The Blessing

This weekend we celebrated the 2nd birthday of my second son, Georgio, and following my tradition of incorporating a spiritual blessing ceremony at the birthday party as I did for Louie, once again I created a space to share the intentions for how I would like to raise my son and bless his life with love. This also provided time to reflect on how well I was honouring my intention since I set out these intentions for the first time at Louie’s first birthday.

Here I share with you the part of the blessing where I affirmed the loving values I wish to uphold for my sons:

I give you my love unconditionally so that you may know and experience unconditional love and share it and shine it in our world.

I will teach you about love by keeping you safe and secure; by nurturing your growth and allowing and supporting you own creativity and true spirit to shine; by showing you affection, acceptance, compassion, kindness, respect, understanding, strength, patience and sacrifice; and by loving you, unconditionally, and always.

I will show kindness by being kind to you, to myself, to animals, to other people and to our planet.

I will show you compassion because I am always interested in how you are feeling and how I can help you to feel better, because I love you.

I shall encourage you to be true to yourself and be truthful with me so that I can keep you safe and together we can honour your authentic beautiful soul

I will do my best to grow my inner peace so that I can hold peace for you and I shall teach you how to connect with your peace, and maintain your peace in stormy times.

I will teach you respect by respecting you and respecting me, and by respecting other people, animals and our world.

I will model acceptance by accepting who I am and who you are, what is now, what has been and what can be.

I will be brave in matters of the heart and soul, when things are important or challenges must be faced to advance or grow, and I will support and encourage you in being brave when life calls on your strength and invites you to grow.

I will encourage your creativity to shine, and support your pure expression

I will teach you to connect with yourself, through mindfulness, self-love and opening your heart to your world

You are always free and I will teach you why this is true and how to stay free

The first thing I noticed was where I was failing; I believe upholding peace and doing my best to maintain peace in me so that I can show them peace is my greatest challenge as a sleep deprived, self-employed, single parent. The reality is, that as much as I intend and desire things to be a certain way, sometimes it’s either just not possible, or its really really hard. And so, in the name of embracing failure, as I intend to teach my boys, and for the purpose of continued learning and growth, I will simply keep trying and never give up until I reach my goal, because it is really hard, but nothing worth doing is impossible, if you really want it.

The second thing I noticed was that I am actually upholding all of the other values pretty well and when I allowed myself to see this, it softened me into a space where I could choose to grant forgiveness, compassion and understanding to my failings. So actually, I am doing okay and I can learn to do better and this too is a lesson I intend to teach my boys.

I leave you with one of my favourite poems and the poem I read my boys at their blessings:

A Celtic blessing…

May the strength of the wind and the light of the sun,
The softness of the rain and the mystery of the moon
Reach you and fill you.
May beauty delight you and happiness uplift you,
May wonder fulfil you and love surround you.
May your step be steady and your arm be strong,
May your heart be peaceful and your word be true.
May you seek to learn, may you learn to live,
May you live to love, and may you love – always.

Antonia x