Parenting and Spirituality: Souls Guiding Souls

The divine realm gave me a soul to join me on this journey of life.

The first time I met my daughter was in a dream when I was about five months pregnant. I went into a dark house on a hill, and in the corner of the room, I saw a little luminescent baby without a defined face. I picked her up and held her, overjoyed by meeting this person for the first time — or perhaps for the millionth time. I knew she was my child right away in the dream and that we were meant to be together. She was everything.

Since she entered my life, nothing could ever — or should ever — be the same. She has been the most influential cause of my personal growth and drives for life’s success. The feeling of life’s lack of meaning is left in my childless past.

Around the time I had the dream, I also chose her name. I named her after the Hindu goddess of non-attachment, knowing that childbirth would prove to be a great physical and mental challenge, hoping that she would inspire me to transcend my physical form. Her presence in my life has involved a series of lessons in non-attachment, combining inner strength with losing things I thought were permanent, and all for the better. She is always here looking at me with faith in her eyes, giving me a clear message that the divine realm believes I can do this.

Without her, I’d still be just a listless person who thinks that travel, personal projects, careers, and forcing myself to be accepted by society is fulfilling. I’d be one of those people who says that I don’t want kids and that I feel so happy because I can do whatever I want whenever I want, still living in foreign countries and posting on social media about it all. That’s how I was before I was pregnant.

It’s the constraints and the barriers that teach me to persevere which inspire me. It’s the amazement that giving up all the travel and frivolous living is incredibly beautiful because all I need is the eyes of this child. I see that she believes in me to change the world, and therefore I believe in myself.

She and I have been on this journey so many times before. I am convinced of this. I’ve written about our past lives. Imagine if I never had a child — and it could never have been anyone but her — and I never got to experience this connection to the divine! I would be living in such a less vibrant reality than I do now.

Carrying her during pregnancy was an act of the deepest divine power and love. I never respected the creative abilities of my body until then. Suddenly, all the parts of my anatomy that I took for granted were useful to creating and sustaining another human being. She appeared out of seeming nothingness to arise inside my uterus, growing and coming with me anywhere I went. I was suddenly never alone. I would never be truly alone again.

She graces my life every day with love and devotion that creates a desire within me to be a better human. I never felt that way before being a mom. I don’t waste a minute of any day trying to make our lives better and striving for goodness.

American society tries to convince us that having children is a choice to take on a burden, and that’s your own problem in life if you made that choice. Those who believe this are truly missing the forest for the trees. People with children have riches beyond comparison.

She asks me whether we can be dogs in our next lives together and tells me she loves me a million times a day. I am reminded first thing in the morning that we can’t live without each other. There’s no doubt in my mind that life isn’t random, as science tries to tell us. There’s meaning in every moment. We are brought here together for a reason, always.