place, one that had effected other family members.
What I love about this is how you and your husband responded to the situation you met with your child. You reflected, observed, read and communicated with your mother with love. Reflecting on her childhood, unlocked an old belief and brought healing to herself and whole family. The power of reading situations cannot be underestimated.
What I love about this is the openess and lack of defence in your mother in law, her willingness to open up and share what is going on for her- I found this very beautiful.
What a beautiful example of how healing our relationships are when we are open to the evolution that is on offer through them, through every constellation we are in. Through what you have shared Diana, you highlight the power on offer for us to heal our hurts with the support of each other, so we can all bring to life and freely live the love that we all innately are.
The way Diana was able to express what she read about her child’s reactions to being with her grandparents indicates just how effective and powerful it is to not hold back how we feel to others, even our immediate family whom we tend to be more ‘polite’ and ‘nice’ to in order to not hurt anyone’s feelings. But as this blog shows, amazing healing can come from a simple sharing of how one feels things to be at any one time.
There are so many hurts that we can cary from our childhood, so many experiences which if we don’t unpick and understand how they impact us will forever haunt us and control our behaviours.
Absolutely Viktoria, and the non-reactivity comes when we understand how we stay reconnected to our Soul-full-essences
Reading other people and situations should be reconnected to as part of our education for its healing properties and ability to unpick situations and bring understanding and a way forward.
Yes, bringing reading others and situations into the education system from day one would be a valuable addition into education.
This is so healing for everyone because it is so awesome that you were open to the fact that your youngest daughter was clearly communicating that something was amiss and that you and your mother-in-law were able to support each other to explore the possibilities and now you are all benefitting from the evolving resolution of all the relationships.
Such simple wisdom but so rarely practiced in our world today. Reinforces the importance of connecting with and understanding our children not from our heads but from our entire body being open to what they are communicating.
The way I know if I got a reading that is true is if I feel expanded in my body.
I appreciate the openness of your mother-in-law! As not everyone would have been ready to look at, what may have caused the anxiety and reflect with an honesty about it. What a lovely constellation, everyone could learn from. Beautiful also that you took her by her hand and not reacted or dismissed her. With true understanding, we can heal our hurts and support each other.
This reflects the power of reading the underlying cause of any behaviour and a willingness to discuss it.
This is a beautiful sharing Diana, and shows the importance of reading, and communicating, and how this can assist in a deep healing.
Thank you Diana, such gorgeous example from your experience with your mother, and how beautiful that it actually allowed healing to take place of the old hurt(pain). Love is always open and offering space for the not love to come out.
What a beautiful healing for your mother-in-law and for many readers. It is amazing how we all can affect each other depending on what is going on for us and what we are choosing to reflect, it can be either healing or harming.
This was such a healing for everyone, including the reader! It showed me how important it is to not react or judge in a situation and simply read what is going on. From there we need to express what we observed, then allow things to unfold naturally.
Offering another the opportunity to let go of hurts and trust is one of our most significant responsibilities on our return back to the soul.
When my children are not themselves I call it out and talk to them about how they are feeling. Sometimes they express immediately what is going on for them and at other times it is down to me to read what is going on from when I first become aware of their behaviour. I find it interesting though as kids do know exactly what is going on… they can hold back because they also know that when they express the truth the response from me may not be what they would like to hear!
Brilliant – this reminds me that life is an ever-unfolding process and every single day and in every single situation we can be learning more and more about life.
So true Marika for if we take everything in life just at face value we may well miss the magic on offer in each and every experience we are blessed with.
We can carry a huge amount of hurts from our past that continue to shadow our present everyday life, but the amazing thing is one experience that addresses and corrects that particular fear or hurt can allow a huge healing and letting go of the old to make way more both understanding and more love.
That’s so true Suse, I was with a group of friends a year or so ago and one of the friends had stern words with me over something and I was unable to stay centred, I just broke down and started to cry. With the help of a friend I delved a little deeper and discovered that the way that I was feeling brought back very similar feelings to how I felt when I was at school when I felt ganged up on and ostracised by the group that I hung out with. Once I had identified this I felt a lightening effect and a clearing in my body as I realised that what had happened with my friend had triggering old feelings of pain from my past that I had been carrying around for all of that time.
