A Quiet Realisation: Childhood, Love and Loving Kindness Meditation

For nearly ten years, I’ve been using Loving Kindness meditation in my yoga classes.

The first part of the script goes something like this:

Imagine yourself as a small child.

Perhaps you can picture a photograph of you.

Look this child in the eye and say:

May you be safe

May you be free from suffering

May you be happy and healthy

May you have ease of being.

This part has always carried a quiet sadness for me. I didn’t have an idyllic childhood. My parents split up, my mother remarried and divorced again, and because she worked, I spent a lot of time on my own. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t particularly comfortable either.

In photos from my childhood, I never look especially happy. Maybe that’s because we didn’t take many photos in those days, and I wasn’t used to smiling for the camera. Or maybe it reflects how I’ve interpreted my childhood over the years.

So whenever we reached this part of the meditation, I felt as though I had to make up for something — to compensate for a lack of parental love by giving as much love as possible to myself as a child.

But tonight, during our pre-Christmas session, I had a sudden epiphany.

I was loved.

I was loved by my parents and my grandparents. Just because my parents separated and I had to look after myself a lot (there was no proper childcare in those days), it didn’t mean I wasn’t loved. They did what they had to do — and they loved me nonetheless.

I was never neglected. I never went hungry. My birthdays were always celebrated. My mother took an interest in my education. Yes, there are sad memories — but there are also many, many happy ones.

Somehow, because my childhood was difficult and not always joyful, I had interpreted that as meaning I wasn’t loved.

And then, out of the blue, I realised something simple and profound: I was loved as much as any other child

This realisation didn’t change what happened, or suddenly make my childhood rosy. But it did change how I see it. I no longer feel the need to “fix” my past or make up for something that was missing. I can look at that child now and see her as she was — doing her best, and coping with life’s ups and downs like any other kids.

And perhaps this is what loving kindness really asks of us: not to rewrite our past, but to see it more clearly, and to let ourselves receive the love that was already there.