My Personal Parenting Proclamation

I, the mother of my childrens' bodies and the wife of my husband's soul, solemnly proclaim that our marriage and my parenthood of you is divine. It's divinity is honored daily in the actions I take, the words I speak, and the lessons we learn together.

I declare that my role as a mother does not diminish my role as a wife or as an individual. Instead my role as a mother does requires that I re-evaluate priorities in order to care best for my family as well as take care of myself. As an individual I chose to become a wife and chose again to become a parent. With those choices I accepted the responsibility of you, my children, and of partnering with you, my spouse.

I believe it is the combined solemn responsibility of us as parents to nurture and teach our children as well as to provide for their basic (and sometimes complex) physical needs. I believe that each marriage, each partnership, must come to an agreement on how the roles and responsibilities of parenting and partnering play out on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

Mothers and Fathers - parents in any form - will be held accountable for their children. Society is built and destroyed by the children we raise. Parenting practices will live on in our children who will at one point decide what to do with them. Our rearing of them effects the way they treat the earth, the relationships they have with other people, and their fundamental beliefs of themselves. It is an incredibly challenging and sacred opportunity that we have engaged in.

I challenge myself to find ways each day to celebrate my role as a parent, my role as a wife, and my individual person. It is my shared obligation to care and provide for the souls of my children. It is my responsibility to care and provide for my own soul and needs, to ask for help when I need it, to seek and use resources, and to allow the time for these.