Here’s the thing, effective parenting and, more specifically, effective discipline, don’t require punishment. Equating discipline with punishment is … - L.R. Knost

Our lives are our stories,
each day a fresh new page,
each season a whole new chapter.
Our parenting chapters become
the beginning of our children's stories
in glorious, dog-eared, mud-stained,
daisy-chain pages of sunshine-filled
days and wish-on-a-star nights and
shared struggles and triumphs
and tears and laughter.
Where their stories go from
there is up to them,
but where they begin is up to us.

Humanity is so confusing. We cover anguish with a smile, isolate ourselves when we feel lonely, and struggle in silence while insisting we're fine. What would the world be like, I wonder, if we all felt safe enough to share our hurts and fears and battles with others so we didn't feel so alone? The human experience is not so very different at its roots, after all, no matter where we live on this hope-filled, hurting planet. We all suffer. We all love. We're all afraid. We all hope and dream and try and fail and try again...and again. And we all need to be heard and understood and appreciated. What if we tried being honest for a change? What if we shared our deepest pain and hardest battles and darkest fears with each other? What if we shared our dearest hopes and wildest dreams and proudest successes and most crushing defeats? What would life be like if we humans finally accepted our own perfectly imperfect humanity and admitted that we need each other in this wild, wonderful world?

I'm just a human
standing in front of other humans
reminding them that we're all human.