A Mother's Ode

My Mom's Day Gift

Dear Sons,

It's so easy to be power-over in my relationship with you

To pretend that your needs do not exist,

To attribute the actions I do not like to your being irresponsible, lazy, or "teenager",

or that your needs do not matter as much as mine.

You want autonomy?

Well, that's not as important as my need for acceptance.

When you wear crumpled clothes, I feel shame, "What will others think of me?"

Fold your clothes after they come out of the dryer RIGHT AWAY!

You want recreation?

Well, that's not as important as my need for organization.

Clear the dishwasher NOW!

Or else... 

Rewards and consequences,

And even praise with the veiled intention of manipulating your behavior,

"Such good kids"!

Sometimes I use NVC in ways that gives you the NVC allergy!

Pretending I'm requesting when I'm really demanding,

Or using NVC language, without NVC consciousness, so I can get my way!

What am I teaching you through these means?

That when you are older, you too can manipulate your power,

To have your needs prioritized,

Is this the world I want us to co-create?

To partner with you so that both our needs matter,

Whether they are met or unmet, 

They are brought to the table,

They are acknowledged,

And sometimes they are mourned.

Power-with!

It is my honor and privilege to be your mother, your teacher, your driver, your nurse, your cook, and your playmate,

Thank you for witnessing my journey of self-growth,

You see you were not born with an instruction manual!

Even thirteen years after I started on this journey, I don't have any of this figured out yet!

Thank you for your grace as I grow, with you, my dear sons.

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Mothering, the Ability to Orient to the Needs of Another, in the Spirit of Unilateral Giving

    Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is based on the principle that humans are a mothering species. This applies as much to males and children, as it does to those of us in the female body, whether we have been blessed with children or not. 

    Of all the species on this planet, humans have the longest period of complete dependency. Without a human's ability to orient to the needs of a baby in the spirit of unilateral giving, our species would not continue to survive. 

   So, on this Mother's Day, we can celebrate our innate tendency to want to care for the needs of others, if we just know what they are, and if there is no demand, guilt, veiled or unveiled coercion placed upon us to meet them. Similarly, those around us enjoy making our lives wonderful. They want to meet our needs, if we can express them without attachment to specific strategies, i.e., expecting a particular person, place, or thing to meet them.

Uncoupling Giving from Receiving

    A baby has complete comfort with unilateral receiving. But somehow, at some point, along life's journey, we become socialized to experience discomfort with receiving. We fear that someone is keeping a tab, and whether we will be able to meet their expectations in the relationship. We fear the intentions behind someone's giving to us. We wonder if they are giving freely, with joy. Given that we sometimes (or often) say "yes" when we mean "no" (to manage our image, hustle for our self-worth, or simply because we are not even aware of our needs), we wonder if the "yes" we are receiving is truly a yes, or perhaps a "mixed yes". Especially when there is a power differential and we are in an up-power role, we know that it can be hard for others to exercise their choice to say "no" to our needs.

    NVC gives us the fundament ability to uncouple giving from receiving and to exercise choice in unilateral giving and in unilateral receiving. Transactional exchange empties relationships. 

    Through the ability to distinguish needs from strategies, and through taking sole responsibility for meeting our needs, NVC provides us the tools to make requests for receiving unilaterally, in a spirit of interdependence.  NVC also helps us connect with our needs in giving to others, which allows us to give joyfully, unilaterally, without strings attached.

Looking at Ourselves with Compassion

    It is hard to be “always on”, which mothering has become, given our isolated, nuclear family situations. Even if we live in joint families, we truly don’t have the Vedic support, internally and interpersonally that is a true “village” bringing up a child. Anthropologists recognize that the ideal ratio of adults to children in traditional societies was 4:1. A child always had other resources to turn to for care, besides their biological parents. A mother who was getting triggered or overwhelmed could take a time out, in this support structure. What to speak of 4, in today’s world, we are sometimes raising children alone. This is sometimes true even for those who live with a partner, due to work travel demands or simply due to one partner not having the training or emotional bandwidth to be present for their children. 

    What makes mothering so hard is that we learn on the job. Most of us spend our entire lives before giving birth in the acquisition of very technical skills that leave us ill-equipped with the home science skills involved in mothering. Our competitive, STEM-centered education consciously discourages the softer human qualities such as empathy and perspective-taking, while encouraging very left-brain development.

    Given the pace of life we live in, is it any wonder that most of us mothers feel totally exhausted and under-resourced? While Krishna Consciousness is the greatest benediction that we could ever beg for our in our lives, improper application of principles can further place demands on us as mothers. We are unsure how to manage chanting 16 rounds, cooking everything at home, from scratch, keeping our children away from devices, and giving some semblance of a Bhagavatam-centric life to our children, while also managing our professional lives, services in the community as Vaishnavis, and other passion pursuits. We equate how our children behave in public to our worth as mothers. If our children are singing bhajans and playing mrdanga, we sense we are respected and belong in the devotee community. But if our children spend time on their devices during Maharaja’s class, we take that as our personal failure. “What will devotees think of me!” If all this is not enough to cause a short circuit, I don’t know what is! 

    If I cannot have compassion for myself as a mother for all this I am contending against, how can I be compassionate with my children? When I yell at my sons, if I retreat into shame, and guilt, judging myself as “useless in spite of trying to learn NVC for so many years”, how can I treat my children with any semblance of empathy?

    So first, I start with a lot of tenderness for the hard, hard, labor of love and service I am giving to this world by being a mother who is on her journey of self-improvement. At one point, the austerity of staying awake at night with my infant made me feel like a zombie. And now, it is the hard, hard work of trying to stay, moment by moment in an intention of power-with, with my teenager, that is taxing, for even though it is natural, the power-over paradigm has become habitual. 

