Twinkle, twinkle little star.
[No. 49]
WHY ARE PEOPLE AFRAID TO PARENT THEIR KIDS?
“Everything’s growing in our garden…”
Phoebe Bridgers
Before I gave birth, people would tell me, “Parenthood is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.” I’d hear, “My life was incomplete until my kid was born,” or, “You’ll just know what to do.” Those voices made parenting sound second-nature. [BOIL WATER. ADD CONTENTS OF PACKET. STIR. THROW ON YOUR FAVORITE TOPPINGS & ENJOY.]
I didn’t think too much about how I would show up for the role in specific [nuanced] ways. I had seen generations of people in my family model themselves on systems of care that felt inherited. I just thought it all would come to me, easily.
I was wrong.
When my child came, she turned me inside out. I felt my heart beat outside my flesh, starting with my daughter’s birth and then, and then…she wailed each night as if to ask, “Am I ready for this? Are you ready for this?”
Today, she tells me casually she wanted more time in the cocoon. I, likewise, was facing my own demons when she came to life. Maybe we both longed for more time to prepare and perfect ourselves for each other. But alas, the universe has her own plans, her own ideas. And in the end, we kept pace, each of us stepping into a role and the interactivity causing a growth-to-fruition. Together, each of us rose from our own independent, ethereal swamps of the mind, body, and soul.
Alien, you ask why people are afraid to parent.
Are you speaking of discipline?
Presence?
It’s true, parenting changes greatly from era to era. Maybe parents used to be more strict. Maybe now we are a little more lenient. For me, the experience has not been linear or laid itself out with an instruction manual. It has been an illuminating mirror that sometimes looks as if it is about to catch fire.
Each day I imagine our past, our present, our future. I question all I have ever been told about what it means to be a good parent, as I learn how to parent my kid. To show up wholly for her is to be radically honest, vulnerable, accountable. Attuned parenting happens up close; this can be messy, in-the-weeds work. We live on trust. We tend to our own and each other’s wounds and wishes. We ask and listen. We break and repair. Parenthood is a line dance at a county fair, and you don’t quite know the choreography, and yet you are drawn to the music. It is an old wooden ferris wheel that makes strange noises when you ride.
However, I am not afraid.
And neither is my child.
[No. 50]
WHAT IS THE MOST PURE LOVE/LIGHT YOU HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED? THE DEEPEST DARKNESS?
They say that you are only as happy as your least happy child. I have only one. I want to do right by her. The experts advise we stay steady in the waves of another. The truth is I have felt crushed in the face of her pain. I have felt peace in the face of her joy. When she leaves me a note on the kitchen counter that says, “Mama, I love you,” it stops me in my tracks. It cracks open my heart. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
AND YOU, WHAT IS THE PUREST LIGHT & THE DEEPEST DARK YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED?