Parenthood: The Most Beautiful Mess

As hard as parenthood can be, we wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Last week, as I was sitting on the couch with three baby shark stickers on my face, tiny toddler elbows digging into my ribcage, and orange juice residue on my shirt, I became aware of two thoughts almost simultaneously:

1. Parenthood is a life accelerator. The love that my wife and I have for our daughter has given us no choice but to get more clear, decisive, and action-oriented in every area of our lives. At this point, life feels more complicated than ever, but we can’t imagine living life the way it was before we became parents.

2. We’ve somehow been doing this, every day, for over two calendar years. TWO. YEARS. I still remember wondering how we’d survive the first full week as parents of a newborn.

To say that parenthood changed everything is somehow still not enough to articulate the way our lives have shifted to make space for Ada Valencia Clark. And as hard as parenthood feels on certain days, we wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Becoming a father is the most life-altering experience I’ve ever known—and I say this as a man who was expelled from college a month before graduation, quit his day job without a backup plan, and got married during a global pandemic. I’m no stranger to change, but fatherhood forced me to become radically honest with myself in a way that I’m still reckoning with over two years later. 

The life that we were building as a family of two was more simple and predictable, but it wasn’t necessarily better.

My wife, Duanecia, told me that I was going to be a father in January 2021. During that season, we had been wrestling with the intricacies of a life that we didn’t plan for. To be fair, no one could have planned for what happened in 2020 and 2021–what had started off as a chance to work from home for a few weeks somehow turned into a “new normal” characterized by a lack of contact with the outside world and an inability to take space from each other.

This was the second apartment we shared as a couple, but it was the first apartment that we spent almost every waking moment inside of. Before the pandemic, our three-bedroom apartment served us well as working professionals with daily commutes, healthy social calendars, and other commitments that gave us the individual space we needed to appreciate the time we spent together. 

As the pandemic stretched on for weeks, months, and years, the thrill of being able to work from home in slippers and bathrobes was gradually replaced by a more complicated web of emotions rooted in frustration, uncertainty, and dread. Was this the last month of the pandemic? Nobody could say. We weren’t just working from home, anymore–we were surviving an unprecedented global crisis while being expected to work and live as if nothing had changed from 9AM to 5PM, Monday to Friday.

We were never under the impression that our employers were invested in protecting our humanity, but the lack of care and concern strung more sharply as the pandemic stretched on. Feeling overworked from the confines of your home creates a different kind of stress–it’s more difficult to shake the tension from the workday when your commute home consists of walking out of the guest room and into the kitchen.

It’s also more difficult to romanticize life with your spouse when you’re forced to operate as deskmates in a co-working space from Monday to Friday. Our romantic mid-day “check-in” texts were no longer necessary, because we were rarely more than ten feet apart. Our “I’m home and I miss you kisses” turned into “just saw you an hour ago” lip pecks. We still loved each other deeply, but love alone wasn’t enough to carry us through all of what we were carrying as individuals and a couple.

To make matters more complex, we were both shadow-boxing with symptoms of diagnoses that we had yet to receive. Duanecia was diagnosed with ADHD in 2021. I was diagnosed with autism in 2023. In 2020, neither of us had the clarity, support, or tools that come with diagnosis. That lack of clarity, paired with an unexpected inability to take literal space from each other, made some of the simplest conversations feel like unsolvable puzzles.

This was true of the months, weeks, and days leading up to Sunday, January 17, 2021, the day when my wife, Duanecia, came back home, sat on the couch next to me, and passed me a positive pregnancy test. 

And in that moment, our world came to a screeching halt. 

Nothing else mattered.

Not the miscommunication.

Not the arguments.

Not the pandemic.

Not our careers.

We were sitting together on the same couch that had served as our office, date night venue, movie theater, and writing studio since the beginning of the pandemic. We were fresh off of an intense argument that had taken place on the same couch. And somehow, none of that mattered. It wasn’t that all of those details were pushed to the back of our minds–in that moment, they didn’t exist.

It was as though we had instantly walked into a different world, as different people, and with different priorities. In the ten seconds of silence that followed our shared revelation, we wrote entire novels in our heads. When we finally broke the silence, we were in tears, on the floor, cuddling in the fetal position.

I won’t bore you with the details of how long we spent crying and talking before we got up off that floor, or how long I spent sitting in the bathtub rapping every word of “Just The Two of Us” by Will Smith, but what I will say is that when we got up, we did so as expectant parents and as fundamentally different people.

We were scared, excited, curious, and thoughtful, but above everything else…we were clear. In hindsight, it’s clear that a lot of our disagreements were tied to all of the life priorities that we were trying to juggle as individuals. Parenthood united us under the clear understanding that from that day forward, our daughter came first and everything else came after. Ada was born 222 days later, on August 26th, but as we sat on that couch on January 17th, we began to transition into our new roles as mom and dad.

