No Parent is Perfect

Growing up, children learn from what their parents do. Your words to a child only serve as a mantra, a phrase they are familiar with. These wont hold weight over time. However, your actions are what they will carry into adulthood. How you live will speak a bigger message than how you think people ought to. 

You can say to your child, "We need to be kind to everyone"; 

But when their wide, curious eyes watch you yell at customer service over the phone, you're really saying: 

"Be kind when you're given what you want"

You can preach that, "We should never judge anyone"

But your child will notice that you clutch your purse tighter and veer far away from the homeless man with a difference skin color. You're communicating:

"Never judge people that look like you"

You can reassure your son or daughter that, "You're beautiful just the way you are"

But when their ears take in you talking to your friend about how you hate your stomach and need a tummy tuck, what they hear is:

"Beauty can be attained if I work at it"

Parents aren't perfect and should never be held to that standard. So if these small things have such an impact on our children, what do we do? We show them we aren't perfect. We point out our mistakes and what we should have done differently. 

We say, "Did you hear how I talked to that person on the phone? I lost my patience and I should have been nicer to them. Next time i'm going to take a deep breath" 

"Did you see that homeless man? He's probably had a harder day than us. Lets go back and give him a sandwich" 

"Did you hear me saying mean stuff about my body? That't not right, we have to be nice to ourselves too. Lets pick out three things we like about ourselves"

And you may think at this point if you have to go back you've already messed up, but that's not the case. What better message to teach your children than self reflection? Show them its hard to do the right thing and we all mess up. When you show them you're human too, they will trust you more to communicate their own mistakes. You're teaching the mentality of "Okay I messed up, now what?" 

NOLA

Theres's something about the streets of New Orleans
They feel exquisitely haunted
You can slow dance with ghosts
As the brass band sings in celebration
In the dark, the city has veins and a pulse

A whole new meaning to the term "nightlife"

Now I talk to the moon
I sit in the darkness with your ghost
There's no sun in the afternoon
And I hate the word "almost"

Bargaining

I want to kill the sick part in me
The part of me that likes the sick in me

The part that guzzles down my drink
Driving down the road, bargaining

With God-- daring him to try me
My heart is hardening
While my thoughts are darkening
The road sparkling
But my ears are buzzing

And I remember that I'm sad

Then I remember nothing
Why is my knee bloody? 
Now my fingers are drumming
I think i'm losing my mind

Every bitter gulp tastes sweet to me
And they should've named me irony
'cause this is a safe place for me

Comfortable with chaos
Grounded when I'm high
I am found when I am lost
Too damn dead to die

Study Tip

If you are ever reading something that you do not feel confident that you will remember, stop where you are and ask yourself:

"Why would this be true?" or "Why does this make sense?"

Do not move on until you have an answer for this that you believe in. Even if it requires extra research. Reasoning is a much better strategy than blind memorization.

Motion Sickness

The most difficult part of the death of someone you love is that the most tragic day for you is another Tuesday for everyone else. Your world may have stopped at 12:23pm on August 16th, but everything else continued.

Expecting a grieving individual to keep pace with society is like making someone run a relay with the flu after they just realized their partner is not even there to take the baton.

“Why is life so complicated?”, she asked. The purity in her tone indicated a true curiosity.

“Because what we need to do, what we are supposed to do, what we want to do, what we can do, and what we are doing almost never line up"