    Seeing our children as living embodiments of beautiful needs is as if dust and soot are being cleared from our eyes, and we are seeing our children from a fresh, new set of eyes. It is neither permissiveness, where I allow my children to run amuck, nor authoritarianism, where their needs do not matter. I was afraid of coming to partnership, for I believed that everyone in my home would just goof off, while I would work as a slave. If the home is based on choice and an internal drive to meet others' needs, I would end up doing all the work, I thought!

    But I am finding that even the intention to partner or collaborate shifts my internal experience of mothering. I am often unable to access the internal resources to manifest this intention in my practical interactions with my children. Then, I give myself lots of empathy for the needs I was trying to meet by, for example, yelling at my son for not clearing his laundry basket. Without justifying and without “wronging” myself, I can sit with the beauty of my needs for order, cleanliness, organization, and responsibility, which led me to choose that strategy. I can also sit with the needs that were not met by my yelling, such as respect, partnership, collaboration, peace, and harmony. Then, I can go to my son with an NVC “broom and dustpan” to clean up my messes, by mourning that my actions and words were out of alignment with my values. 

    All of this is aspirational for me. I live and learn. I make messes and depend on the generosity of my family.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World

    It is hard to imagine a greater source of influence in a child’s life than their mother. Nor a more purifying service than motherhood. To those unsung heroines who are on this mothering journey with me, I offer my humble obeisances. 

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Happy Mother's Day to those that are mothers or have mothers. This includes all of us! 

Please share your thoughts on mothering and NVC by commenting below! 

Emotional Liberation

Question: Although we shouldn't be impolite to others, we also aren't required to own their feelings or bear any responsibility for their feelings. Could you give further clarification of how not to own other's feelings? What does it mean to own others' feelings?

My Thoughts:

When we carry the feelings of others, we see them as burdens!

    My understanding of taking responsibility for others' feelings means that we are in the false ego of thinking that we control our environment - positively or negatively. We blame ourselves for others' disappointment and take credit for when they are content, when in reality, Krishna is the only controller! When I carry your feelings, I am not clear about where I end and you begin, emotionally. 

    Here's a hypothetical and humorous example.

   Let's say that my husband tells me, "You did not make laccha paranthas, shahi paneer, and hot jamuns with cold rabri today, and that makes me very upset." If I take responsibility for his feelings, then I blame myself for being a terrible wife who does not serve her pati parmeshwar to his satisfaction :-) I worry about the security of our relationship. In this emotional slavery stage, I think that I am responsible for others' feelings and strive to keep everyone happy. My self-worth is hinging on how satisfied people are with me, and I hustle to be loved by always pleasing others, even at the cost of not being in touch with my needs. I will feel compelled to remedy the situation by making laccha paranthas, shahi paneer, and hot jamuns with cold rabri for his next meal, albeit with a lot of resentment! People around me become a burden on me, since I am carrying what is not mine to carry. 

    However, with some NVC help in the area of emotional liberation, I realize that everyone (except children) is responsible for meeting their own needs. I might choose to respond to people's needs with compassion, but not out of fear, guilt, shame, insecurity, or hustling to be liked by them. My self-worth or my relationship with you is not on the table. I am not negotiating to be in your good books. But, out of a loving desire to contribute to your well-being, I may make certain choices to meet your needs. 

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    So what's the NVC path to navigate this journey from emotional slavery to emotional liberation? NVC gives us three options for connection, which we will explore in session 7:

    1. Self-Connection (which includes self-empathy and humanizing the other)

    2. Empathy

    3. Self-Expression

    Here's how I would dance between these three options:

 1. Self-Connection:  I will first connect with myself. Self-empathy includes getting in touch with my observations, feelings, and needs.  My internal dialogue is one of compassion, "When I hear Prabhu say that he's upset because I did not make certain foods today, I feel disheartened because I have a need for appreciation and understanding. I wish to be understood for the intensity of services I juggle. I long for harmony in our relationship."

The other aspect of self-connection is getting in touch with the humanity in my husband. I make guesses.  Perhaps he has a desire for comfort. I attribute his feeling "upset" to his need for comfort and nourishment. He is probably longing for some fun in his life after a long day at work. He wants to know that his preferences matter, and thus that he matters to me. 

    Once I have self-connected, I can choose to move to either empathy or self-expression. 

 2. Empathy:  If I choose empathy first, I can ask Prabhu,  "Sounds like you are upset because you were hoping for some fun and comfort during dinner tonight? You really want to know that your preferences matter?" Notice how in this dialogue, I am not carrying his upset feelings, but connecting his feelings to his needs. He can correct any incorrect guesses I might have made in empathizing with his feelings and needs. Even if I am wrong in guessing his feelings and needs, he can tell that I am interested and present with his pain, and that's enough for him to know that I care. 

   Depending on whether I perceive that he has received enough empathy, then I can access if he might be ready to hear what's alive in me, by going next to self-expression. 

3. Self-Expression: "You know Prabhu, when I heard you express that you are upset, I felt pain because I long for understanding of the services I do render to our family." 

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    Not taking responsibility for other's feelings does not mean we are callous to them. We care deeply, out of love. We do not get flustered and discombobulated in our response. We want to enrich others' lives out of compassion for another human being in pain, part and parcel of our beloved Lord Krishna. We are very grounded since we are not carrying that which is not ours to carry. 

    Children are helpless and dependent upon parents to meet their needs. But adults are responsible for meeting their own needs, and thus owning their feelings if the needs are met or unmet. 

    The two of us together might choose to come up with strategies to meet his needs/preferences. He might cook for himself! He might order from Govinda's. I might choose to cook for him, or he might request a Godbrother to do so. He might realize that his deeper need for comfort, nourishment, mattering can be met with multiple other strategies too!