I am grieving today. Not because, well, isn’t that how I usually start… the disclaimer.

I will try to be more direct-ly. Again.

The thing about people and life and the role models your kids and mine have, is that there are things we love about others and things we do not respect or believe in, to the extent we do not allow those things in our own lives.

But because life is open and dynamic and contagious, our kids still pick up some of the things we dislike, we disdain, we abhor. And this weekend I saw some things in my children.

Although I will tell you any single day my children are beautiful and kind and loving and thoughtful and intelligent and captivating…

This weekend I saw deep cynicism, negativity, paranoia and general mistrust. Obviously, those traits hold deep-seeded triggers for me. And it’s not as if my children grew horns and started yelling out horrible things.

It’s insidious. But I felt this moment of knowing that they would have access to all the traits in the world because of me, because of their dad, their extended family, their schools, their friends, things they observe from strangers, social media, tv, movies, video games, not in that order.

And truly, I hope they choose a dose of some of the things that made me take pause. Because they serve a purpose.

To protect us all from unsafe people and places and experiences.

Without them, we live abused and naive and beaten about by others.

With too much of them, we live alone and quiet, gagged and tied, in hopes we have outsmarted the rest of the world, and we will never be reached.

And yet the lovely dose that allows us to live and breathe and give and receive is somewhere in the middle.

It’s difficult to watch the process of my children growing up, trying on different characteristics, in different doses. But today I hope they have the tools to try all the things they need to try. I hope they have the wisdom to choose what truly serves them. And I pray I will have the ability to love them unconditionally, with the right dose of discipline and acceptance. With the right dose of leading them and allowing them to make what I view as mistakes.

And I hope the mostest, that they have the utmost faith in themselves at the end of the day, that they are both capable and entitled to find that path for themselves.

And when I figure out how to do what I know to be the wise and thoughtful parenting, well, I will obviously quit writing this blog and sell my parenting book I always hint at… while NO ONE asks me to actually write it.

People, notice me fishing please!

To you and yours today,

With love

Martini Meditations

CC