Part 3 of 6: Embodying the Parent You Want to Be - Why Parenting Challenges Feel So Heavy
A 6 part series for queer parents (and prospective parents) who love their kids so fiercely, they refuse to settle for a family where there are conditions on love, support, and belonging.
In the last post, we explored the first key shift in The Alignment Practice™ Framework:
💡 Shifting from avoidance to intention.
We talked about how focusing only on what you don’t want keeps you stuck in reactive mode. Instead, when you get clear on what you’re actually trying to build, your values become the anchor for your choices.
But even when you know what you want, decisions can still feel heavy.
Because intention is only the first step.
Today’s post dives deeper into why intention alone isn’t always enough—and the hidden tensions that quietly shape your choices. These tensions can make even intentional decisions feel confusing or impossible to follow through on.
So even when you start to get clear on what you want, the next step isn’t always easy.
🔹 “I know I want to nurture a sense of belonging in my family, but does that mean setting a boundary with my parents—or trying to repair the relationship?”
🔹 “I know I want my child to feel proud of our family, but does that mean confronting every assumption—or choosing when to engage?”
🔹 “I know I want an equal co-parenting dynamic, but does that mean asking for more—or redefining what support looks like?”
Even when you’ve uncovered your deeper values, the how isn’t always clear. And when you do try to move forward, you might hesitate, get stuck in old patterns, or face pushback that makes you second-guess yourself.
That’s because most of us were never taught how to recognize or untangle the deeper forces shaping our decisions. So even when we know what we want, we still feel the weight of competing priorities, external pressures, and fears we haven’t fully examined.
Without a way to work through these hidden tensions, we don’t just hesitate—we carry the emotional load of every decision, questioning whether we’re doing it “right” or if we’re missing something.
Here are three of the five hidden tensions that make parenting choices feel heavier than they need to be:
1️⃣ The Value Trade-Off
It feels like you’re being forced to choose between two equally important values.
Do I prioritize my child’s ability to think critically and challenge norms, or do I prioritize giving them a strong foundation of belonging before they start questioning?
Am I fostering my child’s adaptability to different social environments, or am I prioritizing stability by centering them in queer-affirming spaces?
Am I making space for my own needs and well-being, or am I prioritizing being as present and engaged as possible in my child’s life?
Without a way to bridge competing values, every choice feels lose - lose.
2️⃣ Unconsciously Over-Exaggerating the Fear
Many of us were raised to overestimate risk and underestimate our capacity to navigate it—especially in a world that hasn’t always been safe for us or our families. That conditioning doesn’t disappear.
🔹 If I set this boundary, will my family actually cut me off for good?
🔹 If I raise my child in a home that is perceived by others as “different”, will they resent me later?
🔹 If I send them to this school, am I setting them up for failure?
Instead of letting fear quietly dictate our choices, this is an opportunity to name it, examine it, and decide how much weight it actually deserves.
💡 How real is the risk? What’s the actual likelihood of my worst fear happening?
💡 If it did happen, what would that really mean? Would I truly lose everything, or am I more equipped to handle it than I think?
💡 What am I afraid of losing, and what do I stand to gain?
💡 If the worst did happen, then what? What would I do next? How would I go on?
When fear is right-sized, we are free to make decisions from our values—not just from avoidance. And that means we move forward with clarity, confidence, and a stronger sense of self-trust.
And btw - you can absolutely reflect on these questions alone—but here’s the thing: some fears feel so big—and so real—that it’s hard to right-size them on your own. That’s why I built The Lab the way I did—a structured, supportive space where you can unpack and name fears out loud and have people support you in right-sizing them.
3️⃣ The Inherited Playbook
So much of what we believe about “good parenting” isn’t a conscious choice—it’s inherited. We absorb expectations from our families, culture, and the world around us. And even when we know we want to do things differently, those old scripts still run in the background.
👉 I was raised to believe parenting means constant sacrifice— it feels selfish to have my own needs.
👉 My family never talked about feelings— it feels unnatural for me to validate my kid’s tantrums.
👉 I was taught to be self-sufficient— asking for help in co-parenting feels like failing
Some of our strongest instincts aren’t actually ours—they’re borrowed. Instincts and emotions are (important) information, but they aren’t the only source of information. The opportunity here isn’t to judge them, but to ask: Does this belief still fit me?
✨ What if “good parenting” isn’t about proving something—but about creating something?
✨ What if the things that feel unnatural aren’t wrong—but just unfamiliar?
✨ What if doing things differently doesn’t mean breaking something—but building something new?
When you pause to question why something feels “right” or “wrong,” you stop parenting from old patterns and start parenting from your actual values.
Take a moment to consider your challenge or decision in the context of the 3 hidden tensions, what do you discover?
Next up, we’ll explore the last two hidden tensions—ones that shape your choices more than you realize.
P.S. ✨ The Alignment Practice™ Framework & Lab is intentionally designed to help you untangle these tensions—so you stop feeling like every decision carries impossible trade-offs.
💡 Learning the framework helps you see what’s really driving your choices—and the community reflects back what you can’t always see for yourself.
That’s exactly what The Lab offers: a place to not only learn the framework but to practice it, refine it, and get the feedback you need—so alignment becomes a skill you can trust, even in the hardest moments. And when alignment is a skill you’ve mastered, you can soak in the magical everyday moments, and experience a sense of inner peace knowing that how you’re showing up today is shaping the kind of confident, fulfilled adult your child(ren) will become.
✨🌈TL;DR:
Even when you know what you want as a parent, decisions can still feel heavy—and that’s because of hidden tensions quietly shaping your choices. These tensions can make you second-guess yourself, hesitate to follow through, or feel stuck in old patterns. Some of the biggest culprits include:
1️⃣ Value Trade-Offs — Feeling like you must choose between two equally important values.
2️⃣ Over-Exaggerating Fear — Magnifying risk and underestimating your capacity to handle it.
3️⃣ The Inherited Playbook — Unconsciously following outdated ideas & societal standards of “good parenting” that don’t actually align with your values.
By naming these tensions, you can move from feeling stuck in self-doubt to making everyday choices (big and small) with clarity, confidence, and self-trust—so you can build a family life that reflects your values and creates more joy in the everyday moments.