Danielle E. Conger

I love Gibran! We had a reading from _The Prophet_ at our wedding in memory
of my father. The one on Joy and Sorrow.

--d

Elizabeth Roberts

I've been reading "For The Love Of My Duaghter: A Mother's Bittersweet Story" by Mary Ellen Ton. It's about a woman and her daughter, their estranged relationship that led to the daughter running away, and about their eventual reconnection.

I have long struggled against my mother, and have struggles of my own with my children, especially my oldest. For all that I have always recognized that she is her own person, I have still tried many times to shape her into someone else - to make her behave and do things we want her to, how and when we want her to. I'm learning to let go of all of that, and it goes beyond just academic education into life itself. But as unschoolers, all of life is education and there is no separation. I can guide her, show her ways, but she doesn't have to choose them. She can find her own paths, and many could be ones I'd rather she not take. But her life is HERS, her choices are hers, and all I can do is be beside her as much as possible.

I'm learning slowly to walk beside her, my hand in hers, to follow her when she wants to take a different path than I want to take. It isn't easy.

One of my biggest fears in life though is that we'll end up as distant as my mother and I are. I'm trying hard to keep that from happening. So I read quite a bit about other ways of parenting than the way I was raised. In reading this book, I came across this quote; and of all the people I "know" I think ya'll can understand it.

From "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have thier own thoughts. You may house thier bodies but not their soulds, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. you are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves the bow that is stable.

MamaBeth


Everything I need to know, I learned on my own!

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Elizabeth Roberts

I haven't read it, but now I'm thinking I want to go read it...

MamaBeth

"Danielle E. Conger" <danielle.conger@...> wrote:
I love Gibran! We had a reading from _The Prophet_ at our wedding in memory
of my father. The one on Joy and Sorrow.

--d


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Everything I need to know, I learned on my own!

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Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now

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