by Lauren Porter

Love is like pi – natural, irrational and very important. ~Lisa Hoffman

During my clinical training I worked as a social worker in the Paediatric Emergency Room of a public hospital in the Bronx. It was a yearlong parade of TV-style dramatics, sometimes horrifying, always demanding. I watched teens with gunshot wounds rushed in on gurneys and staff members attacked by coke addicts. And in the quiet moments, I met the children with personal stories of abuse. The 8-year-old whose knees bled profusely after hours of forced-kneeling on a tray of raw rice. The 4-year-old with a circle of cigarette burns on his forearm. The 11-year-old with an iron imprint on her back. The 2-year-old with ‘sock burns,’ that unmistakeable pattern of scalding created by immersing a child’s feet in hot water. And the unforgettable boy who sat immovable in my lap while we watched doctors hover over his comatose twin brother and listened to police describe an apartment, now crime scene, covered in blood.

That year was a journey toward wisdom and a pilgrimage of sorrow, an experience full of events I still cannot explain nor understand. Yet the most bewildering aspect was the words I heard spoken. Each and every parent told me they loved their child. No matter how serious the injury, each parent was steadfast in their belief. They all claimed love as their own.

Years later when I became a parent, I discovered what my education had lacked. While it remains clear that society’s teachings about love are not enough to keep children safe, it is now equally clear to me that the abusive parent and I are not as different as I once thought. We all feel out of control. We yell, we behave badly, we regret our words and responses. We act according to our own needs and impulses, forgetting the sanctity of our children’s needs and the mutuality of our relationship. And, most of all, on our worst days, we all cling tightly to the consolation that we love our children. We assuage our guilt and soothe our fears with the hope that our feelings of love will be enough. We refuse to face the reality. Love is not just a feeling and the feeling is never enough.

With the right words, you can change the world. ~Charlotte the spider, Charlotte’s Web (film)

If you look in the dictionary for the word love you will find this: a feeling of warm, personal attachment or deep affection. It is a sanitized definition, terminology that suits our modern lifestyle, independent natures and fast paced world. It is a diagnosis for individuals. There is no we, no us, no expectation of other. Love is merely a feeling – indeed tremendous and critical – but nonetheless a feeling that may fill us with joy but leaves us without obligation.

This explanation of love is as unsatisfactory as the parents who use it to minimize abuse. To love another person is to accept the need to protect, to trust, to acknowledge and to honour. To love is to abandon our fears and embrace compassion. To love is to move beyond mere feeling into the world of action, embracing a basic desire for others to be happy. We need a new definition of love.

Babies are born loving perfectly. They give fully, trust completely and enter every moment with an awareness of connection. It is messy, unorchestrated and mostly unfamiliar. It is the territory of real love. The field of neuroscience has taught us that feelings shape brain development, brain development shapes feelings and how we are loved makes all the difference. Perhaps this scientific awareness can inform our development as parents. Perhaps it is time to challenge the so-called wisdom and use our feelings to invent new meaning.

When next in a bookshop, take a look at the advice for parents on the shelves. Most of it boils down to strategies. Strategies of avoidance to stave off ‘bad’ habits, strategies of control so we remain in charge and strategies of disharmony which pit our needs against our children in order to fashion our lives into what we think they should be. Yet the only strategy worth pursuing shepherds compassion and guards connection. It is not strategy, but active love. Each family must find their own way, attuning to their particular rhythms and needs against an unflinching backdrop of bold love for each other. We don’t need ways to manage our feelings. Instead, we need to act faithfully to them.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. ~Ursula K. LeGuin

All parents, no matter how enlightened, need support and encouragement to stay the course. We need good information about our children’s needs and development. We deserve societal support and dedication. In order to immerse ourselves fully into parenthood we must first abandon the illusion that it’s easy. We have to let go of the idea that simply the feeling of love will carry us through. We must realize that we are connected to all the other parents out there struggling to find their way. And we have to do the hard work, the complete work, and the work of full attention, the work of giving and caring.

We all know that our feelings cannot erase our behavior. We must remind ourselves, sometimes constantly, of what is important, of what matters, of who we love. Holding that awareness in mind does not make us immune to mistakes. It can, however, move us into apology and reconnection after missteps and misjudgements. If we can acknowledge that we are all capable of failure, we open ourselves to the idea that we are also capable of forgiveness. And of being forgiven. We must be brave enough to hold both in our hands and weigh them equally.

Compassion and love are not mere luxuries. As the source of both inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species. ~His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

To believe that our feelings of love are enough is to believe that a bag of concrete paves the road. It takes work to make the raw materials become the path. As parents we yearn for what is best for our children. To achieve this means we must grow to know our children and begin to understand ourselves. We may come to understand that our reactions and motivations have been prejudiced by past confusion, ancient wounds or bad advice. So we begin to untangle truth from old fiction, to fathom our true potential.

The key lies in the ability to examine both our moments of parenting glory and our moments of parenting horror. Through this complete awareness we let go of the invisible powers that underpin our mistakes and move ourselves into conscious decision-making. We can then see our children as they are, not how we expect them to be. We can then act in love, not rest in the feeling.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. ~Mother Teresa

It is not fashionable to talk about love. Because love has intensity and power that surpasses reason and understanding. Love – real love - comes not just with a thunder of feeling but with a commitment to the life of another. Real love encompasses compassion. Real love abandons fear. The mere feeling of love will never be enough. We must grow its meaning and expand its reach. We must grow the word until it rises like bread to fulfil human longing and human potential. We must allow ourselves to grow with it. We must face the pain and push through, secure in our belief that when there is no more hurt remaining there will still be plenty of love. Our children have the answers. And they don’t need a dictionary.