The Ripple Effect of Purpose

If the only part of me that risks getting bruised by living this way is my ego — then that’s a cost I’m willing to pay.

Because if showing up as I am — emotionally present, willing to be misunderstood, grounded in something bigger — helps even one person feel safe enough to be themselves, then the ripples are worth it.

I think about the young people I support through volunteering at Barnardo’s.
If this work helps me hold better presence for them — makes me more regulated, more open, more real — then it’s already worth something.

If someone misjudges me or jokes about my masculinity, and all that gets wounded is my ego?
So be it.

Because my ego used to mean everything to me.
Now, it doesn’t.
Now, my purpose matters more.

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What I Believe

I believe every human deserves to be seen, loved, and accepted exactly as they are — and to have the right conditions to become who they’re meant to be.

But with children, that belief holds a deeper gravity. Because children don’t have the luxury of reparenting themselves — not yet. They adapt. They survive. They contort themselves around what’s tolerated, what’s safe, what’s familiar.

And sometimes, in that survival, they lose themselves completely.

When a child has even one adult who sees them with calm, regulated presence — who accepts them without needing anything in return — something begins to form inside them. A quiet trust. A stable centre. Even if that adult is no longer there in the future, that feeling remains.

They carry that sense of safety into the world.
They move through life with more trust — in themselves, and in others.
They grow up anchored.

But when a child is raised by someone who never learned how to hold emotional space — someone whose shame spills into the room, who unconsciously asks their child to regulate them — it creates a different kind of ripple.

It can shape a child into someone who distrusts love.
Who rejects their own needs.
Who learns to anticipate, fix, and silence themselves.

And I know that ripple all too well — because I lived it.

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The Wound I Carry

I know what it’s like to not be held emotionally.
To not feel loved in the way that mattered.

And it leaves a wound that doesn’t just sit quietly — it shows up everywhere.
It makes it hard to trust people.
Hard to let love in.
Hard to even trust it when it’s finally there.

The negative impact has been immense. And what’s difficult to sit with is this:
What I needed wasn’t impossible to give.

It wasn’t some heroic act of sacrifice.
It was presence.
Regulation.
Care.

But instead, I was shaped around someone else’s unmet needs. And I know I’m not alone in that. I think it’s more common than we’d like to admit.

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What I Refuse to Pass On

Because of that, I make a vow every day — especially in how I parent my son.

I refuse to let my insecurities leak into him.
I refuse to make my emotional regulation his responsibility.
He didn’t choose to be born — and he shouldn’t be expected to take care of me.

Children should have the space to grow into themselves, not shrink to fit the needs of adults who never learned how to hold their own pain.

When a child is born into a home where their role is already assigned — to soothe, to perform, to rescue — they’re robbed of the most basic human right: to simply be.

I won’t let that happen to him.
And I won’t let that happen to the young people I work with either — not if I can help it.

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The Ripple Effect

I used to think staying quiet made me kind.
That speaking the truth would make me unlikable.
But now I see it differently.

If something I say makes a parent pause — even feel uncomfortable or called out — maybe that moment of discomfort is a gift.
Maybe it leads them to reflect.
And maybe that reflection, painful as it might be, helps their child.

Because truth doesn’t only serve the person hearing it — it ripples into the lives of those around them, especially the ones too small to voice their own pain.

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So I’ll speak.
I’ll risk being misunderstood.
I’ll let the ego bruise.

Because the ripple matters more than the surface.
Because children are worth the truth.
And because I’d rather live with a soft, open heart than a silent one.

This post is just a beginning. I’ll come back and shape it more later. But for now, this is what I needed to say.

And I trust that someone, somewhere, might need to hear it.