“There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever”
-Leonard
Cohen
There is nothing quite like driving through the countryside
accompanied by Leonard Cohen. Leonard sang to us yesterday and I heard these
words from his song, Suzanne, as if for the first time.
“There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever”
Children do that. And they do truly do that forever.
We begin leaning out for love as we start our human journey.
From at least conception on, our journey is about love, giving it, receiving
it, being it, sharing it, returning to it. As the Beatles pointed out, “All you
need is love.”
Little Ones Forming
in Love
As little ones, we are love. Our hearts, the first organ to
come online, start beating four weeks after conception. At that point, there is
not much else to our tiny bodies. We are mostly heart. A huge heart bulge
protrudes from our midline. We have a neural tube forming a brain and a gut
tube that will form our digestive system, but we are mostly heart.
Our hearts, however, like all parts of our bodies, form in
relation to context. The scientific belief in the primacy of genes has been
falling lately to the newer epigenetic understanding that our genes do not
determine our form but rather respond to determinants around us. These include
both maternal states and the bio-electric field that precedes the shaping of
our physical body.
If mom experiences ongoing or particularly intense stress
prenatally, the little one intelligently prepares to live in a stressful world.
Genes turn on or off in response to the environment. The nervous system
develops accordingly, with hyper-sensitivity towards stress.
How do we lean out for love in stress?
What happens to our leaning when mom is too concerned about
her own safety to settle in with her little one?
Children do lean out for love forever. They may or may not
be met there.
Psychoanalyst, Ronald Fairbairn noted that little ones’ greatest
need is not actually to be loved but to have their love received. We come in as
loving beings, needing to be in love. Just to be. Just to be received. But what
are we received by? How are we received?
While many parents truly love and welcome their new baby, children
are conceived within a field of many intentions, often not relating to what the
child most needs. Parents may have hopes, conscious or unconscious, that a baby
will resolve marital tension. Little ones may be seen as replacing an older sibling
who has died, rather than for themselves. A baby may be wanted as an anti-dote
to existential despair, to provide a sense of purpose, to prove manhood or
womanhood, to prolong the family name, to become the next doctor in the family,
to be the first to go to college, etc. etc. How often are little ones welcomed
and received simply as the loving beings they are, as themselves?
Even if the parents truly want to parent a new being, the
news of pregnancy may be shocking or unexpected, and take some time to adjust
to. Parents often don’t feel ready when they discover the pregnancy. They may
also find their own prenatal and birth histories coming to the fore, flooding
them with fear, doubt or insecurity, often without awareness of its source.
This is an important time for parents to do their own work on themselves, with
the support of a therapist experienced with prenatal and birth therapy, so as
to clear the field for the little one arriving.
In the Shadow of Our
Ancestors
Since moving to England, I have been more aware then ever of
ancestral influences in our formation. It seems that almost everyone I
encounter speaks at some point of the traumas experienced in war by their
parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents. So often these traumas are
passed down through the generations. Again, much of this inter-generational
communication used to be seen as genetic. We understand now that we grow within
fields. We are fields within fields. Our parents, their parents, and other
ancestors contribute to the context our cells respond to.
“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of
our decisions on the next seven generations.”
This is an expression of wisdom from the law of the Iroquois
nation, although I have heard other indigenous peoples in America refer to this
responsibility.
It is helpful to remember that, no matter what we do and how
we are, the children are still reaching out for love. It is our responsibility
to meet that.
We want to meet that in our own children as parents, but
there are other children reaching out for love. We are all interconnected. We
are all part of a larger web. We all share this planet and our bio-electric
fields overlap. There are children everywhere. There are even little ones
within us, the little ones we once were, who leaned out for love back then and
are still leaning. How can we meet those children?
Tender Leaning
Our intention will take us a long way. Awareness of our own
histories and the histories of our ancestors still affecting us can take us
further. It may help to understand that pregnancy is often discovered about
four weeks after conception. Recently, technology has made it possible to
confirm a pregnancy much earlier, but this is still a time when women have
missed a menstrual period and are likely to suspect they are pregnant. It is
also the time when the little one’s heart is forming and beginning to beat. How
discovery of our existence at that time is received can have a profound effect
on how we lean out for love throughout our lives.
Wounding from the time of discovery of the pregnancy tends
to be expressed in our bodies in around the heart region. We may hide or
protect our hearts by caving in at the chest. Or we may attempt to be strong
and push our chests out, like soldiers impermeable to the hurts that are
actually deep within. Whatever our wounds and tendencies, the little ones
within us, as well as the children around us, can benefit from us learning to
meet their leaning.
We can learn to love where love has been squashed. We can
learn to trust where trust has been deceived. We can learn to be in present
time, where we are safe, and to share our knowing of safety with the little one
within. If our mothers could not offer this to us, it is time for us to offer
it to ourselves. Then, as the children lean, they will be met.
