Zen Parenting

Understanding Ourselves so we can Take Better Care of Our Children

Cathy Cassani Adams, LCSW

www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk

Note: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. This book is intended only as an informative guide for those wishing to know more about health issues. In no way is this book intended to replace, countermand, or conflict with the advice given to you by your own physician. The ultimate decision concerning care should be made between you and your doctor. We strongly recommend you follow their advice. Information in this book is general and is offered with no guarantees on the part of the author or the publisher. The author and publisher disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book. The names and identifying details of people associated with events described in this book have been changed. Any similarity to actual persons is coincidental.

First published in the United States in 2022 by Hachette Go

An imprint of Hachette Books

A division of Hachette Book Group, Inc

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Yellow Kite

An Imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Cathy Cassani Adams 2022

The right of Cathy Cassani Adams to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover design by Amanda Kain

Interior book design by Jeff Williams

Chakra figure designed by Meghan Lee Design, Graphic Designer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Trade Paperback ISBN  978 1 529 36732 4

eBook ISBN  978 1 529 36733 1

Audiobook ISBN  978 1 529 36734 8

Yellow Kite

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk

The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

For the people who shape my life. Todd, Jacey, Camryn, and Skylar

Prologue

What Is Zen Parenting?

Trying to describe Zen can cause it to lose its meaning entirely. Knowing this, old masters would just say, “Zen is Zen,” as if that would offer some type of clarity to their students. What they knew is that trying to define or hold the meaning of Zen drives us further from it, and by reducing it to words, it is no longer Zen, similar to the understanding of the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching:

The tao is beyond words

and beyond understanding

Words may be used to speak of it,

but they cannot contain it.

This word puzzle points to the fact that a word like Zen cannot be easily defined, and while it’s often used to describe being chill or relaxed, that doesn’t encapsulate its meaning. Zen points to an intangible and paradoxical appreciation of the uncertainty of our lives, and I use the word points because it doesn’t offer specific steps or offer an absolute understanding. It demands that we appreciate and embrace what we are experiencing while living in the uncertainty of not knowing, like when a Zen teacher was handed a teacup and said, “Knowing this glass is fragile, and will break if I drop it, I can fully appreciate and enjoy the beauty of the glass as I hold it carefully.” Once we respect the impermanence and ever-changing aspects of life, we can be present enough to flow with it rather than try to control it.

Zen is about showing up for every aspect of life, the joy and the pain. It’s about observing instead of turning away and accepting rather than rejecting. It’s about finding value in what we tend to label both “good” and “bad” and appreciating the humor in my favorite quote from Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki, “Each of you is perfect the way you are . . . and you can use a little improvement.”

In traditional Chinese philosophy, the yin-yang symbol is used to demonstrate the duality of male-female, light-dark, peace-war. All seemingly opposite characteristics are complementary and interdependent, represented by the yin-yang symbol having a dot of the opposite color inside of it. Generally speaking, yin is characterized as an inward energy that is feminine, still, and dark, and yang is characterized as outward energy, masculine, hot, and bright. It speaks to how our world and lives are composed of different and often opposing forces that coexist and even complement each other. Forces opposite each other even come to rely on one another to exist; as there is no shadow without light, there is no death without life.

This is why my husband and I chose a yin-yang symbol to represent our Zen Parenting Radio podcast, because duality lives at the heart of all of our discussions. How do we embrace the ambiguity and ever-changing nature of life and still live with an open mind and heart? Even our original Zen Parenting Radio podcast tagline—A logical practical dad and an emotional and spiritual mom discuss parenting—speaks to the value of two often contradictory perspectives living in harmony.

The word Zen in this book and for the Zen Parenting Radio podcast is used not to claim a lifelong study with a master or as a religious path, but as the word that best captures the uncertain and ever-changing human experience. With deep regard for its roots and what the word is attempting to capture, we understand ourselves to be lifelong students of its meaning. Zen represents attentive evolving, and we do our best to approach it as the nature of self-awareness, as a deeper understanding of ourselves and others through repeated and consistent practice.

Zen also points to a tolerance for ambiguity and becoming comfortable with paradox, like we only change when we accept who we are or the more we try to control, the less control we will have. These contradictions induce what Carl Jung called a “mental cramp,” the challenge we feel when we begin to confront our unconscious workings. Jung also believed that paradox offered more justice to the unknowable than clarity could, an understanding that paradox allows us to see the whole by holding the tension of opposites.

