Abbie: Hello and welcome to the CosmoParenting Podcast brought to you by the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution. In this space, we invite you to see yourself as someone who is curious about and actively participating in creating your own meaning around parenting.
This is our ‘Validate’ episode, where in the second episode of each month we hear a parenting story, with the hope that sharing the first hand experiences of others who are parenting can make you feel seen and validated in your own experiences. Let’s begin.
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Abbie: Today, I am joined by Jenni, who is parenting a currently 17-year-old child. Hi, Jenni.
Jenni: Hi, thanks for having me.
Abbie: Thanks so much for being here. As you know, this is our theme about community. So what we've been talking about so far is the way that community is created, the way we show up to it, and then what we can provide and what we can receive from community. So with that in mind, could you share your story about community?
Jenni: Absolutely. So my son Noah is 17. He'll be 18 in December. And it has always just been the two of us. His dad's not been part of his life. Except it hasn't always just been the two of us because it's been a really lovely group of people who love both of us very much almost since before the beginning.
So when Noah was born, I lived in Chattanooga and my family was in Memphis. And so I had to cultivate pretty quickly people who were willing to love and care for my child. So the baby, like, we had a bunch of babysitters that were wonderful. A lot of them were teachers at the daycare. So they all had keys to my apartment and I drove a company car, but I drove a different car every day. So I'd leave my car seat at the daycare. And then that way I could just pick it up when I picked him up, which was great because when I got stuck at work, I could text that group of people and say, can somebody take Noah home? And somebody would. And there were nights when I got home and he was already bathed and either in bed or almost in bed because that's what we needed.
So, I'm a very independent person in that I don't like to rely on other people. But parenting is very humbling because you cannot do it on your own. And if you try to do it on your own, it seems like it might be to the detriment of your child. So one place where we intentionally invited some people into the role of helping to educate and raise Noah was around sex and sexuality.
So when you're raising a child of the opposite gender by yourself, there's a lot of questions you can't answer. There's even questions you can't anticipate because biologically, you're just very different. So when Noah was little, probably five or six or seven, maybe, he started having questions about his body, which I've always been very open and encouraged him to feel free to ask me anything.
As he got older, those questions got further out of my frame of reference. And so one of the things that we did is he and I sat down and we thought about some men that he would feel comfortable going to with questions. So out of the people that love us, he came up with three people: the principal at his elementary school, a friend of ours, and the husband of a friend of ours.
So then I got to go to those people and ask them if they would be his “penis people,” and if he could come to them with questions about his body and about sex and sexuality. These are people that I trust to give non-harmful answers, and they all very kindly accepted the invitation. And that way he knew that he had people other than just me and my parents that he could go to. And I also think it brings in other perspectives. So one of the men that he named is gay. And so he was able to go to him with some sexual identity questions in a way that I don't know that I could have answered for him, or at least I would not have answered them the same.
And so it was really helpful to have other people who could help carry some of the load, but also bring different perspectives to it. And I think Noah's growth as a person was helped by it.
Abbie: I think that's such a beautiful story. And I hope encouraging to other people who are parenting, who are listening, that there are people out there that want to be generous with their time and energy. And if you can kind of cultivate that in your communities, like you said, it's really necessary as you're parenting. I really appreciate you sharing this story with us today.
Jenni: Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to.
Abbie: Thank you. And to everyone listening, thank you for joining us, too. Don’t forget to check out www.cosmoactivities.com for our other resources in this series and be sure to comment on this podcast episode on the CosmoParenting Substack. We are so grateful to be on this journey with you. And we will see you next week to explore some parenting best practices.
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