Here’s the reality: “Infants and toddlers are natural night-wakers which has been shown to be protective against SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Children tend to differ not in whether they wake in the night or not, but in whether they need help being soothed back to sleep or not based on their own unique personality, health, environmental factors, etc. Sleeping patterns are neither a sign of a ‘good’ baby or a ‘bad’ baby, just a normal baby. Even adults tend to wake frequently at night, but typically just roll over or adjust their blankets or take a quick trip to the bathroom and then go back to sleep. They just often don’t remember any of it in the morning! In reality, night-waking is simply a biological norm1 that has been misconstrued as ‘problems sleeping’ or ‘sleep issues’ by the demands of our modern, hectic lifestyle.

Pain patterns are vicious cycles, unconsciously passed from generation to generation in deeply entrenched behavioral and relational paradigms. They cannot be changed from the outside, only from within. Fear gives way to comfort, pain to healing, anger to peace, despair to hope, only when the heart of a person or the soul of a people feel safe enough to emerge from the hardened shell of self-preservation and become open to new possibilities. A hurting humanity cannot be healed by force, by arguing, shaming, threatening, manipulating. Those merely feed the pain patterns and harden their protective shells. Love, acceptance, empathy, compassion, those are the gentle rain that blossoms hurt into healing, transforming pain patterns into the peaceful flowering of a healthy, heart-whole humanity.

Glass ceilings
can't stop me.
Glass slippers
don't interest me.
Glass mirrors
don't define me.
I decide who I will
or I will not be.
And I choose to be
unbreakable
untakeable
unshakeable
me.