Heros

I am a mother to two beautiful daughters and two bonus sons. There are times when I wish I could shape how they see me. Like most parents, I would like to be the hero in their eyes, but the truth is children don’t learn from their parents perfect moments, they bear witness to the moments we stumble and fall. It’s when we are metaphorically on the ground, face down in a puddle of tears that they imprint.

I can’t control how my children see me, and honestly, I don’t think I really want to. I love that they keep me honest, and it’s tough not to spiral into Mom guilt because its baked into the job description. It’s been an interesting lesson to acknowledge the mistakes of the past can’t be undone and better to spend the precious time we have here looking at how the past shapes our present and illuminates our future.

I also know that someday their children will be adults. They will hear difficult “truths” from their children. You don’t stop modelling behaviors just because they are grown. I could listen to my children’s adult reflections of my parenting skills and say they are wrong and try to sell them a bill of goods based on my perspective. What they feel is what they feel. Our willingness to let our children have their truth, even when it stings, even when it’s incomplete, even when it feels unfair, is one of the most powerful acts of love a parent can offer.

Many years ago, I said something so hurtful to my mother, and I never apologized and never asked to take it back. I found myself pregnant with my son at the age of 17. I was young, scared, overwhelmed, and my mother chose that moment to share that she was also pregnant with me when she married my birth father. My response was “I held you on a pedestal, I thought you were prefect”. I felt the knife hit home and twist.  

I can’t take it back, but I also knew as a parent, perfection is a big illusion. Most of my early life was all about hidden truths, secrets and hiding. My mother thought by keeping everything hidden she was protecting me. Parents who hide things are almost always trying to protect their children from pain, but what they actually protect them from is understanding. When understanding is missing, children fill the gaps with fear, self-blame, and hypervigilance.  

We live in a new age of parenting, and despite what people think, there is no manual on how to raise your unique being of radiant light. You can’t raise a perfect child, and you can’t be a perfect parent. You can be the person perfectly chosen in radiance by the soul that inhabits the body of your child. Not for your perfection, but for the lessons, obstacles and challenges that are part of their divine blueprint. As humans we learn from the difficulties, from falling down and getting back up.  

A child arrives with a blueprint. A parent arrives with a blueprint. The two blueprints intersect in ways that create friction, growth, love, rupture, repair, and evolution. We are not meant to be perfect. We are meant to be precisely ourselves, the version of us that their soul chose for its own expansion. In return they are the beings your soul chose to refine us. That’s right, our children are teachers for us as much as we are for them.

The only manual I can offer to those parents out there, be a parent who can hear hard truths without retaliating. Acknowledge impact of situations without drowning in guilt. Show that you can evolve even after the “parenting years” are over. Hold space for your adult children’s pain without making it about you. Be a parent who can be a model of emotional maturity at any age. Because in the Light, We are All Love