parenting

Parenting the Child Who Wakes the One Within Us

Your child chose you.

TEA AND ZEN

17 Dec 2025 — 2 min read

Most of us come to parenting believing we are here to raise a child. What we do not expect is that, in the process, we will be raised again ourselves.

A child does not arrive as a blank slate. They arrive as a mirror. In their needs, their cries, their dependence, something long forgotten in us begins to stir. Often, it is not confidence or certainty that surfaces first, but memory—wordless, embodied, and tender.

For many parents, the simple act of being needed exposes a quiet ache:

I was not held like this.

No one listened this closely to me.

I learned to manage alone.

Parenting has a way of laying bare the places where love was inconsistent, safety was fragile, or presence was missing altogether. This is not a failure of the parent now—it is the surfacing of an old truth asking to be met.

A child’s vulnerability often awakens our own. Their fear touches the fear we were taught to swallow. Their anger brushes against anger we were not allowed to have. Their longing calls forth a grief that had no language at the time it was born.

And so parenting quietly becomes a double invitation.

One hand reaches outward—to the child before us.

The other turns inward—to the child we once were.

In these moments, something sacred becomes possible. We are invited to re-parent ourselves in real time. To offer patience where there was none. To speak kindly where silence once lived. To stay present where we learned to disappear.

This does not require perfection. It requires honesty. The courage to feel what was unfelt. To pause instead of passing pain forward. To choose tenderness even when our own inner world feels raw and unfamiliar.

When we tend to our own unmet needs with compassion, something profound shifts. Our nervous system softens. Our reactions slow. We stop asking our children to heal us by being different than we were allowed to be.

In re-parenting ourselves, we free our children from carrying our unfinished stories.

This is not easy work. It can be lonely. It can reopen wounds we thought were long healed. But it is also deeply redemptive. The love we learn to offer inward does not diminish—it multiplies.

In time, parenting becomes less about control and more about shared healing. Two lives unfolding side by side. One teaching the other how to begin again.

And perhaps this is the quiet truth no one tells us:

We are not only here to guide our children into the world.

We are here to finally bring ourselves home.

Nigel Lott

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