Dancing Into Parenthood – My Story
January 6, 2022
Heal The Parent, Heal The Child
January 25, 2022Everything Starts With The Family
If you listened to the podcast episode or the blog released titled “My Story” then you know where the concept of Dancing into Parenthood came from. In this blog we are going to dive in a little deeper to help you understand why I consider this important work for me to do.
Everything starts with the family, doesn’t it? Let’s take a minute to think about your past. What influenced your values? Or your beliefs? Your family most likely impacted you regardless of whether or not you grew up with your biological parents.
Sometimes as adults, we don’t know why we feel the way we feel or behave the way that we do. Many adults also do dysfunctional things to suppress their emotions. We may end up using alcohol, drugs or sex. Many people don’t understand the reasons for doing those things. They just think that they’re vices or addictions, and we use those things to actually help soothe the way we’re feeling. I feel like so many of us don’t take the time to actually figure out why we do these things because it can truly hurt. Why do I have this sort of destructive behavior? Am I suppressing something? And what is it that I’m trying to suppress? It’s a lot of work to focus and go inside and just think about your past. No one wants to think about people that may have hurt you, people that you perhaps really loved so much, but did not receive that love in return.
I’m going to share another really personal story with you, and it’s about my son.
My son Aaron has autism. When he meets someone for the first time, the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Hi, my name is Aaron and my parents are divorced.” Having autism, he doesn’t understand social cues. Which means that he doesn’t understand that, he may make someone feel uncomfortable by saying something so personal right off the bat. I’ve witnessed it many times when he’s done it. At first, it used to feel embarrassing for me. I used to tell him, you don’t need to tell everybody that information and it’s private not everyone needs to know this. But he has this need to tell his story. Obviously, this is a wound that he carries with him.
The divorce had a very big impact on his own life, it occurred when he was 2 years old. If you are a product of a home where your parents were divorced or didn’t get along, then you would understand.
Growing up as a child myself, in a home where my parents constantly argued in front of myself and my brother was totally dysfunctional. Having that sort of experience during my childhood made me notice those same sorts of patterns when they started happening in my own marriage.
After unsuccessfully trying marriage counseling, I just didn’t want to end up down the same road that my parents did. I carry that wound in my adulthood, and I didn’t want the same for my son. I thought getting divorced early on would save my son from living in a dysfunctional home. That was very naive of me, because divorce does impact children in a profound way.
Getting back to my son, in addition to telling people that his parents have divorced, he will say, I live in two homes. I can only imagine how difficult that is for him. His dad and I are polar opposites in our parenting styles and even in our home lives. Sometimes I wonder if he feels like he’s almost living a double life.
So, if everything starts with the family then we need to understand the magnitude that our roles as parents have on our children. In our everyday lives we often forget this. This is why we need to be mindful parents. Creating a family involves us to parent intentionally.
My goal in the service I provide to new and expecting parents is to help them understand how to be intentional from the very beginning. Imagine not inflicting the same wounds that our parents unknowingly inflicted on us. Now that we know better, we have to do better as parents. It’s important that we provide a safe home, a safe environment, and a healthy one for our children. It’s extremely important that we understand that being healthy does not just mean not getting physically sick. It also means understanding and keeping yourself accountable for how you are doing emotional and mentally. Don’t you want your family home to be nurturing, where there’s a lot of love, happiness and joy? I think most of us want that. Most of us want to come from a happy, healthy home.
That means that you have to know your own past and do that introspection into your own past so that you become aware of your wounds. No one wants to hurt someone they love. The thing is, it’s easy to repeat those cycles because they are familiar and comfortable to us. We easily slip back into them unconsciously, because it’s what we know. For me, it was not being as patient as I needed to be, not communicating as well as I needed to communicate and just holding everything inside. Most people will suppress the parent wound instead of addressing it.
My son doesn’t suppress it. He doesn’t understand how to do that, and I’m happy that he doesn’t understand how to do that. And yes, it makes people uncomfortable when he says this to them, and it made me feel very uncomfortable and embarrassed.
As the years have gone on, I’m happy that he can own how he feels about it. I’m happy that he can talk about it. Some people have been wonderful in the way they embrace what he has to say. I’ve heard people respond back with, yes, my parents are divorced, too. I know that’s so important for him because he feels validated. Remember he’s at an age where he’s very young and many kids don’t have parents who are divorced.
It is the goal of Dancing into Parenthood, to keep families together and form healthy family bonds and stop generational traumatic cycles. It’s the whole concept behind it. Creating this blog to give you good information is just a piece of it.
The course that I created for new and expecting parents is a beautiful course where I bring my expertise in Pediatrics and blend it with my healing experience. In the digital course I teach you how to handle your baby and care for your baby. I use my experience to help partners support one another and function together as a team. I also teach you the most common mistakes that parents make, so that you don’t make them yourself (I don’t want you in the ER with your baby). I educate you about your baby’s development, and how to play with your baby. I do all of this because I want babies to grow and thrive, and I want them to be happy and healthy.
Parents who take my course feel confident and empowered. Partners are able to reconnect and find their new normal. They understand what it really means to create a family life and to actually have family goals and realize them.
