I was raised in a very secular home. My parents were raised in different religious faiths.

I have no faith and I have enormous faith.

Parenting is, in my mind, an enormous leap of faith from the moment of conception, or, actually, often before that.  And parenting pre-teens, parenting teens and parenting young adults?!? Letting go of your child as they transition to adulthood? More leaps, more faith.

For me it was important to remember, particularly when things felt rough when parenting teens, that I’d taken leaps of faith before, that things work out most of the time-and often not as I had expected.  This helps me have faith, even if I have no idea what faith even is.  The worst-case scenarios are the worst.  There is a lot between best and worst in most things. And, our perspective on what is best and worst shifts and changes. 

That truth, that things change, is foundational to my faith.  Sometimes I can impact change, and sometimes I cannot.  What I understand changes if I am paying attention and am open to change and to changing.

As parents we think that our job is to understand our child. We must do what is best, to save them from the worst.  That’s what we think. Faith allows me to get real about that thinking! Daniel Seigel , who has an impressive resume on the subject, says that “The strongest predictor of a child’s well being is a parent’s self-understanding.”  Consider that for a moment if you will. The single strongest?  Me understanding me?  I would have said I totally understood me, I had done the therapy and I was secure in who I was.

But, yeah.  Things change.  Circumstances change. The world changes. My kids change.  It took a while, but I now love this reminder.  We are barraged with reminders of the importance of self care.  What is self care?  For you?  I have no idea. I need to genuinely understand me so I can take care of me! (And it took a lot of mani-pedi’s to understand that that just wasn’t it for me;)  It is particularly of value for parents of children transitioning to adulthood, to be gently reminded that our children are growing up, they want to move on, and our job is to understand ourselves and trust them to learn to understand themselves.

As a parent of pre-teens, teens and young adults- AKA people who can pass as adults in the world, and want to – I had to understand myself well enough to be willing to acknowledge some of my deepest fears.  If I chose to believe that my children’s choices and actions were all a result of my parenting, then it was all my fault and I had done harm to the people I loved more than life itself.  Admit that?  Um no thank you. Why would I do that?!

I finally did acknowledge my fear when shit got real real. I then understood that mine was a self-centered belief. My child was growing up and suddenly I wanted to stunt their growth to correct my mistakes, wanted them to act differently so I would feel better? Oh my oh my.  The ugly truth?  I saw them but didn’t see them. I had to understand myself to see others. They were growing up. I wanted to let them grow, let them make mistakes and fall and be there for them, not build scaffolding around them. Children are not buildings; they are not outcomes, I’m not moving in, they are moving out.

For me to get there?  It took faith.