I read a lot to my children. It’s my default activity for a good day, a bad day, a cold day, a sweltering day. When it’s raining, when it’s sunny and bright and I can’t get anyone to go outside. At meals, in the bath, on the floor, at a beach, in the car, at bedtime. When I have heaps of energy, but especially when I have none, I can read for as long as they will let me. And that’s pretty long. I have never spent a day with them when I haven’t read to them. I read to them before they could sit up and look at a book: early favourites like Helen Oxenbury’s Say Goodnight or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. In the earliest days I would also read aloud to them from whatever I was reading. I have a photo of them lying on a quilt while I drink coffee and read aloud from Toni Morrison’s Jazz. I sort of can’t bear to look at that photo anymore though, because I judge myself for the quilt, despite its beauty, being too thin a layer between the babies and the floor. Welcome to my mind!
Anyway, back to reading. Since the beginning of our reading relationship, I’ve noticed something strange emerging as a thematic pattern. So many of these picture books have the most remarkable messages to children:
“I love you when you’re angry.”
“I love you when you’re loud.”
“ I love you when you’re afraid.”
“It’s okay to be different.”
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“My body, your body, every different kind of body! All of them are good bodies! BODIES ARE COOL!”
And so on. These are just snippets that immediately come to mind. I mean, there’s so much more and so many genuinely excellent books written for children.
Of course, there’s nothing odd about promoting these ideas to children. They’re affirming and crucial.
Here’s why I think the above messages are strange: Are these books written by the wounded children who needed these messages? How many people have grown up feeling they were loved just as they are? The older I get, the more people I meet for whom this wasn’t true. Saying, “I love you just the way you are,” is an entirely different universe from : “good job!” or “you’re a good helper!” or “you’re such a good girl” or “boys don’t cry!” or “we’re so proud of you.”
It’s the feeling that you’re utterly lovable even if you fail that test, even if you didn’t try very hard, even if you didn’t behave or comply, and in the exact body that you have right now.
It’s the relief of being enough. And I think a lot of people didn’t get it and therefore don’t live in a universe where it’s a conceivable thought. It doesn’t help that for capitalism, we are never enough.
Just as you are. I think this kind of love is the antidote to perfection and therefore also the antidote to shame. Shame is a destroyer of so many things. It blocks us from being just as we are. It blocks us from being vulnerable, because if we are ashamed of something, it is so difficult to open it, bear the knowledge of it, share it. Have it be there. And be loved nevertheless.
I’m reading to my kids, but I am also reading to myself.
I love you just the way you are, you are brilliant and manifique💎💞
This was such a beautiful, tender and resonating read. Wishing you lots of gentleness and lightness and deep peace 🌸