The truth always lies somewhere in between, and paradox protects us from thinking we have all the answers by reminding us how many things can be true at once. We notice the beauty in the midst of pain; we take things seriously while laughing at the absurdity. This is how we can see and understand ourselves more clearly and then see and understand our partners and children with more willing and open minds.

It’s also paradoxical that if you start calling yourself a Zen Parent, you’ve already lost the point. The word is best used to help us stand back and notice rather than define who we are. It’s not a label or prescriptive way to parent, but a willingness to stay present in what’s happening and engaging in life as it is. Spiritual author Richard Rohr explains this human engagement in three cyclical stages—order, disorder, and reorder—and parenting can be explained and experienced the same way.

The one thing that can be counted on throughout parenting is change—just when we understand our child’s experience or buy the right-size clothes, they change and grow. Just when we get comfortable with typical life challenges, the world experiences a global pandemic. Being able to parent and live well requires a willingness to get comfortable with disorder and uncertainty and even more of a willingness to be introspective and creative to once again find reorder.

Zen Parenting necessitates that we take responsibility for our energy so we can attend to ourselves and our children in the present time. It’s a commitment to an imperfect practice of continual self-awareness so we can show up in the most authentic and mindful way. Instead of a scripted life, it’s a moment-to-moment experience of what’s in front of us. We drop our expectations and do right now.

The tagline from our Zen Parenting Radio podcast comes from Dr. Dan Siegel: “The best predictor of a child’s well-being is a parent’s self-understanding.” To raise a child well, it’s most important to continually raise and parent ourselves first, to recognize the energy we bring to every situation, to be clear about the “why” behind all of the expectations we have for our children.

That means that everything starts with us: why we believe what we believe, why we say what we say, and how well we see and understand the stories that live behind our feelings and actions. Instead of looking at our kids and expecting them to play out the life we have choreographed, we first look at ourselves and figure out where we came up with the choreography.

We may be perpetuating beliefs that were imposed on our grandparents, parents, then us—a continuous cycle of unexamined expectation. We may be preserving a certain way of living or thinking that is actually no longer relevant to this time and place. We may be making choices and decisions to please people who are no longer here or continually chasing a dream that was never ours.

Self-awareness means noticing whatever script we were handed by our family, religion, or society and questioning whether it works for us. It may have had good intention or necessity for a certain time, but it may be stifling or harming us in the present time. It may be suffocating our sense of self, damaging our partnerships, or disconnecting us from our children.

Pain and struggle are wake-up calls, opportunities to be broken open and figure out how to put ourselves back together in a more authentic way, to release the parts that were imposed on us and discover the parts that we may have safely hidden. It’s an ongoing process, not a onetime experience, and we begin to experience and accept it as the natural ebb and flow of life. Instead of holding on too tight, we practice loosening the grip and expanding what we conceive as possible.

Zen Parenting means humility and a broader perspective that’s less about answers and more about living the questions. It demands that we honor and access all of our emotions, to know that all of them play a role in directing us where we need to go. We learn that there is strength in vulnerability and that there is a necessity in getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. This acceptance decreases our need to be defensive or righteous and allows us to open ourselves to listening and learning.

We will inevitably make mistakes, and growth and wisdom come from our ability to accept our humanness and make adjustments along the way. Life is inherently unpredictable. We will all suffer disappointment and pain, but we can trust our hardwiring for challenge and resilience, to experience ourselves as part of something bigger as we maneuver through what’s difficult.

A lot of my therapy clients have acquired all the things they thought they wanted—marriage, kids, a house, work—yet they still feel deeply unhappy and lonely. They live with people and spend time in crowded rooms, yet they still feel isolated. This is because they are disconnected from themselves and their external lives do not match up with their internal desires. They feel the pressure of must rather than the opportunity to choose. Parenting from this place creates a cycle of disconnection that disrupts how we experience our kids and how our kids will inevitably experience us.

Self-awareness that leads to self-acceptance are the things we’re always searching for, the holes and gaps we are always trying to fill. The happy pictures on Instagram are filled with external pleasures and things we’re taught to reach for: money, vacations, clothes, beauty. And while these things can indeed be pleasurable, they can also turn into a bottomless pit of needing more. Peace and contentment depend on an internal investigation and individual practice that lead to self-acceptance.

Then we can notice and quiet the running tape of self-criticisms and “shoulds” in our mind so we can stay present and lead from our more intuitive selves. The practice of self-awareness brings us back to who we are and develops our empathy and understanding of others, an ongoing process that brings us closer to center.

