Growing up, I loved my dad madly. I thought he was the best human around. He seemed to me to have endless knowledge about every subject. He held the bar for what it meant to live by an uncompromisable moral standard. He was kind and compassionate. And, he was exacting in his expectations of others, particularly his children.
Speaking “proper” English was important. I learned quickly that “hopefully” and “second of all” were improper uses of the word/phrase. (It’s “I’m hopeful” and “second,” in case you are wondering.) When I returned from a year living in Australia as an exchange student when I was 17 with the habit of picking up my food with the tines of my fork pointed down (European style), I was promptly schooled in the “correct” (read: American) fork-holding etiquette. When I received a grade of “A”, he’d ask why it wasn’t an “A+”.
When I told my dad that I was returning to school to pursue my doctorate, he (who holds a Ph.D. and a JD) informed me that you couldn’t pay him enough money to return to either side of the lectern. When I was invited by Bob Kegan, one of the adult development field’s preeminent theorists, to serve as a Teaching Fellow for his online course at the Harvard Extension School, my dad ridiculed online education as lacking rigor and academic integrity.
I strived mightily to live up to his expectations, to make him proud. But, no matter what new heights I achieved, I seemed to let him down. And, because my dad was such a model of perfection, it must be me who was wrong, who was less than. It couldn’t have been him. And, my father, imperfect as he was, as all humans are, would never let on that he was wrong, that he made mistakes, that he, too, was flawed.
The way I got loved as a child was by achieving, by contributing, by being perfect. I carried this story of what makes me lovable into my adulthood. I held it as truth. What I also carried with me was a steadfast desire to live up to this impossible standard of perfection, and an unrelenting recognition of all of the times that I did not.
During my doctoral program, I came upon this theory of adult development with its expansion of our capacities to see, feel, think, and act, to make-meaning in ever more complex ways. I was hooked. My own life and development overall seemed to map so precisely with the theory. Except for one thing. The theory seemed to paint a forward-moving, stairway-to-heaven journey. My own experience of development was marked by many forays into smaller, less complex, less expansive ways of being, thinking, seeing. I had a certain set of capacities that in the adult development field are referred to as one’s center-of-gravity – the normal place from which one makes sense of and engages with self and the world. These were present when the birds were singing and the breeze was blowing and the sun was shining. But, when the scaffolds that propped up my ideal self were absent, I would fall back into a smaller, more constricted space of making meaning and acting. And, this could happen often. Certainly weekly. Perhaps even daily. Okay, let’s be honest — sometimes several times in a day.
And, I was primed by my upbringing to notice it, to be crystal clear when I wasn’t meeting that bar. So, I would do what any self-respecting adult does when they’re having a bad day. I’d close my door, not take calls, and wait for the smallness to pass. If it was really bad, I’d hole up in my bed with a box of tissues, a glass of wine and the Real Housewives of whatever city to make me feel a little bit better as a human.
Then I had children. And, children are in your face all the time. There’s no closing yourself behind the door to wait it out…cry it out. Children are right there with you, reflecting you back to you, constantly.
I have a distinct memory of losing my shit with my at-the-time two-year-old son. I don’t remember exactly what had transpired other than that expectations for one’s children’s perfection seem to have been an inherited trait. When my son did not live up to my expectations, it often challenged my own sense of perfection. And, that showed up in blame of him and shame within myself.
In this moment, I had fallen back far. I had none of my greater capacities in my grasp. I could see my ugliness. I couldn’t hide or deny it. Yet, my son, who took the brunt force of my fallback, looked back at me with so much love and acceptance. And, that broke my heart and at the same time cemented my commitment to wading into the depths of my own deeply imperfect humanity. And, doing so out loud. My children are simultaneously one of the biggest triggers of my fallback and the source of my greatest desire to embrace the fullness of me, to learn, and to grow.
Oh, what profound lessons I may have learned, much earlier in my life, had my dad only revealed the fullness of himself. Had he allowed me to look into the eyes of a man who stumbled, and bled, and raged, and then acknowledged his fallibility. Had he seen me loving him back, not for the high-gloss sheen that hid his imperfections. But, loving him back, because of the them.
Yet, this is hard. Even when I see myself failing, which I do so often, it’s shameful to admit it to myself, it’s wrenching to own it with others, it’s devastating to acknowledge it to my children. Still, painful as it is for me to own up to my small self causing them pain, it is critical that they see that I am far from perfect. That their love for me not be predicated upon my perfection, but rather on an appreciation for the awe-inspiring beauty of a human showing up to the practice of being human, day-after-day, sometimes triumphantly, and sometimes on my knees. Because, in allowing them to see and love the fullness of me, they may be better able to see and love the fullness of themselves.
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Last week, I had the opportunity to talk to my friend and colleague, Gideon Culman, on his podcast Where Genius Grows about the wretched agony of inviting our more shadowy characters into the light…and the beauty of surrendering to the fullness of ourselves. It’s a raw, revealing exploration of the experience of fallback…and the practice of showing up to self, day-after-day, recognizing the full, messy, complex, imperfect humans that we are.
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