Your Children Are Not Your Children

After a wonderful conversation with my good friend Gaby about motherhood and how important it is to teach children independence, and how the greatest gift you can give your child is that to be self reliant and confident, she sent me this email with this wonderful quote. I read this a long time ago in a book when I was young... I remember reading it from a child's perspective and showing my mom as if to show her that she needed to let go...  Now reading this again from a mom perspective, it makes me see things differently. So beautiful... so inspiring and bittersweet. 

Thanks for the reminder Gaby. :)

On Children 

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran