Reflections: (Re)Parenting & Belonging

Whooee this one was 🔥. We resumed our Conversations on Tranformation by stepping right into it: talking about the art of “re-parenting” in the context of belonging.

First myth to bust: this isn’t just for those of us who have children (biological or otherwise). This is about transforming ourselves, about the process of unlearning harmful patterns/behaviors and practicing new ways of being.

Reparenting as transformation… and liberation

Jasmine Banks introduced me to the concept of re-parenting last year with a podcast episode on it, and helped frame our conversation. She traces the lineage of “re-parenting” from its origins in psychology (where the therapist assumes the role of parent to tend to the client’s wounded inner child), but offers a decolonizing reframe that sees re-parenting as “us getting back to our indigeneity.” She sees it as a vital intervention in addressing and healing ancestral trauma … as well as critical to how we show up for our children. As Akilah S. Richards put it:

Reparenting is creating liberation for myself.

The whole conversation was mind-expanding and challenging: our speakers named the tensions and feelings they/we were holding at different points in the discussion, and the livestream chat was active and full of feeling. Please check it out for yourself, and feel free to share comments/reactions here or on our YouTube channel.

Building Belonging member Olive Goh graciously managed the livechat and captured beautiful notes/reflections there. Here are a couple themes that stood out for me in the conversation and upon reflection.

Practicing “retroactive compassion”

Jen Lumanlan talked about being tender with our past selves, recognizing that one of the challenges of opening into new awareness is our tendency to “look back and see all the things we’ve been doing wrong.” Instead she suggests that once we accept the disconnect (between our aspirations for ourselves and the reality of our experience), we can move into practice to re-parent ourselves.

Eroc Arroyo-Montano amplified that theme, offering a couple metaphors about natural growth: the snake does not look back on its shed skin with disgust; nor does the butterfly lament the caterpillar. This isn’t about blaming (ourselves, or our parents). He invites us to practice “self reflection and self compassion rather than self flagellation.”

I loved this beautiful line from Eroc:

We have to mourn what we didn’t have so we can celebrate what we do have.

From decolonization to re-indigeneity

This theme re-emerged throughout the conversation: the notion that the work of re-parenting is about letting go of dominant culture paradigms that don’t work for us, and that were specifically designed to harm us (Jasmine speaking as a biracial black Cherokee woman: intersectional identities that settler colonialism deliberately targets for oppression).

I (Brian Stout) mentioned the emergence I’m seeing around this theme: the same week we hosted this conversation two of my favorite parenting podcasts took up this topic: Cindy Wang Brandt interviewed Jo Leuhmann on “decolonizing parenting,” and Trina Greene Brown interviewed Yolanda Williams on her work Parenting Decolonized. Jasmine noted how uncomfortable it made her feel to hear white people (me, in this case) talking about decolonization. The DiDi Delgado contributed from the livechat that perhaps this owes to the tendency of white people not to acknowledge blackness as indigenous. This picked up an earlier thread Eroc had introduced around how white people are suddenly becoming bestselling authors for writing about indigenous knowledge/traditions/medicines… playing on a long history of cultural appropriation and commodifying wisdom.

Akilah raised here that part of this work is about re-membering… not discovering something new, but acknowledging what has always been true: less transformation, more becoming.

Toward a more expansive vision of family

All four speakers recognized the limitations of the dominant culture vision of “family” as a product of systems of oppression (patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism) that shuts us off from other sources of wisdom and connection beyond the narrow filial bonds of our biological parents.

Akilah offered a beautiful meditation on this rebutting the myth of the absent black father, noting in her own upbringing the presence of many different nurturing black men (uncles, neighbors, grandfathers, brothers). Jasmine expanded on the historical roots of the myth (in the racist ideology of Daniel Patrick Moynihan).

Jen spoke to the limitations of the attachment theory model, one that places all responsibility on “parents” without attending to the broader systems and structures that inform our ability to securely “attach.” Jasmine expanded on this theme, noting how unnatural it is that our systems force us to be away from our children (the realities of survival in a system of capitalism that depends on wage labor, and a patriarchal “nuclear family” model that robs us of our natural communities of kinship). It is this forced separation that necessitates attachment, rather than attachment being a natural reality of nested communities.

Parenting as a portal

There was a gorgeous discussion framed around Akilah’s notion that “parenting is a portal”: an invitation into transformation via the prisms that are our children.

Jen spoke to the power of moments when we as parents are feeling “triggered,” observing that this is less about our children’s behavior, and more about attending to what needs are not being met… usually our own as parents!

Eroc echoed that observation, sharing a powerful anecdote of his own experience as a father with his five-year-old. Jasmine reframed the notion of “triggered” to instead offer:

Your young person invited you into a moment of transformation and was a mirror for you.

An invitation to practice

Our speakers closed by offering some practices listeners/viewers can engage in as they seek to practice reparenting for themselves.

Eroc offered a gratitude practice (involving his children in taking moments of appreciation) and a decompression practice: taking a hot shower, using plant medicines/edibles, to give himself the space to unwind and recenter.

Jen invited us to practice pausing; deliberately introducing rituals to slow down, to breath, to reflect, to step out of the frenetic pace of modern life.

Akilah spoke to confident autonomy, about deliberately moving from thinking about “borders” (externally imposed, firm) to “boundaries” (mutually negotiated, paying attention to ourselves and our bodies).

Jasmine invited a practice around accountability, with a beautiful nuance on not being “overly accountable.” Mothers in particular are often asked to be responsible for far more than is appropriate: the practice is to discern what is our work to do, and what is not ours.

I’ll close with a reflection that Jasmine offered that speaks to the transformative potential of reparenting, and is a nice set-up for next week’s conversation:

You have to make a decision if you are going to be an agent of domination or respond with care.

To continue this conversation, please follow their podcasts:

• Jasmine: Parenting is Political (with her partner Mo)
• Jen: Your Parenting Mojo
• Akilah: Fare of the Free Child

You can catch Eroc on social media, and buy Akilah’s beautiful new book!

We’ll be back this Tuesday, September 29th for the next in our series of Conversations on Transformation, this time on Parenting & Belonging, featuring Trina Greene Brown, Julietta Skoog, and Arnina Kashtan. Please register for the livestream by clicking the image below.