Your Children are More Important than Your Dreams
The phenomenon known as Ballerina Farm on Instagram is one of the most popular moms in America. With her eight children, a gaggle of hogs, endless videos of baking from scratch, and her 10 million followers, Hannah Neeleman is a mom to be reckoned with. Oh, and she also wins beauty pageants like a boss. And is a Julliard trained ballerina.
A recent article on Hannah and her husband, Daniel, threw the digital world into hysterics. A main source of outrage is that Hannah gave up her dreams of being a professional ballerina to be a wife and a mother. Many are also horrified that Hannah has little time to herself and sometimes works to the point of exhaustion.
Newsflash: All mothers of young children have little time to themselves and work to the point of exhaustion frequently.
Giving Up Dreams
But let’s get back to the ballerina thing. When Hannah put on her first pair of ballerina slippers, did her parents think, “This is great! No motherhood for her! No wifehood for her! We want our daughter to remain a single, solitary soul dancing into old age wearing tutus and toe shoes forever!” Not likely.
Here’s the thing. Hannah is not alone in “giving up her dreams” to raise a family. Almost everyone does this. And it is not a shame, a tragedy, or a sign of oppression. It’s called growing up. And women are not the only ones who regularly “give up their dreams” for the sake of their families. Most men give up their boyhood dreams of becoming professional athletes to do something far less glamorous.
My dad is such a man. He was a great football player in high school. In fact, some might say he was phenomenal. The local newspapers ran stories about him, football was his life, and he seemed destined for greatness.
Newspaper articles about my dad
Then he met my mom. They got married and soon there was a baby on the way. My dad was practicing with the college football team of his dreams at the time. My dad realized there wasn’t time in the day for him to go to school, go to work, and go to practice, and nurture his marriage. So, he gave up football.
He gave up football.
He poured himself into work and school and caring for my mom who was throwing up multiple times a day. He eventually graduated from college. My mom eventually had the baby and then had three more. One of them was me.
My parents both worked like crazy keeping our family afloat, and it floated. Barely. I had an absolutely stellar childhood full of camping trips and backyard swings and never enough money. But that last part isn’t what mattered the most. What mattered the most is that I knew my parents loved me. I knew they’d make any sacrifice for me.
My parents when they were dating, 1966
Sacred Sacrifice
Parenthood is a position of sacrifice. Author and psychoanalyst Erica Komisar says parenthood comes with “the sacred obligation of nurturing.” To nurture others requires sacrifices of self. This does not mean we fail to care for ourselves or that we never pursue hobbies or do anything fun ever again, but it does mean we offer humongous amounts of time, energy, resources, sleep, and emotional investment in the name of our children’s wellbeing.
All decent parents do this. All decent parents make sacrifices so that their children can eat, sleep in a bed, and possibly even take dance lessons or join a basketball club. Only a tiny sliver of the population will dance or play ball professionally, and even that doesn’t last forever. But family relationships will last—if we’re wise enough to forge them. And somehow, amid all the sacrifice, we end up the better for it.
If no one moved on from their dreams of throwing footballs or tying on their toe shoes in order to bear, raise, nurture, and support children, the world would be full of old people with bad knees, concussed heads, and empty homes. And the world would collapse in one generation because no one would have kids. There would be a whole lot of lonely has-beens out there without their own little cheering squad (these are known as families) to remember they used to be something—and to see that they still ARE something.
Pink Tights and Varicose Veins
Should Hannah Neeleman have rejected the marriage proposal so she could “follow her dreams?” Well, if she had she would have had the great pleasure of pulling her pale pink ballet tights on over her varicose veins when she turned 60, without an adoring audience to laud her fading grace and beauty. But instead, she had kids. And she’s having the time of her life raising them. And when she’s 60 she’ll be surrounded by people who exist because she exists, and those people will laugh and cry and dream and dance with her.
My dad “gave up” football, but did he? He passed his love of the game on to my brothers. He spent countless hours playing catch with them and watching their games and playing football with them and the neighborhood boys on frosty Thanksgiving mornings. His new dream was to watch them—and me—excel not just at football, or chess, or soccer—but to excel at life. His new passion became us and my mom. That is not a tragedy. It is a triumph.
At a recent family gathering that included one of his infant great-grandsons, my dad was reflecting about walking away from football. He said, “I’m happy I did it. It was the right choice. I know what it’s like to score a winning touchdown, but laughing with babies is better.”
If you had told the 18-year-old version of my dad that someday he’d think babies were more interesting than football, he would have laughed his head off. But the truth is, as life pushes on, we don’t just abandon our dreams, our dreams change. They mature, they grow, and they become better than we could have imagined.
A Wrecked Life
Ben Rector wrote a song (it’ll make your day if you listen to it right now) that sums it up perfectly:
“Dreams, I had a lot of dreams.
And if I'm honest, they used to be different things,
Until you were here with me.
Now I close my eyes and I see things differently.
“'Cause you wrecked my world in a beautiful way
And I kinda thought that I'd always stay the same.
But I heard that healthy things grow
And growing things change, yeah
Yeah, you wrecked my world in the most beautiful way.”
Did giving up professional ballet wreck Hannah Neeleman’s life? Did giving up football wreck my dad’s life?
You decide.
Hannah and her family
My Dad and his family
With much love,
Kimberly