We visited Sarah Island, a place which in 1833 was turned into one of the most remote convict settlements in Tasmania. The energy there felt very heavy. We stood in front of some remaining ruins of the buildings and read a few facts about them. Marcel kept asking questions and couldn’t understand why people behaved in such a non-loving way on the island. Then I noticed that Wiktor had been standing a few meters away from us, just looking somewhere. I looked at him and immediately knew that he was feeling sad. I asked him,

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he said, with a look on his face that wasn’t okay for me.

I opened my arms and asked,

“Hug?”

And we hugged for a minute or so. But then he added,

“Mum, you know, I don’t like when you keep asking me if I’m okay.”

And finally, it hit me. He indeed never liked it when I asked him if he was okay in such scenarios, when a mother can sense that something is stirring in her child—those feelings that we, as adults, prefer to avoid.

Whenever Wiktor felt them, he felt them, and he was okay.

But me? I didn’t want to feel those sensations in my body! Even more, I didn’t want my child to feel them and suffer! I unconsciously wanted to protect him from feeling “bad.” I felt this friction with him always whenever I asked in similar situations “Are you okay?” but I never knew how to be a support for him. Once he ultimately spoke to me, it got me that he wasn’t suffering. I was creating the suffering for him with my worrying if he was okay. I felt it deeply in that moment that all the sensations and emotions are okay, and that he wasn’t judging them at all like I’ve been doing nearly all my life until I became conscious about it and started working on myself. He was embracing them all, allowing them to pass through his body. He showed me his strength, not his weakness.

I thanked him for saying that to me, and I promised to change.

“Can I only hug you in those kinds of situations?”

“Yes, you can hug me, but without asking,” he said.

“Okay, I will just hug you.”