The perfect parent doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean being the best parent you can be doesn’t

We all fundamentally aspire to be happy, or to be content in our own skin, with who we are, we want the very same for loved one’s wether that be family or close friends. We want the exact same thing for our kids too. We want them to grow up into independent, healthy, happy, content and confident adults.  We want for them to know their own minds, be steadfast in all their decision making, we desperately want to protect them from ever being or even feeling emotions such as sadness, hurt, loss or shame. 

We guide them the best we can, based on our own knowledge and experience of dealing with our own life, that’s our ‘Handbook’. We sometimes expect, hope that they are willing to learn from us, from our own mistakes in the hope that they don’t ever have to feel all the shitty negative emotions we ourselves as parents have gone through. I know I have gone to many lengths to prevent or try and protect both of my kids from ever experiancing some of the pain that I have been through or endured. 

We feel that if we can achieve that then for us as parents we feel that we have succeeded in guiding our kids in the right direction. Even though I now know, and accept that there are many things I cannot protect them from, it’s still fucking hard seeing them, doubt themselves, question themselves, doubt that they are loveable, doubt that they are attractive, see themselves as failures.

We all have our own personal goals and aspirations for ourselves, whether that’s to feel better about yourself, lose weight, get the job you always wanted, to have enough money in the bank to feel comfortable, whatever our goals or aspirations are if we sit back and think about it, what we are really trying to do is avoid those negative feelings about ourselves. And I get it after all don’t know anyone who’s life ambitions has been to pursue sadness or feel shit.

Hindsight can be like Chinese fucking torture, repeatedly going over the same old shit you can never change  – One of the hardest lessons I have and am still trying to work through is accepting that my original aspirations and all the pursuits I have endeavored to protect my kids, may never be achieved. That’s not to say I won’t ever stop trying, I know I will never stop trying, but learning to accept that they are on their own journey, learning in their own ways, writing their own handbook on life is a tough pill to swallow.

But foresight is also a wonderful thing. 

I look back on my own life, the stuff I saw, felt and experienced as a kid, or as a young adult and even now in this present moment and I can accept that life isn’t always a fairy tale you cannot sprinkle angel dust on shit and expect it to go magically go away #shithappens even rainbow coloured unicorns still shit and stand in their own shit occasionally. 

One thing that is for certain is that we can never go back and change our past, but what we can do is take more responsibility for how we deal with any of our future endeavours’s learning to accept that all we can do is to keep going, but at the same time practice more self-love and learning to be more self-accepting about ourselves, we might not ever reach our goals whatever they may be—but if you stop or even give up there is one thing that is for certain is that you will never reach them. 

The perfect parent doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean being the best parent you can be doesn’t