Reframing parental love through the lens of ache and yearning—the deep longing to know and protect your child—as a legitimate and beautiful expression of devotion.
Rabia's poetry overflows with longing—a ache in the chest for union with the beloved. Modern parenting culture often frames this longing negatively, warning against enmeshment or anxious attachment. Yet Rabia's wisdom honors the parent's longing as itself an expression of love worth examining and integrating. The mother's ache during pregnancy, the parent's vigilance during sleepless nights, the desire to know your baby completely—these are not pathological but spiritual. They reflect the human capacity to be moved by another being's existence. Rabia teaches that longing purifies the heart; it cracks us open. For parents of infants, this longing can be held consciously rather than repressed. You can acknowledge the ancient ache to protect, to know, to matter to this person, while simultaneously releasing the fantasy that you can control their safety or ensure their belonging. This integration—holding both the longing and the surrender—creates a mature love that neither clings nor abandons. When infants sense that their parents' devotion flows from genuine longing to know them rather than from fear or neediness, they internalize that they are genuinely desired for their own sake. This becomes the deepest root of belonging.
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