As a starting point, there is often a point that we have to agree upon before we move forward. That point is that every child is deserving of unconditional love and acceptance.

In honor of the anniversary of me becoming a parent for the first time, I wanted to explore a bit about what parenting looks like, and the ways I see choices as a parent impact kids. Often, the people I work with will grapple with having parents who loved them and provided for them, and who missed the mark in some way shape or form. As a parent, it is damn hard to know if what you are doing is right because there is no handbook, and it isn’t like kids can fill out a satisfaction survey to give you feedback on what you do great and where you can improve. Hell, for all they know, you DO have a handbook and are following it precisely. They have no frame of reference for you and your performance. So, you have to try and cobble together what parenting looks like from your own lived experience, your friends, your family, blog posts, books and tv shows as well as probably 15 other sources that will likely make you feel more like a failure than a success. Unless you are looking at a terrible parent, you will likely often struggle with feeling inadequate.

Recently I have had Killswitch Engage’s album “As Daylight Dies” album playing which has always been one that I loved. There is a track called “Unbroken” on that album which has the lines:

“Through adversity, there is redemption. With passion, fighting. I am, unbroken.” As well as; “The absence of fear is the renewal of our self.”

Following years in an abusive relationship I have gotten to a place where there is some level of appreciation of what I went through. I would never want to go through it again nor would I want someone else to endure it, but for me it was truly a transformative experience.

I wrote previously about the impact of imagery on all of us when it comes to actors and magazine covers and how it creates these impossible standards that most of us are simply incapable of reaching. The problem with this is that often companies and publications will market these images to us in a way that makes them seem attainable if we work hard enough, dedicate ourselves seriously enough, or take the right supplement or vitamin. Hell, we often see our action hero leads as almost an every-man at the start of a film, and then we see them rise to become a hero. This subtly tells us that even a guy who works a job that takes up most of his day and energy, and who raises his kids can have this ultra-impressive physique with rippling abs and bulging biceps even though he eats trash. Magazines and ads for fitness equipment tell us all we need is 20 minutes a day a few times a week to follow this training protocol. But all these conveniently leave out all the factors that go into having this exact physical appearance.

For many of us the journey started with simply not liking our body and how it looked, and the goal was to get our outward appearance more in line with what we thought we should look like. For some people, that goal was “I need to gain mass and size” and for others it was “I need to really lean out and both build more muscle but also show more muscle”. The boards all were united in being unhappy with our individual appearance, and wanting to change it, and being willing to make significant alterations to our daily lives to get there.

The fact is that when we are true to ourselves, and when we stay within what makes us uniquely ourselves, we can find our audience. It may take a good bit of patience because finding our audience can take time, especially if we are starting from zero. That is not to say that we may not have a stroke of luck, but we cannot bet on luck, only ourselves and who we really are.

This is where love becomes something that is painful and where sadly as adults it may take us years to really figure out if we made the right choice. Even following the end of an abusive relationship, where we have been harmed over and over, we may question why we were not enough, or if we had worked a little harder, maybe they would have loved us more. But in the end, when it comes to romantic love, the hardest part is losing the person we loved. Whether we genuinely lose them, or whether we lose our connection to them, loss is loss, and it hurts like hell.

One of the communities I interact with most regularly and find a huge sense of belonging and acceptance in are the people who love Disney. Oddly, Disney was not something I have maintained a relationship with my entire life, and in my high school years through most of college I missed out on a ton of movies that I am now going back and rediscovering. However, something I have noticed in these movies is the importance of community, and that the happy ending usually stems from sort of a reconciliation of someone with their community. This is often seen with their family or their friends including the new friends they make along their journey. We, the audience often get to watch the primary character of these movies struggle to feel a sense of purpose and belonging and through the plot devices of the movie we see them face the fact that they are who they are, and lean into that, because that becomes the only answer. We then watch them triumphant in their storyline and see that those who cared about them love them just the way they are and never asked nor wanted them to be different, or if they had at one point wanted that, they suddenly come around seeing the error of their ways.

Walking into the park, there was an energy, and the fact that it was already decorated for Halloween was an even more magical experience. Other than crying at the sight of the Millennium Falcon lit up at night, I vividly recall the feeling and the ambience of the Haunted Mansion that first night. There was a giddy feeling for me around it, seeing it decorated for Halloween and then coupling that with it having the holiday overlay in the theme of Nightmare Before Christmas (for the uninitiated). I have heard of people developing an instant bond with people, but I think for me I developed an instant bond with this piece of land and this specific attraction. The area the Haunted Mansion sits in, New Orleans Square is one of my favorite areas in all of Disneyland and I have spent a chunk of time there just enjoying the scenery and energy.

I have been very fortunate to find a sense of community in multiple places and multiple fandoms. However, it was not always easy because there is always that strong pull to avoid the things that other people shit on. Anything I love unironically I can point to a subsection of the population who thinks it is dumb, a waste of time, immature or any other number of things. Disney, Star Wars, lifting weights, fantasy books, or any number of my music choices all get hate from someone somewhere. But for many of us, we feel shame in the fact that someone out there does not get it, or maybe that we feel such a sense of joy from this thing that we feel we should hide it.