Has COVID captured your heart? Cooped up, in close proximity 24/7 for months on end, with the people we love most in the world, wears on even the most compassionate heart. With little alone time and few opportunities to think uninterrupted, it’s enormously difficult for parents to be patient and kind and centered and positive 24/7. So, if you find yourself these days fraying like tissue paper in a windstorm, that’s entirely understandable.

During the unprecedented, numerous challenges of parenting during a pandemic I want my coaching clients to gently gather the scattered parts of themselves so they can feel more unified in mind, heart, and spirit. I know—easier said than done. But even a small step in this direction makes living easier. Over the past nine months, I have found a few ideas that have helped my clients return to a more relaxed heart-centered stance. When that happens, they naturally ease up on themselves and their kids. Less stress results from realistic expectations, re-discovering a core centeredness. Soon creative responses replace habitual reactions. Children settle. Parental edges smooth out. Hearts run free again.

The approach I explain below has been particularly significant. Perhaps it will be useful to you in some way? There are three parts to it:

• Remember
• Understand
• Imagine

Part 1: Remember: The Heart REALLY Remembers

In 1998 in his groundbreaking book, The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy, Dr. Paul Pearsall wrote: “Every cell in the body is literally bathed in the info-energy conducted from and by the heart. Since the heart is a primary generator and transmitter of info-energy, it is central to our system’s recollection of its life—its cellular memory.” 

Dr. Pearsall received numerous awards for his research on the relationship between the brain, heart, and immune system. His ground-breaking research on heart transplant recipients receiving the memories of their donor led to the formation of the Cleveland Clinic’s new Heart/Mind program. I stumbled across The Heart’s Code soon after it was published. I found the stories about the memories of heart-transplant recipients particularly fascinating:

• He writes about the case of Claire Sylvia, a dancer, who after a heart and lung transplant who returns home from the hospital with cravings for foods, she normally would have not wanted such as pizza and chicken nuggets. Turns out she received the heart of a teen-age boy who died in a motorcycle accident who indeed liked such foods.

• He tells the story of a wife who come back to her martial bed, baffling her husband with expert knowledge in the ways of the erotic. He wasn’t complaining, merely perplexed, until they both found out from her doctor, she received the heart of a prostitute. 

• And the story I have told to countless workshop participants that hunts me to this day:  about the 8-year-old girl who experienced re-occurring nightmares after returning from the hospital with her new heart. In her dreams, she kept seeing the face of a man that terrified her. Her worried mother told the doctor, who in turn reported to the police this occurrence. Soon after, the girl was able to describe to a detective the face of the man who murdered the 10-year-old girl whose heart she had received. Once the murderer was identified and captured, the nightmares stopped.

Since the publication of The Heart’s Code, much research has been done to verify and extend the notion of heart and cellular memory. For instance, glial cells, commonly thought to exist only in the brain since they have to do with memory are now commonly understood to be in the heart as well as in the intracardiac nervous system. Just as in the brain, neurons in the heart communicate with one another via the release of neurotransmitters.

Mitchell Liester, professor at the University of Colorado writes in a 2019 research paper, Personality Changes Following Heart Transplantation: The Role of Cellular Memory:

“The human intracardiac nervous system (ICNS) is made up of 700 – 1500 intracardiac ganglia (ICG), each composed of 200 – 1000 neurons. Groups of ICG combine with interconnecting nerves to form ganglionated plexi (GP), which are located in specific regions of the heart. Each group of ICG contains sensory, efferent, and interconnecting neurons that control multiple cardiac functions. Based upon similarities with the cerebral brain, this complex system of neurons has been termed the “heart brain.”  Neurons in the heart communicate with one another via the release of neurotransmitters, many of which are also found in the brain. These include norepinephrine (NE), serotonin (5-HT), histamine (H), L-DOPA, dopamine (DA), acetylcholine (Ach), vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and nitric oxide (NO). The intracardiac nervous system has been found to remodel itself after cardiac transplantation, a process known as neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is one of the fundamental characteristics of the cerebral brain that is believed to be involved in the formation, storage, and retrieval of memories. Thus, it is possible that memories are stored within the intracardiac nervous system and are transferred to the recipient at the time of transplantation.”

Part 2: Understand: Children and Teens Remember Being Loved

If you have adult children you know this. One day, seemingly out of the blue, they tell you about something they remember as a child in exact detail and you, try as you might, can’t remember one thing about it. So, you ask questions, “Where were we again?” “What year was this?”  “I actually said what?” And on it goes until you learn about an entirely insignificant (to you) occurrence that had become a major life event for your child.

