Tag: positive parenting

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What I Need This Morning

I’m probably at my worst when plans are disrupted. It’s why I purposefully leave lots of time for everything I do and like to have a pocket full of backup options.

Today’s disruptions are complicated by my anxiety over what it means to be a single dad. I know I need an adult life that is separate from my sons, if only for the fact that it makes me a more complete model of self-care for them. More important is actually taking care of myself. Balancing that against being the sole caregiver of two amazing souls can bend me in half.

I’m letting go of the expectations I put on myself. Maybe the son who was in tears about missing his mom’s touch and had his first fearful episode of sleep walking doesn’t have to go to church today.

I’m replacing fear with love.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Grief and Comic Books

My sons used Christmas money to explore our favorite comic shop today. I remembered how I discovered the Hero’s Journey in a similar place, feeding my imagination for what one person could accomplish with the proper will.

We came home with piles of adventures and closed the day with a viewing of Avengers: Endgame.

The heroes who had survived cataclysmic defeat are the archetypes of grief. Captain America remains the eternal optimist, the unshakable hero who can only believe that good will come. Hawkeye gives in to darkest resentment, taking out his pain on the reality that has betrayed him. Black Widow works and works and works, she works herself to death fighting against the tragedy. Iron Man escapes from the past into his new reality, he discovers what he had before he lost so much. Thor escapes into self medication and pity, drinking himself into solitude.

Each of these archetypes has lived in me at times, but there is one character that I most aspire to personify. Bruce Banner turned inward, he stopped fighting the monster inside. He spent time with the Hulk. He learned about it. He learned about his darkest parts. In doing so he integrated his most destructive power with a mind focused on the good.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Best Christmas

Holidays are where I notice the biggest changes in our lives.

The house isn’t as colorful as it has been in the past and it isn’t filled with wonderful smells of food made with loving care.

But it is so peaceful. Christmas music plays while my boys quietly build their Lego sets and I lay back in bed, taking time for myself. They were excited for the most modest gifts. I feel like I know them better than ever, that our loss and struggles have brought us closer together.

All our fortunes bloom out of the unfortunate.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Don’t Overdo

We don’t have a tree up, I haven’t acquired stocking stuffers, and I’m not sure where the stockings are.

These were all on my mind as I pulled this card from don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements deck.

Now I’m thinking of Halloween. Mary was Tippi Hedren from Hitchcock’s The Birds one year before we met. She took bloody pecks out of a stylish blazer, wired birds around her, and had more birds torturing her hair. It was brilliant.

We overdid it all. Costumes, hikes, meals, decorations…we never sat for more than an evening by the fire. Even that would be rife with problem solving and planning.I don’t know if that’s what left her depleted and unable to fight off the infection, or whether she knew in her soul that her time would not be long. Both could be true.

I’m finding my pace. I’m learning how to rest.

I’m going to do my nest today.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Night Out at the Bar

Alcoholism.

I’ve written very little about it since questioning whether I was an alcoholic almost a year ago.

I stopped drinking on Halloween night, 2018. It was two months before I felt my mind begin to clear. I was entering a romanic relationship with a woman who had a history with addict partners. With her help I stared down two decades of unhealthy patterns and concluded that I had a serious problem. In truth, maintaining the relationship was a significant motivation in my quest to make myself better. That and being a better father to my sons drove me towards therapy and weekly (at minimum) AA meetings. It was all helpful. It was all necessary for me to spend serious time exploring my past and working through my guilt and shame. Why would I quit drinking for this woman and my sons, yet I hadn’t for my wife and those same sons?

I was missing a key element to my healing and it wasn’t until the romance was ended beyond my wishes that I discovered that key. Suddenly single again, I set to meditating and reading more. I picked up Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. It spoke immediately to the hole inside me. I was lacking in a love for myself that was crippling my desire for self improvement. I took on the daily affirmations and listened with care to my self-critical voices. I found inside myself an ability to heal. I didn’t need the therapy sessions or AA meetings anymore, I needed to spend that time expressing love and care for myself. I found an internal drive to push away the things that did not nourish me. Identifying as an “alcoholic” was no longer appropriate. I had broken the patterns and swam in the darkness that had lead me to self medicate. I loved myself too much to do more harm to my mind, body, and soul with alcohol.

I went out last night and danced among the drinkers. There were friends there, but I was primarily there on my own. A lot of it was uncomfortable. I still feel like widowhood is a contagion, that people are too vulnerable to come near that pain. It’s often easier to be around strangers. The music was good and I fell into the bliss of moving to it. It didn’t matter who I was, or wasn’t, dancing with, I was experiencing the moment just for myself.

Not drinking turned out to be the easy part.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Hard Questions

Thank God we had a winning soccer match tonight.

Otherwise, I may not have been able to field challenging questions from my ten-year-old. He opened with mumbling and I was an impatient prick until he fell to tears and said, “I’m afraid of what happens when people die.” This wasn’t just about his mom, I could see it in his eyes, he was contemplating everyone’s death on an empathetic level that would be overwhelming to anyone. I remember contemplating pain in a similar way when I was his age, it was so frightening that I closed off my empathetic self for decades.

So I was faced with the light task of not ruining my son’s compassionate path to adulthood. I held him and we talked easily about Heaven, the inevitability of death, and the power we have to choose how to face it. He’s a smart kid, he’s worked out much of this, but needed to cry through it a little. We turned to the subject of Mary and how he thought he didn’t properly say goodbye. The last thing he really remembers about her was watching the first half of the Super Bowl in the hospital. With the Eagles winning, it was a nicely exaggerated happy moment.

I asked him to remember all the times Mom said, “I love you,” and how many times he said the same to her. I told him, “Mom taught me about always doing this because we never know when we won’t have another chance.”

