Permission To Be Human

A lesson about imperfection and love.

By Asa Shenandoah 

Asa and her son | Photo Credit Asa Shenandoah

I didn’t recognize my own voice.

Not because it was louder than usual. Not because it echoed through the hallway or startled the dog into silence. It was because the woman shouting wasn’t entirely me.

She sounded familiar. She sounded like every adult who had ever lost their patience with me.

That realization arrived as quickly as the anger itself. One moment I was standing in my son’s doorway wrapped in an oversized T-shirt, dripping from the shower, clutching a damp washcloth because every clean towel I’d washed that morning now lay in a wet heap on the bathroom floor. The next, I was listening to a voice I had sworn, years ago, I would never inherit.

The frightening part wasn’t the yelling. It was how good it felt.

There is an honesty about anger that parents rarely admit aloud. Mine wasn’t righteous. It wasn’t instructional. It wasn’t even really about my son.

It was relief. A pressure valve finally giving way.

That morning had begun at five o’clock with my dog licking the toes I’d left hanging over the edge of the bed. Every other weekday we’d already be outside for his pee break before I hurried off to work. Dogs don’t understand weekends. His schedule doesn’t recognize mine.

My plan on this day had been to savor a slow morning before my teenage garbage disposal woke up to empty the refrigerator into his belly. I managed a few chores, including washing and drying every towel in the house, a detail that will matter later, before my phone rang.

A major power outage. Crews needed immediately. Boots on. A text asking my mom  to check on my son. Out the door.

When I returned home it was midnight, more semblance to a grease stained rag someone forgot to throw away than mother. I stood under hot water trying to scrub exhaustion off my skin before hunger forced me out of the shower.

That’s when I reached for a towel.

Every single one was soaked and crumpled on the floor.

I called for my son.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Repeat, several times. 

Wrapped in my dirty shirt, I marched into his room where he stood with headphones on, happily dancing, blissfully unaware that a hurricane had just made landfall in my nervous system.

I let him have it.

After I was dressed and my pulse had returned to something resembling normal, I couldn’t stop thinking about that voice. Where had it come from?

There is an odd contradiction in family legacy.

We beam with pride when someone says, “You get that from your mother,” especially if they’re talking about resilience, intelligence, athleticism, or humor. We like believing that greatness can travel through blood.

Yet the moment we hear ourselves repeating a flaw inherited from the same lineage, panic sets in: I’m turning into my (fill in the black for whichever relative first taught us, intentionally or not, what frustration sounds like).

Parenthood has made me realize that inheritance isn’t selective. We receive the gifts and the rough edges together. 

I recognize  my inherited impatience, perfectionism, and emotional shortcuts when they appear in me, and I fight those fiercely. Sometimes I wonder if I fight them too fiercely.

We often speak about breaking cycles, and we should. But I hope we are careful not to create an impossible standard, one of becoming the perfect parent. Because children don’t need flawless adults. They need adults who know how to be okay being imperfect humans, and who how to repair.

After cooling down I walked back into my son’s room and apologized. Not the kind of apology adults sometimes offer that secretly circle back to proving why we were justified.

I told him I had been emotionally irresponsible. That I was exhausted, hungry, overwhelmed, and should never have approached him in that state. I should have eaten first. Taken a breath. Waited until morning if necessary.

Then he followed the natural rhythm and he apologized, too.

He admitted he hadn’t thought about how he hadn’t left me any towels. He promised to take responsibility for the bathroom laundry and be more thoughtful about cleaning up after himself.

Neither of us left that conversation perfect, but both of us left it better.

Perhaps that’s the inheritance I most hope to give my son. Not a childhood free from mistakes. Not a mother who never loses her temper. But a home where accountability is ordinary. Where apologies are spoken without humiliation. Where repair matters more than pride.

 Children cannot learn humanity from parents pretending to be superhuman. They learn it from watching imperfect people love each other enough to come back, sit down, and try again.