Once we experience what it feels like to let go of expectations, pressure, and falseness, we can offer this freedom to our kids. We can allow them to grow up with a sense of self where they don’t have to learn all of the things we are still trying to unlearn. We can help them ground themselves in purpose and belonging so they can live with self-trust and connection to the world.

This book is for you so you can experience the joy that’s your birthright and so you can answer the question that Mary Oliver posed: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Knowing and inhabiting your answer will keep you from giving your children their answer. You will know who you are, and then you can set your kids free to become who they are. Your relationship with them will be about support and acceptance rather than societal expectation.

Zen Parenting is about reframing our personal and parenting experiences. It is a personal interrogation and a moment-to-moment practice of locating ourselves so we can be here now. Here is the only place our children can feel us; now is the only thing that’s real.

Where It All Began

It was 1998, and I was watching Madonna talk about her just-released Ray of Light album. She said the songs were about her spiritual transformation, an evolution of her sound that gave her purpose and perspective about who she is and what she wanted to teach her daughter.

I didn’t have kids yet, and I wasn’t married, but I nodded my head as if I heard something I already knew. We have to know ourselves if we want to live and parent effectively; we can’t share what we haven’t realized or practiced.

I might have known this intuitively, or maybe all of the self-help books had begun to seep in. I read my first Wayne Dyer book in my late teens, and from then on I had a gravitational pull to the self-help and positive-psychology aisle. But at best I was using the information as a quick fix, and at worst I was acquiring spiritual knowledge to feel special. It was only a surface experience with consciousness and universal principles. I liked the way it felt and sounded, but I wasn’t living what I knew.

And then a series of life-changing events, including my father’s heart attack and chronic illness, getting married, and eventually having my first child, pushed me into deep discomfort. What had always worked was no longer working, and this led to an identity crisis and a heightened sense of impostor syndrome. I felt increasingly depressed and anxious, so much so that I was willing to surrender everything for peace. It was my Madonna Ray of Light moment—I had to break down the structures I had relied on to discover a true way of being.

Some refer to this as the dark night of the soul, but, unfortunately, it extends beyond one night. It’s a deep dive into a new way of seeing things when the old ways no longer work, a revaluation of what’s most important. At the time I called it a personal reckoning, a reconciliation of pain that had been denied or repressed and an unlearning of things that no longer worked.

The best way I can describe the first couple years of this process is yikes. The unexamined life felt like a much easier path, and I often questioned what the hell I was doing. Confronting the truth about anything can be painful and difficult, and I constantly wondered if the road less traveled was worth it.

But with pain and unlearning also come clarity of choices and a focus on what really matters. Life felt like more about finding my own contentment rather than satisfying other people’s expectations. I said no to what didn’t work; I said yes to what I knew I wanted. I started to feel more comfortable in my skin and connected to what was happening around me. My sole intention was to continuously locate the person I was before the world told me to be something different.

I remember at one point fully comprehending that we live on a ball floating in space surrounded by two trillion galaxies and that maybe the things that seemed so overwhelming weren’t that important. It literally made me shake my head and laugh out loud, like I was finding my way back to the bigger picture. Being a part of it all blew my mind, and Rumi’s quote “You are the universe in ecstatic motion” made sense in a new way.

I was suddenly in awe that babies grew in our bodies and needed no help in doing so, that caterpillars become goo and then turn into butterflies, that salmon use their sense of smell to swim upstream. Things that had seemed so common now felt extraordinary, like life had a natural rhythm and sense of purpose.

It became obvious that I needed to make peace with the mortality of my dad and just death overall. Death is what all living things have in common, yet we are so uncomfortable talking about it. As author and Zen Hospice founder Frank Ostaseski said, “Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most.”

Death awareness leads to appreciating life’s preciousness, encouraging us to be braver and more attentive with our lives. The more I got this, the more I enjoyed staring out windows rather than at my computer screen. I took some risks talking, writing, and teaching what I was learning, and I made some mistakes along the way. I remember one of my teachers saying, “Keep making mistakes, because if there are no more mistakes, you are done—and I don’t mean done with that thing, I mean done, done.” It felt like permission to go all in with less worry, like raising my hand to ask a question rather than pretending I understood.

But since there are light and dark to everything, old beliefs still lurked in my brain like old ghosts that knew only how to be scary. They would frighten me into thinking that if I continued to unlearn or grew in self-awareness, I might end up leaving my family and living as a monk on a mountaintop. This was a real concern that kept me up at night, a feeling that I was choosing myself over others, that I was selfish or losing touch with the “real” world.

