Everything else follows from this

This one simple, essential thing

My kids weren’t with me for Christmas this year. It was their dad’s year. So, we gathered a few days later.

My youngest woke up in my house that morning. My bonus kid had Covid but was past the worst of it, so showed up masked. My oldest got dropped off eventually by his partner on her way to work.

We’re past the point where Santa, or any illusion thereof, needs to be maintained. No one climbed into my bed way earlier than I would choose with stockings. We weren’t in our jammies all day. Money is tight, so I declared it “Secondhand Christmas.” Meaning, everything needed to be purchased from thrift or reuse stores. I didn’t go all out for a Christmas brunch, either. Everyone made their own coffee.

It was very low-key and imperfect, and one of the best Christmases I’ve ever had.

I’ve never cared much, as a parent, about achievement, academic or otherwise. I didn’t push my kids to get high grades or participate in sports or clubs. I didn’t sign them up for music lessons, dance classes, or theater troupe as a matter of course. If or when they expressed interest in something, I did my best to make it happen. If their participation required an outlay of money, I made them finish out the season or the class session even if they decided they wanted to quit almost as soon as they started. That was the most pushing I could muster.

There was no high-minded strategy involved in all of this. It was knee-jerk and reactive as much as anything, especially at the beginning. My relationship with their father was difficult enough after we split. Further negotiation over fees and attendance at things was more than I was willing to handle. I also didn’t want to duplicate my own childhood— its trauma or mental illness.

I felt required to perform as a kid— grades, sports, and activities, followed by applause and accolades. I don’t fault my folks for pushing me, though. They wanted they best for me and it was what they knew how to do. For sure, it opened doors and afforded me opportunities. Layered on top of abuse and trauma, unfortunately though, it also left me racked with anxiety, and hyper-focused on external achievement and validation as a measure of my worth. Because, otherwise, I didn’t think I was worth much.

I never wanted my kids to feel they were worth nothing unless someone or something else affirmed they were worth something. I never wanted them to realize their entire sense of value was centered outside themselves. Instead, I wanted their belief in their own value to be unassailable. Everything else, I had to believe, would follow from that.

How to accomplish that, though? With nothing to guide me but reactive instinct, I flipped my hyper-vigilance on its head and paid attention to them. What were they drawn to, but also how did they move through the world?

How did they operate in relationship? When they were stressed, afraid, or angry, did they turn inward or outward? When someone else was vulnerable or hurt, how did they respond? Where did they feel like they belonged and why?

How did they play? What made them laugh? What did they care about?

When they failed, when they were unkind or careless or selfish, I tried to name it as behavior, not character. This is about something you did and there are consequences to bear, but it’s not who you are.

This all sounds so clear and unequivocal but, meanwhile, I’ve regularly doubted myself. Watched other parents and their kids in our progressive (sometimes elitist) college town, compared us to their excellence and achievement in all the things, and feared I’ve failed my children. We are devoid of fancy college acceptances or high paying jobs or accolades over here. Was that my job as a parent? Did I keep them from realizing their potential because of my own reactivity and trauma?

I don’t know, is the honest answer. I’ll never know. Because I made the choices I made and got the kids I’ve got. But I’ll tell you what I do know, which was so evident this Christmas: my kids are excellent gift-givers. They are generous and thoughtful. They pay deep attention to the people they love. They delight in each other’s delight.

They are all better at all of this than me, and I believe this is because, ultimately, they live comfortably in their own skins. They value themselves. Everything else that truly matters— care, community, belonging, satisfaction, and purpose, follows from that single, essential thing.

I don’t take credit for who they’ve become, entirely. How could I? But I do believe I played a part, and that they are proof positive of what I believed was possible, despite all experience and evidence to the contrary. So, Merry Christmas to me.

Just before I got the news that wrecked me from then until now, the news of the murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, I read a missive from Lyz Lenz about taking her kids to Mexico over the holiday to visit the Mayan ruins. I urge you to read it. I think it’s one of the best things she’s ever written.

Lyz wrote about the reality that all empires fall eventually. We are, as near as I can tell, living through the fall of empire now. And if I let it, the horrors of this moment can completely overwhelm me, make me want to crawl under the covers and stay there. But, as Lyz writes, if this is all coming to an end, then our task is to “start building what we hope will remain.”

To remain implies “already existing.” As in, we have to look around and see, if the suitcase we can manage to carry into the apocalypse must, by necessity, be light, what needs to be in it that exists right now? Do we need to carry our achievements and accolades? Our ability to ascend ever higher in the capitalist machine? Our willingness to exist in constant comparison to others such that we find ourselves always wanting?

Or do we need to carry forward the simplest of things— our sense of our own worth and the worth of others, and our most enduring values— decency, kindness, honesty, responsibility, discernment? Our integrity, in other words.

Everything else follows from it. I have to believe that.

XO,

Asha