If you feel like you are failing your child, I have a story for you.

At our Thanksgiving table this year, my oldest (who just went off to college) said he was thankful he grew up in a home where he didn’t have to worry.

I could feel my breath catch in my throat.

Because when he was little, I worked 80 hours a week trying to finish my family practice residency. His father was actively using drugs and went away to rehab twice and lived in a three-quarter-way home for six months before he found sobriety. We could barely pay our bills. I once abandoned a full cart of groceries because there wasn’t enough in the bank, and I cried my eyes out when our water was turned off for a whole weekend. We moved and fought and failed and floundered and many, many times I was sure I was failing my child.

I worried. A lot.

But…

I never stopped showing up.

I showed up for dinner. I showed up for bath time and books before bed. I showed up for snuggles on the couch and afternoons at the park and trips to the zoo. I showed up to rock him in that green chair in our living room and sang all his favorite songs and clapped his little hands. I showed up for basketball games and school programs and Minecraft creations and very long stories about ‘the weirdest dream ever.’

I showed up for our family. I showed up to work. I paid the bills and bought the groceries and switched the laundry from the washer to the dryer. And I prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed as I began a new life with my husband, and together we fell and failed and stood up and tried again. We added babies to the family and took a handful of family vacations and watched our little boy grow up and cheered from the sidelines and served up snacks and welcomed his friends. And NONE of it was perfect. Or fancy. Or even all that special.

Today we live in a regular house on a regular street in the middle of an ordinary life. Our son drives an old beater car and works part-time and pays for his own college tuition.

But...

He came to Thanksgiving dinner nearly finished with his first semester and told us he was grateful for his childhood. A childhood where he was safe and warm and comfortable and loved and always our first priority. A childhood where he didn’t have to worry.

Turns out, we provided a perfectly ORDINARY life filled with a million imperfect ORDINARY moments. And those ordinary moments became his whole childhood. A childhood he looks back on now and feels grateful for.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you feel like you’re failing them, you aren’t. If you always wanted more for them—something so much better—I promise, what you’re giving is enough. The imperfect, ordinary moments of today will become a whole childhood they will be grateful for.

They don’t need perfect or fancy or special. They need YOU. They need ordinary. They need love.

And they need you to keep showing up.

I’d love to share my new book with you! Everything I Wish I Could Tell You About Midlife