Shame, Co-Parenting and Forgiveness
Joel Leon steps into the confessional
“I didn't see any book for like, hey, I met this person . . .we had unprotected sex. We're having a baby now. I want to show up for this baby and this co-parent, but we're not intimate like there was no book for that for me.”
In the Spring of 2009 I had been working to start a new church in Denver with nothing but a couple thousand dollars, a Masters in Divinity, and a mechanical pencil. I was working 60 or 70 hours a week, making fliers, writing sermons, setting up chairs, organizing events, and having coffee with what felt like everyone in Denver, twice. And despite my efforts, that scrappy little church just never managed to attract more than about 30 people each Sunday. We would get one new person and another couple would move away for graduate school. I was burnt out and exhausted and one Sunday when an especially low number of people came to church, I came home afterwards feeling like a complete failure and my 8 and 10 year old kids were fighting with each other in the living room.
The phone rang and I could barely hear the person on the other end and I covered the mouthpiece and told my kids to cut it out. On the phone was a young man from church who was calling to tell me that he just doesn’t have time to help anymore and needs to step down from the leadership team and I mustered everything in me to be gracious and tell him I understood and don't worry about it. But all the muscles in my chest and neck were contracting at the effort of it, so that by the time I hung up, I launched into my still fighting kids in a way that was far beyond acceptable. I slammed their doors as hard as I could and I yelled at them to just fucking stop it. I was out of control.
Within the hour I would find myself on the edge of their beds, teary, admitting that my anger had nothing to do with them and it is never ok for someone to act like that toward them and also asking their forgiveness.
It was my worst parenting moment. And I’ve always secretly feared that it is also the one moment they will carry with them forever. Not the trips I took them on. Not all the times I read to them and jumped with them on our trampoline, but that one Sunday afternoon when I cursed and slammed their doors.
Just last year, when my daughter Harper was 20, I sheepishly asked if she remembered that moment. “Yes,” she said. “It for sure wasn’t good.” We sat there for a moment without saying anything, then she looked at me and said, “But in all fairness. We WERE being awful.”
The grace in that just floored me. And made me wonder -- what feels more impossible, forgiving our own parents for not being perfect, or forgiving ourselves for not being perfect parents?
My guest in The Confessional is storyteller Joel Leon, who tells me about his own worst parenting moment and how it led him to forgive his own father. Stay with us.
Joel was born and raised in the Bronx. He is the author of A Book About Things I Will Tell My Daughter and God Wears Durags Too.
Join me and Joel for a live chat!
Friday Sept 4th, 4:30p PST/ 5:30p MST/ 6:30p CST/ 7:30p EST Joel and I will have a chat live on my Instagram. Just click on the circle with my image on the upper left. Join us!
Watch Joel’s Ted Talk on co-parenting!
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Dear Nadia, I am not confident that I can offer blessings upon others as you do, but, as a poet, I do envision some of my words as blessings. Today, listening to you and Joel share, I was given this to offer for you. Nadia, I bless the gift you nurture and share of connection and story. I bless your keen insight into the souls and experiences of all who stop awhile to sit with you. I give thanks for your resilience and recovery, especially the knowledge that they never cease. I lift up praise in honor of you reminding myself that progress not perfection is admirable. And everytime you use your voice as a public theologian to love us queers out loud, I offer love and intercessory prayer so that you may influence others while starting safe and having fun. Thank you for introducing me to Joel and continuing to welcome me in. Would you share the link you mentioned in the podcast for the "women's" sexual health/sexuality/awareness org? Gender, as you know, is complicated, and once we start altering gender expression sex becomes more complicated than it already was.
I want to listen. I'm working, and I'd rather have this going than the radio. But I can't. Every graphic icon I click on just takes me to a separate image tab. Can you talk to someone who understands usability so that when I see the icon with the microphone and a start arrow that it will take me to the recording? I'm on a laptop. I look forward to these podcasts, but I find the usabiltiy frustrating....and I'm no spring chicken so hence, the grumpiness.