Thank you Diana, I have not read this for awhile. It’s really supporting me today to realise how powerful reading is in relationships, and not to assume I understand why someone is like they are, and to consider reading instead of reacting. We each can have our own story we can use based on our hurts to perceive events, instead of reading life exactly as it is.
to observe you do it for yourself but eventually you read for the other, to get out from whatever they called in or were imposed by. Reading connects us to the truth instead of getting drawn into stories.
“Reading connects us to the truth instead of getting drawn into stories’, I agree Stefanie and by understanding what is truly going on we are able to respond accordingly rather than responding to something that is not actually true, which in turn ensures our movements are not going to be true either and so the lie of life continues.
Wow children have such wisdom we really just need to open our hearts and listen.
We’ve all closed our hearts and our bodies down to everyone and as it is our bodies that lead us to truth it means that we no longer have our inbuilt sat navs functioning properly, which is why we’re all careering all over the place and the world is in the chaotic and disturbing mess that it is.
Diana, I really like how you talk about ‘reading’ your children to find out what it is they are truly communicating, I have noticed with my young son that his behaviour can become out of character and that he can get angry or frustrated if he feels hurt by something and that he may not say what is he is upset by initially and so reading the situation and what may be causing the change in behaviour feels important.
It’s amazing the reflections we are constantly surrounded by, especially from the unadulterated presence of children, offering us the opportunity to heal and evolve if we are open to reading what is going on in any situation and willing to be honest about the truth we see. All of which, as you have so beautifully illustrated through sharing this experience, lead only to deepening a loving connection with ourselves and each other as such living with greater truth.
We really do not give children enough credit, simply put their enthusiasm and joy for life makes them natural born healers.
Or worse – we put these qualities down to them being youthful and not actual qualities that we can carry forward with us our whole lives.
Children are a great source of healing as they are often not as bombarded by the ideals and beliefs that flood us as we get older. There is an instant knowing, an openness and a willingness to allow others just to be. What a gift for anyone in a child’s company.
Children can feel what is going on with the people around them. So the old adage of not speaking about things in front of them – so common when I was growing up – really doesn’t apply. Being able to openly and honestly share how we feel gives everyone a congruence. Otherwise children wonder why they feel a certain way about things, yet if the adults are behaving as if that weren’t happening they can feel confused. ‘Honesty is the best policy.’
We carry so much weight of past hurts in our bodies, without knowing it is there. The work of Universal Medicine has been ground breaking in helping people deal with their hurts in a loving a true fashion thus removing them as a rudder in life.
So true Heather – the healing modalities and presentations of Universal Medicine are ‘ground breaking’. It is empowering to realise that we do have a choice in how we live, and liberating to return to live guided by the love that resides within, who we really are.
I love the natural openness and innocence of children. Even though it may not be easy to see in their behaviour, at least they show something is clearly not true and loving. As adults when we feel anxious we tend to hide it under all manner of things so the truth is never exposed.
There is so much buried in our collective unconscious that then influences and shapes society before our very eyes
Reading life is a gift we all hold and when we observe and feel what is truly going on we can learn and understand much more than our minds can think. Using these gifts is a great way to break down old behaviours and issues that may arise to understand why we use them and how we can heal and move through them.
It is so beautiful how healing is reading what is going on and exploring what is the root cause of a situation that happens. As your story shows Diane it is very healing for all included in the process – it gives a feeling of expansion and freedom for all involved.
When we read life, life confirms the knowing inside of us, this is the deepest safety we can feel.
I watch my parents and my parents in law with our 11month old and it is interesting to observe that at first every time she fell that would say ‘oops’ – so we talked about this and how to want needed – how Clare doesn’t know that falling is a bad thing until we say it to her. So they stopped saying it – and it was huge for us all to no longer use that term even though it is so normal. Kids certainly can teach us so much – it is pretty incredible if we are willing to listen.
I often see mothers struggling with their identity and with the stress they feel under, one of my neighbours recently thanked me for reminding her she is a woman first before a mother, she said the words really stayed with her and allowed her to remember there is more to her then ‘just’ a mother.
