Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It's the fear that we're not good enough.
Brene BrownRead
Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.
Interpretation
Parenting is fraught with challenges due to the uncertainty and self-doubt many parents experience.
Brene Brown highlights the complexities of parenting, revealing that it is often filled with feelings of shame and judgment. This is primarily because parents frequently navigate their responsibilities amidst uncertainty and self-doubt, making the journey of raising children daunting and fraught with emotional hurdles.
In practice
During a parenting workshop, I shared a quote by Brene Brown about the struggles of self-doubt in raising children.
Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It's the fear that we're not good enough.
I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.
Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they're afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.
I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.
I'm not a parenting expert. In fact, I'm not sure that I even believe in the idea of 'parenting experts.' I'm an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I'm an experienced mapmaker and a stumbling traveler. Like many of you, parenting is by far my boldest and most daring adventure.
I've learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.
Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.
I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me.
I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter what happened, I still had my family, or at least the remnants of a family ripped apart by divorce and then glued back together in various odd arrangements through a series of ill- advised remarriages. It was good to know I had a solid foundation.
My kids are the most inspiring thing that pushes me. It used to be because they were born, and I had to take care of them. Now it's because my son raps, and he's better than me. So now I gotta keep up with him, you know what I'm saying?
Your child is never not your child. You can be 90 and your mother 120, but your mother is still worried about you.
I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed.
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