My subject today is superpowers. I have never felt that I had superpowers, but when you really think about it, we all have some superpowers.

As new parents our superpowers are functioning on little or no sleep. Taking care of this tiny little human and while not always knowing what to do, letting instinct take over. To grow with our children, have dreams for them, to try to form their little lives into a person that functions in all aspects of society. Then without notice, suddenly your child is two. Suddenly you are dealing with this being that has opinions, whether or not they are voiced, they now have a mind of their own. Isn’t that what we as parents want? While the answer is almost always yes, sometimes we wish we could go back to the infant. At two, our superpowers are to try to move our little tornados forward, toward the right choices, to control their actions yet allow them to become their own person. Then we get to the teenage years. We really need our superpowers here. I always felt that my best superpower with my teenage children (whom I had four of at one time in the house) was to think about which battle was really worth fighting, with these soon to be adults. As teenagers, most kids are testing the waters, testing our patience and testing out adulthood. Is it really a battle you want to fight if your child dyes their hair bright orange? There after all so many more things that they could be doing that could be life and death situations, those are the battle I chose to fight. Those are the situations when I needed my superpowers. Then comes being an adult. I always tell the teenagers that being an adult is not always what it is cut out to be. As an adult, we will and do need many superpowers. We will need them for many of the mountains, which we will need to climb whether or not we want to climb them. We will need them for our spouses, our children, our co-workers, the loved ones lost, the loved ones who are lost, illnesses and family disagreements, and so, so many more.  So I guess I do have superpowers, and if you look inside yourself, you also have superpowers. No not those that you would think, like flying, or x-ray vision, or invisibility, but those superpowers that make us better human beings, that bring out compassion, that show us how to love and be loved, that allow us to hold our tongue. There are so many more but the most important one for me would be to let our children go, to let them fall down and pick themselves  up again, to become functioning adults in a society that tends to throw away everything including children.

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