Aunting

I don’t know how parents do it…

I’m not a mother. I know this because…I don’t have any kids…in the physical. My role as aunt fits my personality perfectly because it isn’t a full time position. Which allows me to have the freedom of pacing my emotional growth. But…today there was a sit-chi-ation that highlighted how much growth I still require because my patience was needed…but my anger showed up first. And for the first time since my niece has been alive…I screamed at her. The tears that tried to fall from my eyes, after turning my head from her, were summoned because I was reminded how grateful I am for not giving myself the opportunity to fail at rearing any of my own kids. Because disciplining a child requires discipline from the adult. Today I found out mine is still lacking after I couldn’t calm myself down while trying to correct her. We were on our way to my place when the first conversation happened and after I finished failing to control my emotions…she fell asleep…woke up to walk in the building…and then went back to sleep after we got in my apartment.

I still had work to do when we got here so I tried to distract myself with that until I finished. But the whole time I was working, my conscience was telling me how wrong I was for handling her the way I did. So I said the starter prayer that I always say whenever I need God to guide my steps…”Please transmute my energy into love and light.”. After saying that part…I went into detail about what I needed guidance on and after a few minutes…I was clear headed enough to wake my niece up so I could acknowledge my wrong. I’ve given a lot of apologies before but this time I felt my heart sinking into my stomach because I knew that I showed up in a way that I criticize other people for…and by other people I mean my BM (biological mother). Today’s situation involved a mistruth that was told and…my feelings were hurt. But instead of processing the situation from the perspective of a child trying to test boundaries to see what she can and can’t get away with…I immediately made it personal and got defensive. I always told myself that I would never pass down the kind of knee-jerk anger type correction that I received but when given the opportunity to do better…I did more of the same.

After waking my niece up, we sat and talked about what happened. I explained that I was wrong for raising my voice at her and let her know that that’s how I respond sometimes when my feelings are hurt. But I let her know that this is the wrong way to respond and that I should’ve done a better job controlling myself. The way her face lit up when I explained my thought process brought tears back to my eyes because I could literally see her putting the pieces to the puzzle together in her mind. Most kids internalize verbal aggression and find ways to make situations like that their fault. So my instincts told me to reinforce the fact that even though mistruths aren’t an option between us…that still doesn’t give me the right to talk to her like I did. I told her that the consequences she now has should’ve been the way I showed her how upset I was and because I chose to yell…I owed her an apology. I apologized for yelling…she apologized for her mistruth…we hugged and I dropped her off. Truthfully speaking…I don’t know why anyone would sign themselves up to be responsible for shaping the minds of whole humans but I respect the ones who are mentally sound enough to take their roles seriously. Because that conversation lasted less than 10 minutes but I feel like I went through 10 years worth of emotions. Wooo…saaah.

Love,

Choosy