What They Got Right
This past weekend, my girlfriend’s niece and nephew stayed with us to celebrate their birthdays. Both are March babies. Her nephew turned thirteen. He comes from a home environment that I’d describe as challenging and inconsistent.
Spending two days with him hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. There’s a particular look a kid gets when they’re not sure if the ground beneath them is stable. You can see it in how they interact with adults. How they test boundaries quietly, almost scientifically. How they gauge whether it’s safe to relax or whether they need to keep their guard up.
Watching him reminded me that not every kid gets the same foundation. And it forced me to look at my own foundation more honestly than I have in a while.
I’ve been hard on my parents. I’ve carried frustrations about things I felt they got wrong, gaps I had to fill on my own, moments where I needed something they couldn’t or didn’t give me. Some of that is fair. Some of it I’m still working through. But this weekend cut through the noise and reminded me that being hard on them is not the full picture.
There are things my parents got right. And the things they got right have carried me further than the things they got wrong ever held me back.
My parents instilled in me the belief that I could do anything I put my mind to. Not in a bumper sticker way. In a way that seeped into my bones over years of hearing it, absorbing it, and eventually testing it against the parts of my life that felt immovable. I recognize the privilege embedded in that belief. Not everyone grows up hearing it. Not everyone who hears it gets to test it in an environment where the test is even fair.
But I did hear it. And I did test it. And time after time, when I’ve been at the bottom of something, staring up at what felt like an impossible distance between where I was and where I wanted to be, that belief was the thing that got me to take the first step. It is the foundation of every meaningful change I’ve ever made. When I didn’t like my health, I changed it. I don’t like my job; now I’m in the process of changing it. When I suffered a traumatic brain injury and had to claw my way back to being a functioning member of society, I did it because somewhere deep in me was the conviction that the climb was possible. My parents put that there. I should give them more credit for it than I have.
My mom instilled in me the value of taking care of my body. I struggled a lot with asthma as a kid, and she made it her mission to keep me physically active. She did everything in her power to keep the asthma from becoming an excuse to sit on the sidelines. She didn’t let me opt out. She found ways around it, through it, past it.
That carried over into my adult life in ways I don’t think she could have predicted. Over the last five years, physical activity has become a non-negotiable part of my daily routine. It regulates my mood. It clears my head. It gives me the capacity to handle everything else that demands my attention on a given day. I don’t think I arrive at that priority without her pushing me through those early years when my lungs were working against me.
My parents taught me the value of teamwork. That good people working together will outproduce any single individual, no matter how talented that individual thinks they are. I’ve seen this confirmed enough times in my career to know it’s not a platitude. The best things I’ve ever built were built with other people. The worst professional experiences I’ve had were ones where collaboration broke down and everyone retreated into their own corner, convinced they could do it better alone.
There’s something about watching a twelve-year-old figure out how the world works that strips away all the complexity you’ve layered on top of your own story. You stop cataloging the things that went wrong and start noticing the things that went right. The things you carry with you every single day without giving credit to the people who put them there.
I’ve been hard on my parents. Some of that is earned. But sitting across the table from a kid who is navigating a harder version of growing up than I ever had to, I felt something I wasn’t expecting.
Gratitude.
The belief that I can change my circumstances. The discipline to take care of my body. The understanding that I’m better when I’m surrounded by good people.
Those aren’t small things. Those are load-bearing walls. My parents poured that concrete, and I’ve been building on top of it for 31 years without stopping to acknowledge the foundation.
This weekend made me realize how much I've taken this privilege for granted. Thank you Mom and Dad.