[Christin Spoolstra]

https://laceonrace.com/2022/02/14/christins-hope-vision-2022/

Christin’s Hope & Vision 2022

Discussion

[Christin Spoolstra]

I wrote this almost a year ago, a few weeks after Ary was born, as a contribution to LoR’s Hope & Vision series. Over that year, my hope has grown as I have continually found support from the LoR village as we learn how to parent toward a more equitable future.

[Shara Cody]

I share your hope, Christin, and that feels like part of the “cleaving together” in community. The mention of “balance” is standing out to me both as something that comes with parenting and as something that white supremacy has created an excessive need for as it works to keep everyone out of balance in order to maintain its hold and harm. As I’m about to become a parent for the first time, hopes and fears feel especially saturated and the need for courage and commitment from me are even greater so that I keep walking towards the North Star.

[Christin Spoolstra]

@shara – I love that “courage and commitment” over “balance”! Thanks!

[Rebecca McClinton]

I sometimes get too self centered on ‘my’ becoming ever safer for Black and Brown folks around me, centering me even in my quest to do the opposite. …how am I doing at it, what is ‘my’ impact. I appreciate Christin’s reminder here that it’s a me and a we. It’s part of what I appreciate about the break out groups at the Lace on Race cafe….how to take the work outside of myself, as a parent, as an employee, as a community member. Work that is a simultaneously inside and outside, this generation/and the next.

[Christin Spoolstra]

Yes, because if we focus only on our own safety(ish), then we’re missing the broader changes that can/should be coming. All the both/ands that we talk about, the internal and the external. Can be really overwhelming sometimes to think of all the different branches, so I’m really grateful to this community for ensuring I don’t stop and slide in overwhelm but keep moving forward step by step and with all deliberate speed

[Rebecca McClinton]

it really is the community/accountability bit, isn’t it, that makes all the difference! Glad to be walking with you here!

[Emily Holzknecht]

I am thinking here about the difference between hope and expectation. There is a parent who I work with who frames parenting as “the death of expectation”. This framing within the context of parenting a teenager and a trans one at that speaks to the reality of many parents a lot of the time and probably all parents at least some of the time. But expectation is different from hope. The death of expectation needs not be the death of hope. Hope has space for holding a whole person who is separate from the parent. And it’s not an either/or. We can grieve the death of expectations that maybe we didn’t even know we had while also celebrating the whole person we didn’t know would grace our lives and hoping for the future. And maybe some day we will find that we now see the death of those expectations rather than their fulfillment as a good thing.

[Christin Spoolstra]

Happy to learn from your veteran parenting about how to parent in hope instead of expectation!

[Julia Tayler]

Parenting is one of the hardest (if not hardest) things I’ve ever done. I worry about many things but certainly passing along kindness and compassion is a big one. I have two teenage girls and they say that they really look at their same sex parent for guidance. You have added fears and hopes that I didn’t have. I feel like part of the reason I do this work is to model to them and get them involved and down the right path. They ask more questions than I did at their age. We live in a predominately white area so it is important to ask questions and be willing to learn .

[Author]

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