Here’s a post from our pal Pete of Full Permission Living, called, Learning to Love Your Hate on Mother’s Day. As always, he’s urging mothers to take better care of themselves. Who can argue with that?

I have been very hard on mothers during the past year, its true, but invariably my criticism has been in the direction of urging mothers to take better care of themselves, to focus on their own self-acceptance and seek gratification in their adult life. I have tried to encourage mothers to trust nature more, and to trust their kids, without trying to control or "fix" everything.

In that regard, Donna Fish, a psychoanalyst writing on the Huffington Post offers a perfect Mother’s Day gift entitled, "Love and Hate in the Time of Parenting." It beautifully informs us that having feelings of "hate" for your kids at times is not only normal, but beneficial, if experienced consciously and without guilt.

Here are some excerpts from Donna:

"I want to help all you parents out there learn why and how it is vital to embrace your intense feelings of hatred at times towards your kids. Don’t feel guilty. This is not to give yourself a free pass, or a rationalization, but rather to let you know why in fact it is a vital part of teaching your children how to tolerate ambivalent feelings. Part of being a human being and part of relationships.

"I promise you, this is not coming only from the Mom perspective of how I feel at times when I am in the biggest fight with my kids. It comes from the training I have gotten as an analyst, when I was told by one of my best teachers: ‘good enough is not only ‘good enough’, it is vital to help kids tolerate disappointment, and learn to hold onto us in their minds in the face of their own anger and hatred."

I love that! I have said that many times to mothers – "Good enough is good enough." Perfect is not only not an attainable goal, it is not a desirable goal. One of the biggest and most important tasks of growing up is learning how to accept all of one’s feelings, especially the negative ones. And children, like the little sponges that they are, learn by example through absorption. If you feel guilty for every moment of anger, sadness or fear you have, your kids will pick up on that guilt, and incorporate it into their evolving personality. They will then treat their own feelings as suspect, not legitimate or acceptable.

Here’s more from Donna:

"Now we are talking primitive feelings here, right? But name me an intense relationship that doesn’t involve love and hate, and I will say that is not intimate. Or deeply involved."

Exactly. In interpersonal relationships, you cannot hate someone you don’t love and expect love from, nor can you love someone without having feelings of hate at times. But experienced in a clean way, the moments of hate are not a problem.

Here’s one of my favorite passages from Jane Roberts’ extraordinary channeled "Seth" book, "The Nature of Personal Reality:"

"Left alone, hate does not last. Often it is akin to
love for the hater is attracted to the object of hatred by deep bonds.
In its natural state, hatred does not initiate violence. Love and hate
are both based upon self-identification. You do not bother to love or
hate someone you cannot identify with at all. Hatred always involves a
painful sense of separation from love, which may be idealized. If you
hate a parent, it is precisely because you expect such love.

A person from who you expect nothing will never earn your
bitterness. Hatred, then, is a means of returning to love, and left
alone and expressed, it is meant to communicate a separation that
exists in relation to what is expected. Often you are taught not only
to repress verbal expressions of hate, but also told that hateful
thoughts are as bad as hateful actions. You become conditioned so that
you feel guilty when you even contemplate hating another. In this case,
you will exaggerate all those differences from the ideal, and focus on
them predominantly. But it requires only a determined and honest
attempt to become aware of your own feelings and beliefs, and even your
hateful fantasies will return you to reconciliation and release love.
Love, therefore, can contain hate very nicely."

How beautiful is that? Back to you, Donna:

"Learn
to love your hate. I am always drawn to other irreverent moms like
myself, who are willing to be upfront about their angry feelings, and
the emotional intensity that can come up in parenting.

"Most importantly though, we do need to model for our kids, that, in
the face of their tantrums, or anger as we don’t give them what they
want, that we can hold onto their love for us and we remember how great
they are even when they are behaving so badly. That gives them a way to
soothe themselves and hold on to soothing feelings to help them develop
that tool to prevent fixing it with drugs, alcohol, food, etc.

"Simple. Direct. Don’t be afraid. It passes. Teach your kid it is
not the end of the world and you know they still love you, as you do
them even when you or they ‘feel’ the hatred."

I know we don’t like to use that word. But hey, we are all human. If you can feel it, you don’t have to act on it.