The Remembrance Codes

Raising Free Spirits: Parenting Beyond the Pattern

• Susan Sutherland

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What if parenting isn’t about shaping - but about witnessing?

This episode invites a reimagining of what it means to guide the next generation.... not as sculptors of behavior, but as stewards of freedom. It’s a conversation for anyone ready to break inherited patterns and honor the innate wisdom within our children.

We explore how sovereignty begins at home - in how we listen, how we limit, and how we let go. From clothing choices to body autonomy, from rebellion to repair, we reflect on the quiet ways control can masquerade as care, and how true love honors a soul’s unfolding - not its compliance.

Parenting is one of the most sacred assignments we’ll ever receive. It is less about perfection and more about presence. Less about producing outcomes, and more about creating space for truth to arise.

Whether you're raising a child, healing your own inner one, or simply asking what it means to grow free in a world of rules.... this episode is for you.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Remembrance Codes. Today's episode may stir. It may unearth tenderness, regret, courage, hope and maybe deep clarity, because we are being asked, as parents and as stewards, to raise children who do not fit into the systems we inherited, children who remember who they are, and for that we must first remember that they are not ours to mold. So this is not a parenting manual. It is a conversation, albeit a bit one-sided, and it is a return to reverence. Our children are not our second chance. They are not here to fulfill our unlived dreams. They are not proving their worth or ours through their behavior or accolades or achievements. They are sovereign souls. They are wise and ancient and whole, who chose to arrive through us, not for us, and we are not their sculptors. We are their mirrors and their guides and their guardians for a season, and we get the opportunity to witness the unveiling of their unique blueprint. To witness the unveiling of their unique blueprint, not to overwrite it with our fears and our projections and our unhealed expressions of wounds. Trust me when I say that I have had to work through how I was unconsciously doing this myself.

Speaker 1:

My dad loves a winner, but not without criticism, and I was having a conversation one time with him and he was talking about his beloved Gamecocks. And I say beloved because his car and nearly every item in his wardrobe are garnet and black. But it is the kind of beloved that you would have with a dog who messes in your house every single day. There's an underlying thread of love, but what is expressed is disappointment and frustration. So, anyway, he was telling me about how awful the defense was and how terrible the offense was and that they couldn't have scored if they had a free pass into the end zone, and you would have never known it from the conversation, but they had won the game. Anyway, to say that I grew up with a fixation on winning is to put it mildly. And it's only a few years ago that I got my competitiveness in check, to where I can play games to have fun, that I can play games and enjoy games, that I don't actually have a chance at winning Instead of just opting out because winning would be the goal.

Speaker 1:

And for too long I was frustrated at my kids, at their level of effort in sports. Why didn't they put in the heart and the energy and the passion and the after-school work and the desire like I pushed myself until I was willing to witness the wounds that I was seeing through before I recognized that I had been trying to earn approval and connection with my dad through my achievements in sports. Do I really want my kids to feel like they need to leave it all on the field or a court to be seen? No, on the field or a court to be seen no. And that is not a knock on my dad. He was raised by teenagers and he did the best he could with the tools he had. And my sister may be the least competitive person on the face of the planet. Those hats that say I really hope both teams have fun was made for her. So it is not about my dad but what I chose to grow through in that relationship. But I had to recognize that for myself so I could shift the pattern in my own parenting.

Speaker 1:

So don't shy away from being an observer of your parenting. The gold lies when you refuse to look away. All right, we can't talk about parenting without talking about raising rebels. My parents did Bless their hearts.

Speaker 1:

I was a rebel because I had to be. I came to fracture the shell from the inside to expose distortion. We didn't know this. Then I rebelled against them, against school, against systems, and it was misunderstood by all of us and usually expressed pretty immaturely. It was the no just to be heard, pretty immaturely. It was the no just to be heard, and that's okay. I would say they survived, but my mom did not make it out of my teen years. But I'm not going to take, I'm not going to put the blame on me for that.

Speaker 1:

But my rebellion was not defiance, it was divine refusal to expose distortion, to reject what others accepted, to remember what others forgot. I refused to be shaped by what did not honor my soul and I carried that fire so that my children didn't have to but listen up. My parents agreed to be the hearth, not the extinguisher. They held space for my burning so that my flame could refine but not destroy. I didn't always understand me, but they chose not to crush me, and that is also part of the healing line no-transcript. Because of that, because I was held and not silenced, I became the kind of parent who need not demand rebellion from my children. I didn't ask them to break what I had already dismantled. That doesn't mean their path is going to be so easy or that rebellion won't someday rise in them too, but if it does, it will be a rebellion of refinement, not survival. The calm in them is not compliance. It is peace earned by the labor of my soul and the unflinching grace of my parents. My kids do not push against walls because I have not built them too high. They don't rage against structure because I don't enforce a cage. Because of the groundwork laid in a previous generation, I was able to provide a place for them to become without needing to escape escape.