Technically, I’ve been a parent for just over two years–but from my vantage point, parenthood began with our pregnancy. We spent the months leading up to childbirth preparing ourselves for parenthood as individuals, and perhaps most importantly, as a couple. I could write a whole novel about what I’ve learned from parenthood thus far, but I’ve attempted to condense my learnings into three main points–one for every year that Ada’s wellbeing has been our family’s North Star:

1. When you’re having a hard day, you’re not alone.

Parenthood is a beautiful mess. The beauty of the experience doesn’t take away from the exhaustion that comes with the role. So many days leave me feeling drained, mentally, physically and emotionally–but my wife is always right next to me in the trenches. And no matter how much I do to show up as Ada’s dad and Duanecia’s husband, there are certain expectations that Ada only has for her mother that I can’t help with. 

There are certain details of parenting a little Black girl that my wife is better socialized to understand. There is a level of comfort that I can’t provide because of biological limitations. Due to my neurodivergence, there are some ways that I simply cannot show up, no matter how badly I want to. More often than not, my wife is just as, if not more tired than I am. She carries burdens that I can’t speak to. My feelings are valid, but my feelings can’t be the sole determinant of how I show up. When I’m having a hard day, I’m not alone. 

This realization can be challenging to stomach. Many days, we are both burning the candle from both ends and there’s nothing we can do about it. Many nights, the best thing we can manage is a hug, a quick kiss, and an “I love you” before we end the day. 

At the same time, with this understanding comes a degree of comfort. I can truly say that I’ve never been alone as a father–Ada’s mom has been my partner in parenting every step of the way. We both know how hard parenthood is, and intuitively understand a lot of things about each other that no one else on this earth is equipped to understand. I don’t carry this weight on my own, we shoulder it together.

It’s also not lost on me that Ada has hard days, too. Her concerns are different from ours, but they’re still valid. Sometimes I think about what it must be like to just wake up in a car seat without being able to understand where we’re going, or to be around new people after spending the first year of your life isolated due to a pandemic, or to not understand why the only two people she wants to spend time with have to go to work.

Your feelings will always be valid and relevant–but thinking more intentionally about the feelings of the people around you is the best way to properly contextualize and act on what you’re feeling in the moment.

2. It is our responsibility to set the boundaries that will help us to maintain relationships with the people we love.

When we told our friends, family, and loved ones that we were expecting, we were flooded with congratulatory messages, along with sincere questions like “what do you need?” and “how can we help?” Our folks were kind enough to set up a meal train, so that we didn’t have to worry about food during the first couple of weeks after Duanecia gave birth. 

But as the dust settled, and we attempted to find flow as parents of a newborn, everyone else’s life went on. Despite the best intentions of people who love us, we were overwhelmed by the extent to which our society is poorly equipped to support parents.

Our friends who had yet to become parents didn’t understand what we were going through. Our friends who were already parents were stretched too thin managing their own affairs to show up. Our jobs and clients sympathized with the additional burden of parenthood that we had chosen, but there was never any attempt to provide additional support beyond the initial parental leave that we had negotiated. 

Parenting is a full-time job, and society expects us to continue on with the rest of our life obligations as if nothing has changed. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t wake up some days feeling resentful. I’d also be lying if I said that feeding into the resentment changed anything about my situation. 

We’ve arrived at a point of radical acceptance as it pertains to how the world does and does not show up for us as Ada’s parents. As the two people charged with being Ada’s first teachers, protectors, and friends, we have to not only survive this world, but also find ways to incorporate enough joy into our lives to sustain the three of us.

These days, we’re choosing to meet all of our people where they’re at, even though we wish that more of them were able to meet us halfway. We have decided that we’d rather accept all of our people for who they are than continue to hold expectations that are not being met.

We still vent about our frustrations, but we don’t let that be the end of the conversation–we vent, acknowledge, adjust, and life goes on. We strive to set the boundaries that will equip us to build deeper relationships that are rooted in love, rather than resentment.

3. We don’t get any of these moments back.

Ada used to call Mickey Mouse “Gickey” because she couldn’t quite get the “M” sound out. I’ve never seen anything more adorable than a toothy, excited, fourteen-month-old Ada yelling out “GICKEY” when the next episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse populates on YouTube. My wife and I would gush over how cute it was. We recorded it on video a few times– then one day, Ada woke up, ate berries and rice for breakfast, and asked us if she could watch “Mickey.” Yes, “Mickey” with a capital “M.” A few days later, more of her teeth started growing in. Then, face matured. She stopped laughing at peek-a-boo. She didn’t want me to hold her anymore, it was time for her to explore the world more independently. She wasn’t a baby anymore–she was becoming a toddler.

As difficult as the newborn season was for our family, it was also beautiful in specific and nuanced ways that we will never experience, again. Like all of us, Ada will continue to grow and shed old versions of herself for the rest of her life. As her parents, we get the privilege of seeing the intricacies of every phase of life that she experiences—for now. One day, that will change, too.

No matter how busy, tired, or overwhelmed we may be in the moment, we need to be mindful that every moment is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Mindfulness is one of the greatest gifts that we can offer ourselves. When we remain present, we are able to experience the beauty of the present moment, so that we can look back on memories with gratitude for the experience, instead of regretting that we were too busy to appreciate life in the moment. 

---

Recently I was a guest on a podcast called Dose of Duality with my friends Deja and Alicia—you can watch the full conversation below: