[su_heading size=”18″]Is Being a Parent a Thankless Job, or a Rewarding One?[/su_heading]

As difficult as parenting can be, it’s all worth it in the end. Meditation certainly helps one to appreciate the beautiful moments and accept the ugly ones.

[su_heading size=”18″]BEING A HAPPY PARENT[/su_heading]

My meditation practice began recently when I was working for a hot digital marketing firm in Aspen. It was a stimulating position with incredibly creative and quick witted, intelligent people, located in a yellow refurbished Victorian on Main Street, smack dab in the heart of Aspen, Colorado. One of those wet dreams kind of job (I’ve never had one but remember, I live with all boys).

With a full time job, I was juggling a lot, and could not turn my mind off with all the worry that raising teenagers in a legalized marijuana resort town like; kids finding their parent’s stashes hidden in the garage, and smoking them…or while on a foreign country “family trip”, snooping through a parent’s suitcase and finding dabs smuggled in or dropping LSD at a concert that parents lovingly dropped them off at in the hopes that there would be enough intelligence to honor that the reigns of restraint were just inched back out and this was a chance to earn back trust (for all of you weed lovers, I’ll tell you right now…this is not about you…and this is not about rescinding Amendment 64. This is about helping our youth, who are under the legal age of 21) so please don’t even give me your spiel about how marijuana is not a gateway drug for underaged minors, because what we are experiencing with our youth is living proof that you know not what you speak. Go ahead, challenge me on this topic – I dare ya.

Even our wide-eyed and innocent Hootie-Hoo was showing signs of emotional behavioral problems, falling to pieces if somebody looked at him wrong, or running out the door yelling that he was going to find himself a new family during homework time.

Being no mastermind in the art of child psychology, and not having the funds to enlist experts to test for behavioral issues that we feared all three of our boys had, the wheels would not stop whirling in my head as I tried to figure out how to fix all that seemed broken.

My method of escape from it all was to plug in to Pandora and turn it up while powering up mountains, or find girlfriends to sidle up with at a downvalley cowboy bar…and buy horses and shit…It’s one or the other for me, I ain’t lyin’.

Don’t forget, we do live in a party town and although I am a work in progress when it comes to reaching some sort of enlightenment, I’m a party girl at heart and when things just get too much and I still have too much aggressive energy even after releasing endorphins or meditating, there is always something going on in our valley and a friend to go out with.

Always plugged in, always online, often escaping, and always thinking, I desperately needed to learn how to quiet the noise, lest I make myself sick.

One day, after a 1,000 vertical hike, I searched for and found the perfect meditation spot which appeared to have been used before for this very purpose. I was pretty sure that the little stone circle meticulously laid out around the spot I was to sit in, was built by the same people that are always writing messages in all the multi-colored rocks they find like: Jesus Loves You and Peace.

MEDITATE OR MEDICATE

Sitting with my legs crossed, I set my timer on my smartphone, closed my eyes and focused on my breathing giving myself 10 minutes to calm the noise. Twenty minutes later I opened my eyes to snow-capped mountains and hawks soaring over sage brush. Thus my meditation practice began, and the windows to the magic from my childhood reopened.

I spent a lot of time as a child absorbed in fairy paintings from my mother’s art collection painted by famous painters such as; John Anster Fitzgerald, Richard Doyle, Arthur Rackham, placing myself in a world where fairies enticed me to play amongst moss covered rocks and trees threatened to capture and trap me in their gnarled branches, my meditation practice awakened these memories. I began to look upon the world with a heightened alertness and fascination.

To intellectualize what is happening, I listen on Audible to books like; “Waking Up” by Sam Harris, 10 % Happier by Dan Harris and “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. I also speak to the higher beings that enter my life from Rabbis to Pastors. I have had the nectar dripped on my forehead by Tibetan Monks and have been told by the minister of my in-law’s church that I am surrounded by a golden aura and angels.

It has been a fantastic journey that I am on and although all of this is helping me to wake up, the true awakening comes from deep within and spurs on the most beautiful peacefulness that I have ever had, since I was a child.

As difficult as parenting can be, we are teaching our children to become accountable for their actions and I no longer allow myself to worry about the future. Now, I am constantly getting the chills from all the beautiful moments I am having throughout the day and letting out little guffaws of laughter at the funny sense of humor nature has, uncertain as to whether I am going insane or in the beginnings of a true awakening.

When I weigh it all out; the thirteen year old who finds EVERYTHING that we do unbelievably annoying and tells us that we have to be less embarrassing and stop dancing at parties where he is also invited to; the fifteen year old who is barely ever home and who we miss incredibly until he bangs through the door as loud as a bad storm and throws himself at all of us with his 6 foot 150 pound frame; and a husband who as adorably positive as he is, lives in his own sheltered, disillusioned world where he honestly believes that his wife, (dubbed Jiggil-ian for my large breasts) is a “sex pot” (even though I wake up at 5am and NEED to be in bed by 9pm) and his sons are all as they are supposed to be, being a parent to three boys consistently comes out on the positive side of the scale and the answer is a resounding YES, I am happy (most of the time) but it definitely is the most challenging job I will ever have.

Click to see the peanut butter and jelly dance