Speaker 1:

So, whether you were the rebel or you are raising the rebel, see this as part of our collected experience to choose disruptors, to dismantle the systems that can no longer work. Often, the child pushes back is the one who sees most clearly. They refuse to conform, not because they are difficult, but because they are discerning. They are rejecting something false in the field and asking us to see it too. So if this is the path that you are on, instead of labeling them as defiant, begin asking what truth they are defending. All right, let's do a 180 and talk about the obedient ones, because there's a cultural pressure for children to reflect their parents and not their own essence. We see it in something as simple as choosing clothes when a toddler wants to wear rain boots and pajamas at the grocery store, many parents say no, not because it's unsafe, but because it's unpresentable. But whose comfort are we protecting when we honor a child's expression, even mismatched socks or wild color choices? We are sending the message you are allowed to be fully you. So what we can do is stop judging the parents whose kids look unusual. Maybe they're the ones doing it right.

Speaker 1:

We do not need more kids who become adults, who fall in line, who accept the rules without questioning. In order to raise sovereign children, they have to know that their voice matters and that their questioning is valid, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Mark used to bring up his dad's parenting to our family without questioning it. His dad apparently would have knocked his head off his block. That was the phrase. My dad would have knocked my head off my block for anything slightly inappropriate at the dinner table or when a kid questioned him, and we have finally had to have the conversation like just because your dad did something a certain way doesn't make it right, and I don't want to raise children who are in the yes ma'am club without learning to think for themselves, to question authority and to question systems. They need to question it all in a safe place, which is me. I welcome the questions. Bring them all. If I'm doing something you don't like, let's challenge it. I want to be a place for them to learn that questioning is appropriate. Which brings me to this.

Speaker 1:

I'm often asked what I teach my kids about spirituality, and the truth is this I teach them by how I live. My example is my lesson and beyond that, I trust their soul to know their path of unfolding. I am not rushing them to awaken or accept anything that I say, because I am not meant to mold them, but to hold space for them to take the shape that they came to take and admire its beauty. That they came to take and admire its beauty. I trust their soul and I'm going to give them the space to find that form. In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene it says Human beings need limits in order to find their form. But the problem lies in how to give limits that do not confine, distort or mutilate the growth and development of a human being. Children do need limits. They need safety and structure and form, but limits must not become leashes. They are scaffolding for the soul, not shackles for the spirit. We have to be the grown-ups in the room, but that doesn't mean we have to impose. It means we safeguard, it means that we are the gardener that removes the weeds that interfere with their growth, but we don't rush their bloom. Don't rush their bloom. So, yes, set limits, set boundaries, but ask yourself are these boundaries protecting my child's growth or my comfort? Do your roles honor their expression or your image?

Speaker 1:

All right, now for a necessary piece of the discussion of raising sovereign children, and this may be difficult to hear, but it must be spoken. If we claim to raise sovereign children, we must begin with their bodies. Circumcision when it is not medically necessary is a violation of body autonomy. We cannot bypass this just because it is culturally accepted. I posted about this on my social media and many responded that they or their parents, especially fathers, chose circumcision to avoid their sons feeling different. But sameness is not a virtue when it costs wholeness. Others acknowledge that they never even thought about it, like this is just what's done, so I didn't give it a second thought. But y'all we know that the body holds memory, the body stores trauma, and this is an unnecessary procedure that is performed when the baby's nervous system is most vulnerable and the baby is beginning to map out trust and safety and touch, and we wonder why our men are disconnected from their bodies and pleasure and their voice, but we continue a practice that severs their connection. This is not to shame, but it is to bring awareness so that generations after ours will have a new normal, a new majority that recognizes the sacredness of the body. That the new normal would be that your parents choose your wholeness. To the parents who made that choice. I honor the love you made it from and I invite you to remember we can only change the future by telling the truth about the past.

Speaker 1:

Now I am going to call myself out on one of my biggest struggles in raising sovereign children social media. Our children are becoming consumers before they are creators. They are watching others live their lives online instead of living their own, and we are complicit when we hand them screens without teaching them discernment. I talk about discernment all the time, but I can tell you that my kids watch videos of others cooking and don't cook, or others baking and don't bake. They watch videos of others dancing but rarely dance. They watch videos of other people living their lives while they are hunched over looking at a screen.

Speaker 1:

Sovereignty is not just about saying no to systems. It's about remembering how to create, to dance, to draw, to build, to be bored and discover, to find joy not in likes and loops, but in life itself. And we have to ask ourselves how often do we model that? Are you playful? Are you creat creative? Are you binging experience on a TV show or are you living it?

Speaker 1:

Parenting is not easy. It is a constant dance between protection and permission. There are moments when we must step in, when safety is at risk, but far more often we are stepping in to maintain control, not care. Let them wear what they want to wear. Let them feel what they feel. Let them tell you who they are. They are not ours to perfect, they are ours to protect until they can protect themselves.

Speaker 1:

A mantra that keeps me honoring their independence and my role as their guardian is to remind myself that I am not raising children, I am raising adults. I am a bird launcher, not a future empty nester. I want to raise adults who remember their sovereignty. I don't want them to seek my permission or my approval or my guidance for everything. I want them to know how to go inward to the one who knows. So this isn't about getting it right all the time. I most certainly don't. It's about being willing to repair, to evolve and to listen. Our children are not asking for perfection from us. They are asking for permission to be To the children who may be listening, may your no be honored, may your yes be free, may your voice be trusted and may you remember you were never meant to be molded, only met. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next week.

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Susan Sutherland

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