I'll go first. This week kicked my butt. I was tired. I didn't post as much as I wanted to. And honestly? I'm still showing up tired right now. 😅 So instead of pretending everything was perfect let's just be real with each other. One word. How was YOUR week as a parent? Drop it below. No explanation needed unless you want to give one.

Father, Today I come against the lie that I am not enough. Not a good enough parent. Not a patient enough parent. Not a present enough parent. Not a strong enough parent. Lord, I confess that sometimes I measure myself by my mistakes. I replay the moments I lost my temper. The moments I missed it. The moments I should have listened more. The moments I should have corrected differently. And if I'm not careful, I start believing those moments define me. But today I reject that lie. I am not a perfect parent. But I am a parent who loves my children. I am a parent who is trying. I am a parent who keeps showing up. And Father, my qualification does not come from perfection. It comes from You. You entrusted these children to me. Knowing my weaknesses. Knowing my flaws. Knowing every area where I would need Your help. And You still chose me. So forgive me for questioning what You already decided. Forgive me for believing I have to be perfect to be effective. Forgive me for carrying guilt You never asked me to carry. Today I release the pressure. The pressure to have all the answers. The pressure to never make mistakes. The pressure to get everything right. Father, heal the places where comparison has stolen my confidence. Heal the places where shame has stolen my joy. Heal the places where fear has convinced me that I'm ruining my children. Because I am not raising them alone. You are helping me. You are guiding me. You are covering what I miss. You are redeeming what I get wrong. And You are working in my children even when I cannot see it. Lord, teach me to focus on progress instead of perfection. Help me celebrate growth instead of obsessing over mistakes. Help me parent from confidence instead of fear. I declare: I am not failing. I am learning. I am growing. I am being equipped. I am being refined. I am becoming the parent my children need. And where I am weak, God's grace is sufficient. My children do not need a perfect parent. They need a present parent. A praying parent.

You cannot regulate what you cannot identify. Most children and honestly most adults walk around with a constant undercurrent of feeling that they have never been given words for. So instead of saying 'I feel overwhelmed', they slam a door. Instead of saying 'I feel embarrassed', they shut down completely. Instead of saying 'I feel left out', they act out at school. Instead of saying 'I feel scared', they rage. The behavior is not the problem. The behavior is the communication. And the reason they are communicating with their behavior instead of their words is because nobody gave them the words. Today we fix that. THE FEELINGS VOCABULARY — BY AGE AGES 2–4 — Start Simple: Happy. Sad. Mad. Scared. Surprised. Silly. That is enough for this age. Do not overwhelm them. Just name it when you see it. 'You look mad right now. Is that what you're feeling?' Let them confirm or correct. 'It looks like you might be scared. That's okay. I'm right here.' The goal is to build the habit of NAMING before reacting. AGES 5–8 — Go Deeper: Add words like: frustrated, nervous, excited, embarrassed, left out, proud, disappointed, confused, overwhelmed, lonely. Play a feelings guessing game. Show them a face — real or in a book — and ask what feeling they see. When they act out ask: 'What happened right before you felt like doing that?' Teach them to trace the feeling back. AGES 9–12 — Get Specific: Now they can handle nuance. Introduce words like: anxious, humiliated, resentful, jealous, hopeful, insecure, grateful, conflicted. Ask bigger questions: 'What did that situation bring up for you?' 'What were you afraid was going to happen?' Help them see that most big reactions come from smaller feelings that were ignored too long. TEENS — Make It a Conversation: Stop asking 'how was your day.' Start asking 'what was the best moment and the hardest moment today?' Introduce the concept that one situation can produce multiple feelings at the same time. 'You can be excited AND nervous about the same thing. Both are real.'

Your child is not okay. I know that is hard to read. Because you have been working so hard to keep things as normal as possible. You have been civil. You have been careful. You have been trying. But your child is not okay. Not because you are failing. But because divorce and family separation are one of the most destabilizing things a child can experience. And children do not process it out loud. They process it in their behavior. In their body. In the quiet of their bedroom at night. Here is what your child may be carrying right now that they have never said out loud: "Is this my fault?" More children than you know believe their parents split up because of something they did or something they are. "If I am good enough will they get back together?" Children will silently perform for years trying to fix something that was never theirs to fix. "Which one do I have to choose?" Even when you've never asked them to choose they feel the pressure every single day. "Am I going to be abandoned too?" A parent leaving the home plants a seed of fear that the other parent might leave too. None of this is your fault for getting divorced. But it is your responsibility to address it. Your child needs to hear out loud, directly from you that none of this is their fault. That both parents still love them. That love does not require a shared address. That conversation might be the most important one you ever have. 💬 Have you ever asked your child directly how they feel about the family separation? What happened or what has stopped you from asking? Our next post will talk about How to talk to your child about divorce without making them carry your pain. Real language. Real boundaries. Real healing.

Before we move into day two I need to share something personal. Because this series isn't just something I teach. It's something I lived. When I was 8 years old my mother passed away. And I remember my aunt Judy trying to make me feel better the only way she knew how White Castle burgers. I'll never forget what she said. "There's no time to cry. Just eat." And that was it. No conversation about where my mother went. No language for what I was feeling. No God in the room to make sense of any of it. I remember cursing God. I was 8 years old and I looked up and said if you were a good God why would you take my mother away? Nobody answered that question for me. It wasn't until I got older that I learned my mother had been dealing with hypothyroidism. That she had been sick. That this was a conversation our family should have been having while she was still living so that when she was gone we had something to hold onto. We didn't have that conversation. And I carried the weight of that silence for years. Fast forward to when my grandmother passed she was very present in my children's lives. And I refused to let them experience what I experienced. So I wrote them a book. It's called Grandma's Coming Home. It's based on our Christmas tradition, every year we would go to Maryland to her house to decorate and celebrate. But that Christmas she wasn't there. They looked everywhere for her. She was just.. gone. In the book my children drift off to sleep and have a beautiful encounter with grandma in heaven. She tells them she's okay. Her legs are working. Everything she ever poured into them is still there. And she's just moved to a different home. It's a book we can always come back to when we need it. I'm sharing it here today because somebody in this community needs it. Maybe for your children. Maybe for yourself. This is why we have hard conversations BEFORE the crisis hits. So our children have something to hold onto when the unthinkable happens. Not White Castle burgers and silence.