“I’m glad that I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” my elder son told me on one of his home-from-college vacations. “What do you mean?” I asked. 

“Well, there are so many privileged kids at school, they don’t know how to do the work. And we had to do chores and things so I never felt entitled growing up.” 

“Hmm interesting.”

“And another thing…that Christmas we only got books from used book stores—that was my best Christmas ever.”

“It was? I never knew that. It was the most stark, minimalist holiday ever.” (as a single mom I was flat broke at that time)

“No, really, I loved opening each box and seeing the stacks of books inside. I couldn’t wait to read them. I liked the simplicity of that Christmas. Uncomplicated. It’s now my preferred way to enjoy holidays.”

Another example comes from my younger son who now as an adult has a fond memory at age 8 of trudging two miles (round trip) in calf-length snow in the bitter cold to return library books. Then warming up by browsing in the library, checking out a bunch of books, and then plodding back to hot chocolate and reading time. 

(As I write this, I see that the examples I remember freely have to do with books! Reading must be one of my love languages to my sons.)

Kids remember our authentic connection times with them. Of, course, we can never be sure which times these will be. And unfortunately, traumatic events burr into cellular memories as well. Yet active love eventually outmaneuvers pain. I am continually amazed by the inspiring stories I hear from parents about how daily heart-felt connections mitigate children’s aching events and ease their emotional wounds.

“Cardiac energy patterns have dynamic interactive effects. When one heart sends energy to another, that energy becomes a part of the receiving heart’s memory.” ~Dr. Paul Pearsall

Part 3:  Imagine: What Will Your Child Remember About Living Through a Pandemic? 

While we can’t know what our children will remember from their childhood, we can up the chances that the memories will be good ones when we support ourselves to stay as heart-centered as possible—especially during trying times. An activity that has helped me and many parents I have worked with is visualizing your child as an adult. Let’s take a look at what your child, now an adult 20 or 25 years from now, remembers about the pandemic. Will your child’s memories be something like this?

“I remember I couldn’t sleep and heard you crying in the living room. I got up and asked you why are you crying Mommy. I think I was four. (He was actually 3 and you were crying because you lost your job and you didn’t know what was happening next.) I recall that we snuggled and you said you were sad and that tears cleans out the sadness. I never forgot that. Tears clean out the sadness. As a result, I never worried about crying. And to this day I am grateful. My girlfriend told me just the other day how moved she was that I cried openly without embarrassment when she told me about her Mom’s recent struggles. So that’s me. Grown man who cries freely. Sure, I have some vague memories of wearing a mask and seeing my teacher on a computer. But that’s not what stuck with me. That time snuggling on the couch and what you told me really made an impression.”

“Well, I was in middle school at the time and I remember being so frustrated I couldn’t be with my friends and that we couldn’t have a normal school experience. I remember vividly that first day of Zoom school when you asked the teacher for the parents’ names of the kids in my homeroom and she said it was against the law to give them to you. Undaunted, you persisted, “Will you kindly ask the parents to send me their e-mails as I want to get in touch with each of them? She said she would. How could she not with the way you asked? Nice, yet clear and confident. I have used your voice in my head to ask for what I want that way ever since. To my college teachers when I wanted some extra readings; to my boss just yesterday who told me she knows why I am a successful attorney. I ask for what I want clearly and confidently. And then the other thing I remember is that we did all sorts of creative things with our class as the parents put their heads together—thanks to you. I remember reading some books at the same time as my friend and then we chatted about what we read after the hour was up. I was excited to sit on the couch for a while knowing my friend was also with me on her couch at her home. It was fun using our imaginations like that. I learned that there are creative ways—other possibilities that we might not think possible but can become possible if we think about them. Does that make sense, Mom?”

“I remember the walks. The masks and the social distancing, of course. But what really sticks in my mind is the walking by your side and talking. I don’t remember a thing we talked about. But I do remember looking forward to those walks because I felt so calm and peaceful during and after them. I felt your presence on those walks in a way I didn’t during the hectic days when you were at work on the kitchen table and I couldn’t even open the refrigerator for snack without upsetting you. Those walks helped me understand you and everything better. And hey, I now love to walk as you know. Helps me slow down get inside myself. Did I tell you I plan on hiking the Appalachian Trail this summer?”

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Copyright, Gloria DeGaetano, 2021. All rights reserved.