That’s a big one for mothers Samantha, especially as leading up to the birth there is no idea of all these ideals and beliefs held within the body about what it means to be a mother, and what does that look like. Mothers so often put themselves last in the pecking order of importance, so lovely to read that your neighbour had that conversation with you, and will probably pass it on to her friends and family.
How very true Diana, that every experience is an opportunity for healing and learning. Your example is beautiful in that all involved were open to healing and learning; a divine gift for you all.
Thank you Diana for a great sharing, I loved how you were able to read the situation with your youngest child which led you to speak with your mother-in-law and her openness to understand and heal from what you had offered. Your honesty and openness to go there was beautiful in its offering.
Thank you beautiful mother in Law for this open sharing together with your daughter in law.
With deep appreciation for the openness and willingness to look at those patterns which frees you and the future generations of patterns we all know.
It would be super helpful if parents learnt how to read their children because this then opens the way for truer communications and interactions between parents and children, and children would then get to know, feel and understand that they have an equal say and that what they feel is to be honoured and heard. Then we may not have as many tantrums or upsets with our children because we can truly feel/know what they truly need and support in that.
This blog is so great to come back to again. Being able to approach your mother-in-law about the problem in the first place was very honest. The fact that she was open to understanding what her tension was all about was a beautiful healing for her and the whole family. it is amazing when we are open to reading situations what children can communicate even if they don’t have the words to communicate it.
This is a wonderful sharing Diana, there is much here for us all to learn and appreciate how something can be simply understood by choosing to ‘read’ and ask what is going on. One wise, intuitive question without reaction or emotion can unlock an amazing healing for all.
Diana, thank you for sharing this, it is wonderful that you ‘read’ your daughter and were able to get to the root cause of what was going on for her. I can feel that it is easy with children to only see the behaviors and to tell them off for this without looking deeper at what has triggered this behaviour and what they are sharing with us, how amazing and healing your willingness to look deeper into this has been for all involved.
What a gorgeous reminder that we live in a great sphere of life in whose cycles we are forever given an opportunity to revisit and thus reimprint all that does not match the love we in essence are.
If we stay open to all the learning that is on offer around us everyday, could it be that we would lighten up with life a bit, relinquish the agony of getting things right or wrong and enjoy growing and learning together?
Wow what an amazing healing was on offer here! It’s pretty intense how we can get into patterns of how things should be rather than always looking at what might be needed based on the situation. But as is shared here – kids can teach us so much just by us observing them.
We have these gorgeous wise little gems offering us so much love, if we so choose it we can learn from them and let their love inspire us to evolve.
It is so lovely to feel the transparency between you and your mother-in-law and her willingness to explore her anxiety around your youngest daughter. Children offer us so many amazing healings when we are open to reading what their behaviour is reflecting and this has a huge impact on everyone concerned.
Yes the willingness to learn in all the relationships here was very evident and inspiring.
Being in the presence of children and feeling their honesty and innocence is enough to expose in us behaviours which are based on protection from our hurts and survival which is the opposite of the love that we are.
I love how you see everything as an experience and an opportunity for healing. When you see life like this we can only grow from our every encounter. Beautiful how you gave your mother-in-law an opportunity to let go of her consistent feeling of ‘what if’, and how freeing it was for everyone.
Young children can teach us so much. When I think of the little people in my life I feel very blessed, they totally inspire me with their innocence and quality of expression. There is never a dull moment when a young child is around.
It would serve us all greatly if we were to remember that ‘Little people’ are only little in stature and that who they are and what they bring is both grand and colossal. They literally bring Heaven with them.
It really is amazing to feel that, when we let go of old hurts, images or beliefs that we have carried around for years or maybe lifetimes, can have a big affect on our life and how we live it. Expressing how we feel and letting go of these ways of being can significantly ease the tension and strain on our bodies and allow us to move from more space and flow and heal our past hurts.
it was so inspiring to read that your Mother in-law after all of these years could sense that issue from her childhood and heal. Your blog is great because it shows how sensitive we all are and how everything affects everything, which means the responsibility we all play in everything that goes on is big!
I love how when one person is honest and prepared to go deeper with what is occurring around them that this is hugely supportive for all. There is such a power in just being ourselves and as you say Diane provided a huge opportunity for healing.
