{"id":6140,"date":"2011-01-14T15:25:40","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T22:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=6140"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:52:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T17:52:00","slug":"the-heart-grows-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2011\/01\/14\/the-heart-grows-too\/","title":{"rendered":"The Heart Grows Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, Bean was watching one of her very-favorite-of-all-time-in-her-life shows: Dinosaur Train. It was the end of an episode; I was nearby on the computer. Suddenly she burst into huge sobs. I was startled. What happened? What’s wrong?! I asked her. Her chest was heaving, and she wailed out, “They s-s-said good-bye!! I’m so sad! I feel so lonely!!”<\/p>\n

I sat down and pulled her to me while she cried. Then we backed up the show to see what upset her. She burst into tears again. The dinosaur friends were saying good-bye for the evening, going home to dinner. It wasn’t forever good-bye. Then Bean said the music made her sad. And I could see that. The notes are sweet, but they’re in a minor key and they descend. It’s intended to evoke a feeling of end-of-the-day calmness, but in Bean it triggered sorrow.<\/p>\n

“Mommy, does music make you sad?” I replied that sometimes, music has the power to stir up feelings of sadness, joy, anger, and other feelings. <\/p>\n

I realize not everyone will care to know the details, but in case you’re curious, I found the episode online (be patient while the show loads). <\/p>\n

Dinosaur Train: Tiny’s Tiny Place<\/a> <\/p>\n

If you watch it, you can move the little orange slider on the blue bar so that the number of seconds remaining say 1:00 (minute). Play it from that point, and watch and listen. It’s about 30 seconds, but it triggered a giant response.<\/p>\n

She has grieved before — when things don’t go her way, or something is lost or taken from her. However, this was the first expression and experience of grief as a “witness,” on a more existential level, with a situation not attached to her directly.<\/p>\n

It made my heart clutch for a moment. There is so much more of that ahead of her. I hope I am up to the task of helping her learn to hold her heart, and those of others, in compassion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, Bean was watching one of her very-favorite-of-all-time-in-her-life shows: Dinosaur Train. It was the end of an episode; I was nearby on the computer. Suddenly she burst into huge sobs. I was startled. What happened? What’s wrong?! I asked her. Her chest was heaving, and she wailed out, “They s-s-said good-bye!! I’m so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-motherhood"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6140"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13549,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6140\/revisions\/13549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}