Parenting is hard, good work. We know this and mostly, we embrace this. But, what do we do when we have done everything possible to guide our children, and instead of the path we believe is right for them, they choose another. What about the other times when we try to keep them safe and sheltered from harm, and still, harm comes.

If, and when the good work you do in loving and parenting your children becomes the hard work you struggle with, and becomes the hard times you feel like you have failed your most precious of life's gifts - What. Then what?

My Gift given in Loving Compassion to YOU is a gentle reminder that we have signed up to parent our children. We are not their "Creators". This is their journey here.

The Creation is within our children and not of us.

It is our loving work to be stable, yet supple - to bend and not break - to allow our children to fly upon their own path. To be their bow.

And so I give you the gift of this poem by Khalil Gibran - the great Lebanese-American spiritual poet and artist: It's titled "On Children".

I hope you'll keep a copy and read it often. It's been a great help to me throughout my 30+ years as a mother - setting me once again upon my intended path when I've forgotten to bend and be a stable bow.

“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 their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
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 also the bow that is stable.””

— By Kahlil Gibran

Be The Bow