Vachon Imagined

There is nothing more unbearable than a parent watching their child suffer.

It can be something small—a skinned knee. Or something invisible—a feeling of rejection. Even emotions like excitement can become unbearable in their intensity, which may explain why we reach for ways to contain them again, to put them back in Pandora’s box.

Sometimes those “ways” are substances, like drugs. They can feel like medicine for the spirit. But not necessarily medicine for the soul. The soul doesn’t need anything—it is everything, contained in one body, expressed through one mind. That is what it does: it becomes the collective, and even becomes you.

But when a parent cannot allow a child to suffer, something gets interrupted. They either absorb it or deny it. And in doing so, they remove an experience the child will eventually have to face alone.

Because it comes at three just as quickly as it comes at thirty-three.

And wise parents don’t prevent it. They stay with it. They let the child feel it, and help them meet it with open eyes—not a conditioned or numbed mind.