I really hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season, however you celebrate, and also if you don’t celebrate at this time of year.
Did you take some time to cozy by the fire and read?
Reading is always on my list. I recently started ‘Becoming’ by Michelle Obama. Whatever your political persuasion, this is an interesting read on what it is to experience being at the heart of American life, and still be your own person.
I think that the title of the book is so telling. This isn’t a book about having ARRIVED, it’s a book about BECOMING.
Here, in Michelle’s own words:
“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”
This is exactly how I see our journey as parents. 
It’s not as though you follow a set of parenting principles and you wake up on morning having ‘arrived’ as a parent.
There’s no morning you can wake up and say, “That’s it, I have this parenting challenge sorted, now pass the strong coffee and all the Sunday newspapers.”
Instead, we grow and evolve just as our children grow and evolve. There’s no destination. There’s always something to learn.
When we hold out for perfect, we often do no more than cause ourselves a lot of stress. There’s also the unfortunate side effect that if we strive for perfection, we do not allow our children to be in a perpetual state of becoming too. (They are and always will be whether we resist it or not.)
This evolution, this journey, is what I support the parents that I work with through.
Some parts of the journey are easier than others, that’s for sure. When the going gets tough I’m there, helping the parents I work with with the individual circumstances of their hugely varied lives.
Even where those lives are so varied, the same principles work. I see it time and time again. For example, we add more knowledge about how the brain works. We add in a lot more empathy and understanding.
All of the skills, tools and understandings that we work on together can help to make the process of becoming a lot smoother and the bond between parent and child stronger.
But change starts with believing that you’re in charge. Change starts when you believe that you can make a difference.
Michelle Obama says in Becoming:
“I now tried out a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be.”
Are you allowing yourself to be in charge of your own happiness?
Are you allowing yourself to grow, to learn, to become?
You don’t have to be the finished article as a parent. You just have to allow yourself to become and continue to become, all the while heading in the direction that you want to go in. #progressoverperfection
Speak soon,
Lisa
XO
P.S. If you want to make this your year of becoming the parent you hope to be, I’m here for you! Watch out for my weekly blogs.
Ref: Michelle Obama ‘Becoming’ Crown Publishing Group; First Edition edition (November 13, 2018).
No personal connection or recommendation by the author or publisher is implied or intended. (I’m just a fangirl!)
