On Parenthood
On Parenthood
By Ashley Mozingo
Age 34 Winston Salem, NC, USA
I will no longer allow anyone to discredit my thoughts on parenthood just because I’m not a parent. I have two. And most importantly, I’ve been a child.
We have severely underestimated the spirit’s capacity to understand and translate energy.
This truth revisits me often. Especially now as I sit in reflection, in softness, in clarity — about the decision to bring a child into the world. It is not a fleeting thought. It is not a romanticized rite of passage. It is a deep, committed, life-altering choice.
Childbirth is not casual. It is sacred. It is cellular. It is ancestral. You are preparing to bring the world an ancestor, often disconnected from your own.
I don’t think people fully understand that. I don’t think we speak with enough honesty about what it means to become a portal for life.
Not just biologically, but energetically, emotionally….
…spiritually.
To decide to have a child because you “love this other person” — or in some cases, don’t love the person, which baffles me more — feels deeply misaligned when the context around that decision lacks support, healing, and intentionality.
Are we paying attention to the conditions in which a child is conceived, raised, and energetically held?
It frustrates me.
Because I know what it feels like to be born into someone else’s untended to hurt.
To arrive on Earth as a witness.
To feel, from the very beginning, that the world I entered was one shaped by unspoken sadness, masked pain, withheld resentment, and adult expectations that had nothing to do with me but yet would be projected onto me anyway.
Children know.
They know the conditions of their arrival.
They know the unsaid.
They know the frequency of your fear before you’ve ever spoken it aloud.
You feel regardless of you speak the feeling.
I knew my mother resented me before I could crawl.
Her energy spoke very loudly.
Her trauma, her body, her innocence, and her grief all folded into the making of me. I was here reminding her of every choice she never fully accepted as her own.
As an adult I understand. I’ve cried the tears I needed for the two young adults with 3 children and no other option but to try to keep us alive. There was no time for dreaming, planning, or loving. Living as two adults in the 80s/90s, as a 60s babies?
But my point. Children are people too.
They can feel. Be hurt, be inspired, be afraid, be confused.
They can also be great listeners and understanders too.
This is what people do not talk about enough:
That a child, even without language, understands vibration.
Understands avoidance.
Understands when love is performative and when presence is fractured.
We come through knowing.
We arrive attuned.
I hear often when decisions are being made, “the heartbeat changed my mind”. I hear this and wonder if they even know the sound of their own heart.
Or “my family name”, well what of it? I want to know from curiosity not condemnation.
“Legacy”…. Of? A family of? What do you mean? What are the conditions and definitions?
This is my radically loving advocacy.
Before we think about welcoming the idea of children, ask:
What is the condition of my heart?
What/Who/Where are my support systems?
What are my values?
It’s not just about “loving” a child. It’s about being well, being honest, being present… or being on a healing path that allows for those things.
We can’t rush past these questions.
The child you bring into this world will not just inherit your smile or your eyes.
They will inherit your energy.
Your fears.
Your silences.
And your capacity — or incapacity — to love from a less fragmented place.
My wish for myself, and for all beings…
That if and when we choose to become parents,
we do so with honesty.
We do so with softness.
We do so with support.
And most of all, we do so from a place that allows children to arrive as honored beings. It’s an honor that they are alive and are here.
May we create conditions where it is safe to age,
safe to love,
safe to begin again.