We talked about how he and his brother bravely came to the hospital and faced the news that Mom probably wouldn’t survive. It took them all day to be ready to see her and they stood shoulder to shoulder to tell her goodnight.

I told him that it was the first step towards Mary’s peace with dying. She’d find peace with many other friends and family over the next 36 hours.

There were more questions about the details of my comings and goings and what happened at the hospital while they were at home. We both got our tears out.

I thank God again for the wisdom these circumstances has afforded me and my sons. We’re not letting this break us, but allowing it to make us stronger.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Patience and Voluntarism

I’m proud of my son for getting back on the mats at Elevated Studios this week. He’s been mentally wrestling with attending class. I’ve tried to have patience and remember that if I force him to do a thing, that he’ll eventually hate the thing, me, or himself. I’ve asked him questions and attempted to find a way to help him train again. I can’t say anything I did or said got him there. He’s always some mystery to me.

For all that I don’t know, I am confident that letting him make these decisions is the right path in allowing him to develop as an independent individual.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Solo Dadding at Mountain Jam

This one was intimidating. Assumptions had crept in as I planned and envisioned our spring and summer adventures. I expected to have more support, a co-parent, to teamwork on grand excursions. I thought things might be getting easier. After 16 months of having my parental assumptions repeatedly blown up one would think that I should be used to this; or better yet, that I would give up on assumptions and the future. But I can be a slow learner.

Cap the dissolving of expectations with waves of grief and a busy unschool schedule, and I wasn’t feeling up to the task of four nights of festival camping. Especially since this music festival, Mountain Jam in Bethel, New York, would feature bands that had significant ties to memories of my late wife, Mary.

Screw all that. I have slept in tents since I was an infant, attended day-long festivals since I was a preteen, survived the riots of Woodstock ’99, logged thousands of hours alone on the road with my sons, and honed my situational intuitions over those many hours. I set my back straight and climbed into our Dodge Caravan with confidence.

The road smoothed and eased before us. The trip was shorter than expected. Somewhat miraculously, an online friend spotted us as we drove by her camp site and hollered. The rain came down and the van got stuck in the mud, but, with help, we got the tent up and had ourselves set for the first night of music before sundown. We continued to find the right people at the right times. Friendly staff and volunteers, helpful young people, generous vendors, fun and engaging performers, and very special families made for easy going days and nights.

Above all, I was reminded of how good my sons are at this. They made friends, charmed adults, and carved their own unique experience out of the weekend’s offerings. For my own part, I simplified personal obligations and expectations, enjoyed as much music as I could consume, and let myself have a whole lot of fun. We stayed up late, danced and played recklessly, and took care of business when circumstances called for it.

I came away from the weekend with my shoulders back and my head high. Our story seems impossible, I saw that in many faces as I told it to new friends, but there is an immense power in mastering an impossible task. Or just in taking it on and failing, as I have many times.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Bold Healing

“You know, I think this just might be the best summer eva.”

This declaration of a widower to motherless children may seem ludicrous. Maybe I have more confidence and chutzpah than I have any right to, but my ten-year-old responded with an easy, “Yeah, Dad, I agree.”

Summer’s not even here, yet we’re between road trips, on our way to a four-day music festival, and getting ready for my sons to appear in two Shakespeare productions, a jiu-jitsu tournament or two, and innumerable Delaware events.

I’ve been asked how I do all that I do with my sons. My first thought is that they’re not mine. They’re beautiful individuals who are stuck with me as their caregiver for a time. I feel a responsibility to not just prepare them for the world, but to launch them on mini quests into it. It is eternally challenging, frustrating, exhausting, and fulfilling. Their ability to navigate difficult situations rivals most adults I observe. They’ve had a crash course in unfairness, yet know they can make this world better by exploring and mastering it.

So, yeah, I think we’re looking ahead to the best summer eva.

God bless,

Jason

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Owning Up

On July 27th, 2018, I had a few beers with neighbor friends as our children played together. The night went longer than it should have and I had more to drink than I should have. My sons gave me a hard time as I tried to bring them home for the night, only a short walk away. I lost my temper immediately and threw our house keys into the darkness, telling them they’d be sleeping outside if they didn’t find them. Finally, with keys recovered, we got home and continued to bicker, with me becoming more belligerent. Over some perceived slight I went into a complete rage and smashed a chair on the floor repeatedly, screaming for their attention. I succeeded in the clear goal of terrifying them. They were screaming in fear and I shut myself in my room. After a couple weeks of really struggling as a single parent and increasingly losing control of my drinking, I lied in bed and stormed with confusion until I fell asleep.

My boys woke me a short time later, “Dad, the police are here.”

I don’t know why I was calm. I don’t know why I felt sober. I don’t know why I was able to quell their concerns so quickly. Maybe I know exactly why: I could have lost my children that night.

I went on to be angry at the neighbor who called, the police, and finally myself. I was too embarrassed to share the full truth. I slowly started to work on myself, a job I thought could be carried out privately. I was wrong. Not until I started sharing my worst stories and deepest fears was I able to get my hands around them and start to understand. Three months later I stopped drinking completely. A couple weeks after that I publicly dedicated myself to becoming a better parent. I’ve found people who listen to and challenge me. I’ve lost a lot of that anger.

And even with all that I had put this story away. The Orange Rhino Challenge had called me to reveal it weeks ago, but I chickened out. Then my elder son told the story of that night to new friends in front of me. I was immediately defensive and felt the embarrassment again. I was able to look at it more clearly this time and see how many things I had done wrong leading up to that night. Not sharing that story was a lingering mistake in the way of my self betterment.

God bless,
Jason