I later learned that a lot of women feel this way as they awaken to themselves. It’s as if we feel the collective unconsciousness of all women, the historical reality that women were confronted with the terror and risk of evolving beyond their societal conditioning, not because of weakness or a lack of desire, but because of the threat of societal isolation, retribution, or death. Evolving today may not carry the same risks as our ancestors, but it’s still a level of awareness that all women must move through, a realization that awake women disturb the system and that this disruption is a threat to our conditioned self and society as a whole. Something needs to die for something new to come to life.

But once we hear (feel, however we experience it) the call to evolve, it can be difficult or almost impossible to turn down its volume. Trying to stay asleep—and believe me, I tried—made me physically and emotionally ill, and I no longer had the choice to push it away. I felt compelled by something larger than myself, leaving me terrified and relieved at the same time. As Sue Monk Kidd says in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, “There is no place so awake and alive as the edge of becoming. But more than that, birthing the kind of woman who can authentically say, ‘My soul is my own,’ and then embody it in her life, her spirituality, and her community is worth the risk and hardship.”

I continued to learn and grow, but the terror stuck around, telling me I would change and become unrecognizable to myself and the ones I love. But in many ways, the result was quite the opposite. I did have to grieve some relationships and work experiences that no longer fit with my new understanding, but I also had more energy to show up for my family. Taking responsibility for myself let the people I loved off the hook; it was no longer their responsibility to fill me up, and I no longer felt like I was in charge of their becoming.

I experienced the paradox of loving them better by backing away, by living my life so they could have their own. I set myself free from needing their constant appreciation and then felt more appreciated. I ditched the “role” of mom and became a person who also happened to be a mom, which allowed me to approach my kids with humanness rather than hierarchy. I got out of the box that told me who I was supposed to be and showed up as myself, allowing me to show up more authentically for my family.

Self-awareness is an internal process, like shining a bright flashlight on all the hidden places of the mind. This ability to see clearly allows us to know ourselves and appreciate who we are, allowing us to choose rather than react and trust rather than live in a constant state of anxiety. Shit still happens, but the lag time of feeling fear and pain gets shorter, while the ability to return to center or ask for help speeds up.

If we can role model and teach our kids how to see themselves clearly from the very beginning, the flashlight won’t be as needed because they’ll already have a working light switch. They can naturally check in with their emotions and appreciate why they have them. They can use tools to self-regulate rather than spiral into a tantrum. They can appreciate the uniqueness of their minds and hearts and live in a place of self-acceptance rather than shame.

Education and outward achievement are pieces of the “good life” puzzle, but true contentment comes from a healthy internal life. Study after study has proven that emotional intelligence (defined as the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions and recognize, understand, and influence the emotions of others) predicts future success in relationships, health, and quality of life and that children with high EQ earn better grades, stay in school longer, and make healthier choices overall.

Instead of forcing kids into what we perceive to be the norm, we can teach them to respect their uniqueness and practice self-compassion during difficult times. We can remind them they are hardwired for challenges and that even failure will lead to greater strength and resilience. We can encourage them to love their time here, to show up as themselves and take advantage of their moments.

If we want our kids to really get this, we must do it first. Instead of lecturing them about self-acceptance, we need to demonstrate what it looks like. Instead of telling them to ask for help or for what they need, we need to show them how it’s done. Children do not learn by listening to what we say; they learn by watching how we live.

This book is about having your Madonna Ray of Light moment, about practicing self-awareness to gain clarity about what you want to pass on. It’s about taking inventory of how you were parented and figuring out what stays and what goes. This is a needed evolutionary process that is essential for every generation because the world and level of awareness are constantly changing. Some traditions and expectations will remain timeless, but other teachings or expectations may no longer fit. If your children have children, they will hopefully go through the same exercise of filtering through what works and what doesn’t for their family.

This is also an opportunity to introduce yourself to your kids: to be your true self as a parent rather than play the “role” of parent, to support your kids without completely forgetting who you are or choosing martyrdom and then wearing it like a badge of honor. Martyrdom hurts you and eventually your family because it leads to your resenting them for what you do. You build a relationship with your kids over time, and it’s important to establish a sturdy foundation built on personal responsibility and practicing what you preach.

Sitting on the sidelines of life and then yelling at our kids about how they should participate isn’t fair and will inevitably lead to tension and disconnection. Instead, we get to demonstrate self-understanding and self-compassion; we get to recognize our mistakes and apologize when necessary. We get to notice and accept our emotions and trust that they will naturally come and go. We get to be joy seekers and expand our awareness so we can see the big picture and interconnectedness of all things. Then our kids will know how to be awed by the world and feel at home in their skin, wherever they may go.