am going to start by being honest: I am prone to being stressed the fuck out. I know I barely have things to stress about (relatively speaking) but in retrospect, I have seen some of the signs: stress eating, too much sleep, mismanagement of my time resulting in disappointment and intense procrastination. Plus, climate change has 2018/2019 feeling like coldest winter ever (on top of the 365 day long hunger games, also known as 2018) which is the perfect time for my seasonal depression to set in.… It has taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that I battle depression and anxiety, even after my homegirl Dr. Donna Oriowo hinted that my anxiety may be something I want to NOT gloss over, (which I kind of did any way)… But in a weird way I found comfort in realizing that I’m just one of the billions of people on earth dealing with what could either be intersectional oppression or my bad habit of giving too many fucks about things I cannot control, like Donald Trump being President.

Often when we think of self-esteem, we think it happens on an personal level and that nothing interferes with it. Believe it or not, self-esteem is a concept that must be taught and is taught unintentionally and intentionally. The unintentional teaching of self-esteem usually teaches us how to have the lowest self-esteem possible. As a teen, this is happening on a variety of levels in every environment they enter.

The path to end parent shaming was an interesting one for me. With my goal of helping create a society that doesn’t condemn every parent for every mistake they make, I have forged a message and a voice that feels so far removed from the emotionally abused girl I once was. Growing up in the type of home that I did, with the history I have, makes it almost impossible to believe that I am here – as a professional, as a healing voice for parents, and as a sane woman capable of love (both giving and receiving). But, alas, here I am, on a mission to create a shame-proof parenting framework that will change the way we think about parenting.