Little Forever Beginnings
“First baby!” Whenever I hear these words, 28 years ago in life’s rear view mirror feels like yesterday, the day we brought our first daughter home from the hospital. We were between semesters in college. I can still see our little infant in her red, yellow, and blue pajamas, sitting in the living room with me as my husband closed the door behind him - on his way to a normal day of work.
I Felt Like Having a Meltdown
My life suddenly happening in a completely different - and unexpected - universe, I felt less than capable, the pressure of motherhood landing on my shoulders, and fear robbing my visions of joy as a mother. A river of tears burst from me. All I could think to do was to “get my daughter’s day started out right” with a bath, but I didn’t even know how to do that!
In this moment, although these unimagined emotions were all present and intense together, one driving emotion took the lead. It was what broke through my frozen mind and made it possible receive what I experienced as inspiration. It propelled my fragile body into motion. It was this power, I believe, that not only pulled me past the first, fresh, incapacitating realizations, but also tuned me in to understanding of what to do instead for years to come, and to have the will to do it.
Love Began to Conquer
The “mother’s love” I experienced in these first, tender moments of life with my daughter was empowering. Yet, down the road a few more deliveries, I experienced seasons where that same love seemed to do the reverse - to hold me back when I didn’t want to do or say the wrong thing; when I wanted to honor my children’s choices and their abilities to learn; when I trusted that not intervening was the right choice.
Five children and empty-nesting under my belt now, I still struggle to know which approach is best at times, but I am not alone. I see my adult children succeeding. But not because parents and children finally have it right - rather, despite, and because of the experiences that are not always perfect, an orchestra of skills and perspectives are actively applied. A stasis of love and peace through effort, patience, and tears are all in motion in a beautiful life song that resonates love.
Parenting, I learned, was just as much about my learning and growth as it was me facilitating the learning and growth of my children.
I thankfully further learned from listening to fellow parents a little farther down the road than me that my experience with successes, conundrums and all, is common.
Out of the Ordinary, Came the Extraordinary for Us
My personal experiences in parenting motivates me to write on the subject. This is a humbling reflection for me. The reason is evident in the years before my husband and I started a family. The reason is found throughout our parenting years. It is magnified in our lived, contrasting experience as a family today.
My husband and I both come from less-than-ideal backgrounds. We both experienced abuses but in vastly different ways. Our desires to escape the effects of struggles our parents had generated what I see now as impressive determination. In those early years, my observation was that if I exercised my power to make different choices than I had seen in my family, I could succeed.
My husband and I worked to take all the good from our backgrounds and create productive views, communication patterns, and experiences in our sphere of reality.
Everyone’s Experience and Growth Curve is Unique, but Common Enough to Relate
I am sensitive to the fact that escaping the grips of mental illness, poor decisions, and forces beyond our control by our choices alone is not always a guarantee. What I experienced is that my cause-and-effect lived reality did put force behind my faith in what I applied as a solution.
This is relevant because I have come to know that a greater majority of parents have also come from less-than-ideal backgrounds. Furthermore, the perspective I write from is also meaningful because even in the BEST homes, the the world we all live in will still produce wounds, scathing experiences, scarring effects, impacting one individual differently than another. It also provides plenty of hope to focus on to escape tragedy, if not eventually.
We are in a constant state of woundedness and healing in tandem with the drive and requirement to experience joy and lightening. I credit my background for teaching me so much about what I didn’t want, that I could feel when we were heading the wrong or the right direction - (although I couldn’t tell you at all what “what I did want” actually looked like). At times I joked with God and myself as I labeled this “parenting by braille.”
Alone, but Not
It is not uncommon that people who know our family ask how we got our children to be such great friends, individuals, contributors to work, social, and home. “It takes a tribe” always pops to the forefront of my answers, and truly, our tribe has been a great influence in our lives. It is a tribe that started in college, grew in our first and second neighborhoods, and now continues to impact our (now) adult children as they navigate the big world on their own paths.
My husband and I have also learned that leveraging the help from a tribe is vastly more effective when empowering is practiced in the home. From those critical first moments with my oldest daughter to seeing the desire in my children’s faces to be effective and matter, and on to today as we navigate young adult years, the inkling I had in those first moments remains a critical compass, “Empower.”
Perhaps it is because as a mother at 23 years of age, I somehow felt strengthened against the odds. The need to empower others may have been emphasized through seeing toddlers overpower each other. It was highlighted as our family took charge when teachers bypassed needs and created education gaps that needed to be filled. I felt it as I imagined how my children would function in a complicated world when they turned 18.
In the Spirit of Giving Back to Our Tribe
What I do know is that we can and must learn from each other. My husband and I have been asked by many over the years to write a parenting book. After much debate, and despite experiencing humility and inadequacy in answering such a request, with a little more perspective in our stage of life, my desire is to contribute value to the parenting conversation.
I am grateful to be able to share our little, forever beginnings with you, and hope you will share yours, too.
