Celebrating Your Strengths

Principles

If you're reading this, it’s because you care deeply about being a good parent. And I want to tell you something you may not hear often enough: you already are.

Parenthood is a constant cycle of growth—your child is always changing, and that means you are, too. You’re trying, adjusting, learning, sometimes failing, and trying again. And that doesn’t mean you’re falling short—it means you’re showing up. Like Chilli says at the end of the “Mum School” episode of Bluey: “We all fail Mum School sometimes. We can just try again tomorrow.”

But when you're in the thick of it—when the to-do list is piling up, the tantrums won’t quit, and your patience feels paper-thin—it’s easy to forget your strengths. Maybe you're holding yourself to impossible standards, comparing your behind-the-scenes to someone else's curated highlight reel. Or maybe you're just so exhausted, you can’t see the remarkable things you’re doing day in and day out. It’s not that you don’t have strengths—it’s that burnout, overwhelm, and self-doubt make them hard to see.

To remind yourself of your strengths as a parent, consider these tactics:

• Reflect on your achievements, no matter how small, to boost your self-esteem.
• Seek feedback from loved ones to gain a new perspective on your strengths.
• Practice self-compassion and set realistic expectations for yourself.
• Keep a gratitude journal to focus on the positives, including your strengths.
• Prioritize self-care to reduce stress and prevent burnout.

The truth is, our society doesn’t offer enough support to parents. We’re expected to carry it all—without dropping anything, ever. That’s why it's not just okay but essential to give yourself grace, to celebrate your wins (even the quiet ones), and to use strategies like gratitude and self-compassion to protect yourself from burnout. Because you deserve care, too. You're already doing the most important thing: showing up with love.

A Few Perspectives

As meditator and author, Yung Pueblo, puts it,:

The healer you have been looking for is your own courage to know and love yourself completely.

Here’s how Anne Helen Petersen, author of Culture Study, reminds us of our worth:

A recommitment to and cherishing of oneself isn’t self-care, or self-centeredness, at least not in the contemporary connotations of those words. Instead, it’s a declaration of value: not because you labor, not because you consume, not because you produce, but simply because you are.

from Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

Pause for Reflection

What are your strengths as a parent?

Continue this reflection in the Moment for Parents app.