There really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.
—Anne Lamott
In times that seem to bring out people’s worst, parents feel something different. We’re raw. We’re vulnerable. We tear up when we hear about the loss of a loved one. We feel it in our gut when we think about families struggling to make ends meet. Those viral videos hit us differently. The stepparents gifted adoption papers, the military parent surprising their children with an unexpected visit home, families reunited at the border? It’s like instant waterworks . . .
What is that? You’re raw because having kids has opened you up. “I wasn’t emotionally prepared for parenthood,” the comedian and author Michael Ian Black writes, “after spending the thirty previous years in a cauterized emotional state.” Parenthood forces you to engage the world in a more active way. It forces you to engage with yourself and your own emotions in an active way. Was it easier to go through the world closed off and cynical? Is there something tribal and reassuring about focusing on yourself and your problems and placing the blame for those things elsewhere, on those other people? Of course. But that’s less and less possible these days. This parenting thing has changed you. It’s made you see that it’s all connected, that we’re all connected. It’s made you better.