“If You Want Change, You’ve Got to Change”

We were listening to the song “Jamboree” by the Okee Dokee Brothers the other day and this line came up. I look over to my husband in the car and say “Well isn’t that basically what parenting is?”

Like many other parents, we have hopes, dreams, and wishes for E (things like emotional intelligence, a zest for life, etc) and also things that I hope she won’t have to carry the burden of (things like body shame, diet culture, repressed feelings, etc).

I had the realization while I was pregnant that if I wanted these things for our little one, that I also needed to want these things for myself and believe that I am worthy of them as well. I would need to unlearn many of the things that I believed to be true about myself and my place in the world.

Something my therapist keeps saying is how she thinks it is so beautiful that this next generation of parents is intentionally trying to break some of these generational traumas. That we are realizing that we have the power to unlearn and relearn things that we were taught or socialized to believe in our childhoods.

Our kiddos are always watching us, and they can intuit more than we would think. So really, what it comes down to is that if we want these changes for our little ones, we have to be willing to change ourselves.

To read the expanded post, see the full blog here.