Counter-cultural advice from Peggy O'Mara

I really appreciated Peggy O'Mara's essay in this month's issue of Mothering Magazine.  Click on the link for the online version, but here is just an excerpt:

Due to her ability to know so clearly what she wanted and my ability to trust her feelings, even though they were not in my plans, my entire life fell into place in a different way. If it really is true that someone can be trusted to understand her own experiences, make her own choices, and take responsibility for her own decisions, then it must be possible to fashion very unique lives for ourselves—lives that are truly handmade, rather than imitations of society’s shifting standards of behavior.

My daughter made all of the times I had toughed it out the sadnesses they really were, rather than the necessities I had believed them to be. Her decision made my whole body relax, as I no longer had to be ever alert to the “right” way. Her clarity demonstrated that it is possible to raise children who know and trust their inner experience, who have not been lied to, who are not neurotic.