What an incredible blessing for your whole family, and it’s amazing you were all able to talk about this so openly. This should be our norm, quite sad really that it’s not, as many families don’t communicate how they are really feeling, for some people this can be a whole lifetime. Living with people you are supposedly closest to but never really truly and deeply trusting and being open, letting them in, and being honest and truthful with them.
When I read this, all I could feel is how important it is to read; as a parent, but actually in all parts of our life. That reading is offering us the freedom to feel what is there, what is the truth of what is going on.. And what blessings that are occurring too. Equally to feel where one is at in their life and to feel what is needed to establish balance and its full healing. It is the order of the universe that supports to heal and clear all momentums (past situations continued in the present) that are not based on love and truth. To get the air out and become real about what is there and who we are. There is no off or on switch. And to realize this and claim that – one becomes aware, that more action is needed. Hence, when we are aware we need to take action on the things we feel and experience. Hence, we can also see that the world has switched off from awareness and so we have made ourselves in a big trouble. Which only awareness, transparency and full openness can help us out from.
I am lucky enough to work with refugee children and wow do they teach me loads, working with children or just being in the presence of children offers us so much opportunity to grow and understand ourselves and others more.
Diana, this is amazing, so many times things like this would go unsaid, not wanting to offend anyone, how wonderful that you read the situation and expressed what you were feeling – what a healing for all involved. it is so important to express ourselves and not hold back and in this we can all learn and evolve, i can feel that there is no need to take things personally, we can simply learn from them – very beautiful!
If we are prepared to be taught, then we can learn so much. Being open to reflections from children is an amazing thing to do and I have had so much shown to me by my three kids and lots of other children – but you have to be very open to it – all too often we can over-ride what is laid in front of us by supposing that we know better, or that it isn’t relevant to us, or that it is something up with the kid…there are a whole plethora of avoidance tactics that we can use. I’ve learnt more about myself through transparent parenting than any other avenue of my life. And for that, I deeply appreciate my kids for what they have shown me, and myself for (some of the times) being prepared to see.
Lovely to re-read this blog, and it is amazing how we can learn from each other and situations by reading what is being communicated without relying on the use of words alone.
We have so much that we can learn from each other – we can learn from children, from other adults, from friends and family…and in turn we too have always something that others can learn from too. This is how beautifully life can be constellated. Hence the key is to simply stay open to learning and open to what others have to reflect to us at all times as well as knowing and appreciating the things we too reflect to others.
Young children have a beautiful way of teaching us to trust who we naturally are.
What an amazing healing for your mother in law, it is so fascinating how much we can hold onto things, it doesn’t matter how many years pass. If we have unfelt hurts that are in our body, they will remain until we have felt and healed from them.
This is such a great example of how so many of us are walking round carrying one or more deeply entrenched behaviours that have stayed with us since childhood, behaviours that it often takes a situation like this before being revealed. I can so relate to taking my childhood experiences into parenting my children and even though at times I was able to identify them, they were still very hard to release, but the freedom in my body once they were gone was life changing.
I love the openess of your mother in law and how she was able to reflect on the situation and not going into getting defensive. This then allowed a much deeper connection between everyone- a very gorgeous sharing.
wow this experience and the learning that has taken place would have been life changing for your daughters grandmother, this is a great healing of a pattern she has had since childhood.
It’s amazing how fully equipped we all already are to deal with life’s situations. Is it possible we don’t really have as many issues as we think? That perhaps by learning to re-connect and then reading life we can work through anything that presents itself and with ease? It doesn’t have to be a big deal, just as this beautiful example has shown us.
Children are so receptive to whether we are truly opening to listening to them and the truth they have to share. We know this because even as adults we can detect if someone is going to re-act to what we share or be open to it. We may not be registering this but it is an inbuilt mechanism that is being used in every interaction we are in.
Beautiful Diana, this blog is in many many ways HUGE ; it breaks consciousness, it reveals the ideals and believes that are in no way true at all, and how these pains and so actions and behaviors come from pre-existent pains/hurts from the past! How incredible insight to work with and how we are shown everything in life to learn from. Simply incredible.