Ode to Progenitors

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You know what I've been thinking about lately? In my own life, I have changed whole ways of being, when comparing my present to my personal expectations of three or four years ago. Even being a confident and secure individual was not enough to stop me from seeing things about myself that desperately needed to change and doing so. If I've only learnt one thing from the difficult year that I've recently left, it is that you never learn enough to stop needing to improve. You never learn enough to never need to change.

That being said, I've always been kind of fascinated by parents and the fact that whole other humans generate inside the woman, and then become big, self-sufficient creatures (relatively!), adults by definition. If you've done/are doing it, don't you find that highly interesting and awe inspiring? If you haven't, isn't it weird? Imagine having small humans that depend on you for everything, that you and society mandates a great amount of responsibility for; little beings that must learn everything there is to know about the world, and they have to do it from people who don't know everything there is to know about the world. I say this very circumspectly, because I know at least this much - I don't know NEARLY enough about life, God and the world. I think about trying to be a parent at this age, and I feel such a great sense of respect and gratefulness to any parent who has grown or at the age of understanding children that know their parents love them and that they are worthwhile. I know my parents deserve some kind of an award.

My point for today's post is simply this: it is incredibly hard to navigate this life. It is a beautiful and complicated journey, but not at all easy. Even as an adult with very few responsibilities there is conflict and drama and disappointment and I shudder to think how this doubles when given the responsibility of other lives to navigate simultaneously. I just wanted to take a minute to appreciate that parents have it H-A-R-D.

I could go on to cite research on adult development and how the individual's personal needs drastically change over a lifetime, especially with the inclusion of those life stages (young parent, parent of teens, parent of a disabled child, empty nester, parent of deceased child/ren, parent of older children, etcetera) but I would like, instead for us to take a minute to think about our particular situation - whether from the perspective of the parent or the child and appreciate the journey that parents have to take. I have to pause and thank God for my parents who work hard at walking the journey with me, and with my siblings and for never giving up on me.