A Dream Fulfilled

A little over a year ago, on May 14, 2023, I published the first blog post here at Awakened2Love.substack.com. For the most part, I have published new content approximately every two weeks. The past several weeks have been very busy with work, spring cleaning, and my son’s graduation(woo-hoo!), so this article has been delayed a bit. But I am giving myself grace and am celebrating that I shared 26 articles in the first year. Thank you for joining me on this journey and taking the time to read my ramblings! We also celebrated Mother’s Day recently and Father’s Day is coming up real soon, so I want to share some thoughts about parenting.

I wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember. I mean, when I was a kid, I loved younger kids and wanted to have a job working with kids and to also have kids of my own. After I met my husband, we talked about having children and he wanted even more children than I did! I think he wanted to have his own family band. I finally became a mom at age 33 and fell in love with our precious girl immediately. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we loved our babies with our whole hearts and learned as we went along.

The early years were filled with changing diapers, answering hungry cries at 2AM, and wearing spit-up but being too tired to care. We seemed to lose time in the constant cycle of picking up toys, doing mountains of laundry, and trying to keep them clean… and alive. Why are toddlers so determined to find the most creative way to die?? Then we became their chauffers, driving them to parks, storytime and playdates and later to school events, sports, and sleepovers. And before we could find the pause button, they have fast-forwarded to their first job, learned to drive, and graduated from high school. Whoa! How did we get here so fast?

[Mother’s Day at Epcot Center in 2014]

As a mom who somehow managed to raise two children to adulthood without too many ER visits, I am definitely older and grayer, somewhat wiser, and humbly grounded in the fact that I am far from perfect. We have apologized to our children for mistakes we made along the way and have tried to course-correct. Because we are human, we will need to apologize again and again. In response to a recent apology, my son said that it’s the first time living life for each of us. I love the grace and humility in that statement!

My parenting philosophy is that loving our children unconditionally and encouraging them to find what makes them happy is the most important thing we can do to help them become successful, healthy adult humans. My natural tendency seemed to be to criticize and lecture my kids as my forefathers and foremothers? did in times past. I have learned that being loving and supportive is more fun and leads to better relationships with our kids.

It breaks my heart when I hear someone say that their parents don’t accept who they are, who they love, or refuse to call them by their chosen name. Not accepting them won’t change who they are but it may keep you from having the relationship that you want with them and could cause them irreparable harm. We won’t always understand or agree with our kids’ choices, but they should always feel safe to make their own choices and share them with us. They should KNOW without a doubt that we love them and always will.

Another Substack writer published the following article for Mental Health Awareness month that emphasizes the life-saving ability of loving and accepting LGBTQ+ people as they are:

Personal Horror Stories and Alarming Research Findings About the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People in the U.S.

[Reader, if you do/did not have parents who love(d) you completely and unconditionally, I hope you have found new family who do love and accept you as you are. I just learned that fictive kinship is a term used to describe these new family connections with people we aren’t related to by blood or marriage. I love my fictive family!]

My husband revised and recorded the song Perfectly Loved (originally recorded by Rachel Lampa) as a message of love to our children and to anyone who needs to hear that they are loved. YOU have always been perfectly loved.