Day 18: Use Your Past Failures

I was 26 when Magnolia was born. I’m not going to say that I had no idea how to be a mother, because I have great examples in my life, but I will say that the first thing I did when we got home was send Forrest to a book store to get me a bunch of books on parenting. We really did end up making up a lot of it as we went along. I feel like we had a lot of the basics down, and definitely the philosophies that our parents gifted us, but still, there was the night when the damn pacifier wouldn’t stay in and Forrest tried to tape it on (doesn’t work, by the way). Or the time when I tried baby led weaning and gave Magnolia some chopped up pieces of chopped banana and she quickly choked on the very first one. Or the time when doctor told us it was time to stop swaddling the twins and we laughed in her face because nothing, nothing got in the way of making sure those kids slept.

All that to say, well before we even hit the toddler years, the two of us were well-acquainted with failure. And I will be damned if I don’t use every one of those to offer empathy to new parents. A few friends of mine have had babies recently and asked me how I did this or that. Again, I laugh hysterically and say, “Oh, we did it all wrong. All wrong. But they’re still here, so I guess it worked out?”

I am certain that I still offer unsolicited advice, annoying parenting stories, and judgments about all these newfangled baby inventions. (Although I wish they had had those lay flat strollers back then. Why didn’t we have those?) But in community, the best path towards honoring people’s vulnerability is using your own past failures to give you the empathy they need. The antidote to shame, as Brené Brown says, is empathy. Only by owning our past, forgiving ourselves, and using our mistakes, can we offer that empathy to the people in our lives.

If we’re willing to do this, we can not only build deeper connections with our community, but also build the kind of community that is honest about its struggles. Until we can be straight with each other about what we need, we can never really be there for each other. Leading with vulnerability is setting a tone of gentleness, kindness, and humor.

How can your failures help you offer empathy today?