The Real Full-Time Gig: Motherhood

“Everything don’t come giftwrapped.” J Cole

If you want to know what matters most to me…just spend 10 minutes with me and you quickly realize that I love my kids, my phone hardly rings (except for my friends and my wife), and I care about people. If you want to see me get extremely serious…play when it comes to education, mistreat anyone; especially someone I love and all bets are off! However, if you want to see my cry, become grievously inaudible, act sanguine in the face of fear…catch me parenting my kids.

Parenting by far has been the most humbling thing, I have ever experienced in life. It is always challenging me, my beliefs, and how I do things. It keeps me up late at night, and keeps me silent when other people would rather discuss other parent’s idiosyncrasies (I will be the one being introspective out of sheer compassion). One thing you won’t hear me debate is how someone parents…and you know why? Because half of the time, I wonder if I am doing it correctly. Because most of the time, I feel like I am failing. Because most of the time, I am wondering am I giving them too much, or not enough. Because most of the time, I am questioning God like “you sure I can do this?”

If you are fortunate enough to be aware as a parent, you are constantly looking at how you can do things better or differently. You realize that even if you had decent parents, there are still some scars you are healing. Parenting is a process, where you grow up with your children and sometimes it’s painful. It’s painful because you are constantly checking yourself, like “Did I just tell them not to do something, I just did?” Parenting makes you accountable to a fault in ways that make you confront your inner child. Most importantly it makes you overall a better human being…if you let it.

Every day I break the cardinal rule of parenting, by letting my kids know that “parents aren’t’ perfect!” Yep, I said it! Some parents would like to make their kids feel like when they make mistakes they have committed treason when we have made some of the same mistakes…almost daily! I remind my kids, that no matter what: I am a human being before I am ever a parent, but in the meantime I’ll be in these trenches trying to raise extraordinary, conscious, proud brown children. What are some challenges you face with parenting?