BEING, TOGETHER: THE EMPATHIC CONNECTION

                

photos by Betty Roethlisberger, 2015

My son Eliott and I have a shared saying, one that describes my connection to him in the dance of life. I'll turn to him and say "You made me the mother I am" - and our eyes make contact, we smile, and I exhale. (You know the feeling, right?) At each stage of development, life has given us opportunities to be, as individuals as well as together: mother and infant, mother and child, mother and adolescent, mother and adult. The music changes but the dance continues. 

We all have ideas about who we will be as a parent: loving, gentle, always happy; strong, always right; disciplined, in control; our child's best friend... and these labels fall off like scales as we shed the skin of the fantasy parent and realise that we are not that. This process can take years, and it can happen in an instant, it all depends on our journey. As in other areas of life, when the mask comes down we really get to experience what I call the nuggets of this precious human existence. They make up the moments when I feel truly alive, truly me and at the same time truly in relation. This feeling is what I understand to be the empathic connection.

In reality, being a parent is a fluid experience, always transforming. We discover with time that the Dance of Being is a perpetual motion, a swinging pendulum of connecting and letting go; which one of my very wise Montessori trainers explained as Separation and Attachment. 

When you think about human life from a physical / biological standpoint, it is set in motion when a sperm cell separates from the body of the male and attaches to the ovum which has separated from the ovary of the female. The newly-formed cell then goes on through a sequence of separations and attachments, eventually (if each stage is healthy) forming an embryo that develops during pregnancy into the newborn child, separating from the mother's body at birth.

From then, the dance of this unique relation continues. Weaning, crawling, walking, driving, leaving home, life. Each of these milestones occurs when the child must find different conditions in order to thrive. Each time both parent and child let go in order to re-attach in a different way. In my imagination I see a circus act, when the flying trapeze artist releases the hands of the catcher, pirouettes gracefully in the air while the audience holds its breath, and then - drumroll please - reconnects with the catcher, to the relieved applause of all. Over and over, the parent also releases the child, giving her the signal that she is free to go, remaining attentive and ready to catch her again when she returns. We learn by doing, and learn trust by trusting. I recall the moment of truth when I realised that my ability to experience Eliott leaving home for college, and not feeling that my life was ending, was directly related to our having negotiated the previous separations in healthy ways, to the best of our ability. His ability in these things always seemed way ahead of mine, hence the saying with which I introduced this post, by the way.

The dance of the empathic connection provides everything the child needs, to become a complete human being. But it also provides everything the parent needs, to experience the joy that comes from knowing we are partners in the dance of life. The beat may change, some tunes we don't even recognise, but the dance goes on, and so do we.

 Françoise Sansoni is a happy parent of Eliott and Betty and a trained Montessori Guide. She hopes that her blog posts will connect parents and children everywhere, so that we may thrive, together.