The Fear All Parents Share

My daughter falls off her paddleboard and an alligator is right there and grabs her leg. I-95 drag racers weave and my kids are slammed against the wall, dead. Wrong place wrong time, a fight, a gun.

Will my kids still like each other when they get older? My new teen driver gets distracted, hits someone and life is never the same again. My son gets shipped out to war and it’s the last we see of him.

These are just some of my gazillion fears. I bet you have a list that’s just as long.

I have some fears that are even darker and weirder, things that just pop into my head creating this sense of doom and make me wonder, “How did my mind even conceive of these things?”

My eyes widen in fear.

Worries. They play upon us. Haunt us. We swat them away but they love to nudge their way back into our minds, uninvited.

Thank God most never come true – most never come even close to being true. But that sense that there could be evil and pain lurking around the corner is very real.

One time, my very confident and smart 9-year-old daughter was walking around our neighborhood block with our new dog when two men in a truck did a U-turn, pulled around and asked her if she wanted a ride home to see her parents. She said, “no” and high-tailed it home. Thanks to some good detective work by our neighborhood security guards, we were able to trace the truck as a rental to a guy who had a prison record. I shudder to think …

I asked a few women who have raised kids to share what they would tell their younger self about the fears they had. Some said they wouldn’t tell their younger self anything, because worrying is what moms do – there’s nothing to change.

Others said they would tell their younger self to recognize that there’s no cookie-cutter way to raise kids and if you exercise that “one size fits all” approach, authoritarian rule is the result – and that can backfire when they become teens.

As Rose Lewis, now an accomplished counselor and the mother of my “Family Matters” colleague Diamone Ukegbu said, “Now that my kids are adults, I would give myself the advice to be more well-rounded in their life … their physical and spiritual health is just as important as their mental and emotional health.”

My dear friend Michelle Brown said, “As a mother to two Black male teenagers, I worried about an encounter with law enforcement or an authority figure … we instructed them on how to remain calm, cooperative and non-threatening in situations, but when Trayvon Martin was shot for simply walking down the street wearing a hoodie, I was truly afraid that no amount of prudence would save them.”

Now that they are adults, Michelle still worries.

“They are confident, self-assured, friendly young men, who sport tattoos, beards and muscles. While the world may see them as Black men, they are my babies. At this stage, I can only be grateful for each day that they survive without incident,” she said. “Random gunfire, car accidents and daily violence aside, I comfort myself by remembering that to be their mother is a gift that I’ve held for 30 years, and if they are taken tomorrow, I will forever be grateful. It’s a daily fear that I manage with prayer and gratitude.”

Michelle shares fears so many Black parents live with every single day. I can’t imagine adding that heavy-hearted fear to my list.

Another dear friend who wanted to remain nameless shared her subtle fear that somehow the strained relationship with her teen would continue forever and they would cease to accept each other. What parent doesn’t fear that their children could choose to reject them – permanently?

She shared that she would tell her younger self, “Self, you will grow, they will grow, your relationship will grow. It will grow because you will work hard on the parts of you that need to heal. They will grow because as they mature and understand the challenges of the adult world, they will have a softer view of you. But remember, as you grow, you will have to let go of what you thought would be and embrace what is. A beautiful surrender of something you actually never had: control.”

Wise and beautiful words of grace. Control is a fleeting thing, if it ever really exists at all.

I find comfort in knowing that every single parent worries. It means we are not alone. We care deeply. We could care to our death. It’s something every parent in the world shares.

Last year, we hosted an exchange student from Serbia, who has since moved on into his own place. When his parents came to the U.S. to see him, they came for dinner. We had an incredible night together even though we spoke totally different languages. When it was time to go, the mother hugged me tightly. This strong but petite woman had tears in her eyes as she shared how much she worried about her son so very far away. She thanked us profusely for being his home-away family. I felt I knew a little of her pain.

It struck me deeply that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, what your politics are, what your language is – when your baby steps out the door of your house, you will worry.

When wearing her work hat, Lisa Mozloom is a media and presentation training coach and PR practitioner at The M Network, but at home she is a woman passionate about raising three teens, loving her husband, and finding ways to extend hospitality and hope to those around her.