What Dr. King & Thich Nhat Hanh Taught Me about Decolonized, Embodied, & Intergenerational Parenting
Thich Nhat Hanh joined the ancestors this week. Thay (as Thich Nhat Hanh was called by his students) had a huge influence on me.
He was the first teacher who taught me to problematize and politicize "peace." Peace for whom?
He taught me to mobilize rage and love into advocacy.
He taught me that love in action is compassion.
He called me back to my "true home," my body. Because of his teachings, I'm re-learning and re-membering to love all parts of me every day so that I can fulfill the vow of Bodhisattva when I serve families and young children.
My heart is so tender knowing that the legacy of his teachings will live on through so many of his students.
You might have already known that the In-Out-N-Through™ program was born when his teaching, "The way out is in," came to me in my meditation. Whether in our parenting or social justice practice, we begin by going IN ourselves, coming OUT the other side of pain and breaking THROUGH what we thought was impossible. When we go IN, OUT, and THROUGH we always come back to care. We come back to care for ourselves, care for our families, and care for our communities.
I keep this photo of Dr. King and Thay by my desk to keep my soul humbled and to remind me what solidarity looks like.
To honor both teachers, I'd love to offer my reflections on some ways their teachings relate to decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting.
1. Dr. King’s “Beloved Community” & Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Interdependence”
Parents are not individually responsible for their children's development. Individualism and capitalism might have conditioned many of us to be hyper focused on brain development and developmental milestones so that we can give our children the best childhood we can.
I hope that the notions of a beloved community and interdependence can remind us to build our families within a beloved community.
A community where conflicts are met with accountability and compassion.
A community where solidarity and mutual aid are at the heart of giving and receiving care.
A community where we support each other and collectively work for liberation together.
2. Dr. King taught “Attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil” and Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “Often, when we say, ‘I love you’ we focus mostly on the idea of the ‘I’ who’s doing the loving and less on the quality of the love that’s being offered.”
We love our children the best way we know how to. Yet “the quality of the love” that we give to our children is influenced by our childhood, or by outdated family cycles we want to break, or by white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal ideas.
We might be reacting to our inner 3-year-old instead of responding to our actual 3-year-old child who’s right in front of us.
This autopilot parenting is so common. My invitation is to replace shame and blame with Dr. King’s teaching which urges us to “Attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil,”
I believe this is one way we can practice TNH’s “when we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.”