Telling stressed-out moms they should use Human Design as a parenting tool could get you sucker-punched. But it would be epically supportive for children if more parents knew about it. Here’s why.

Understand your kid from a new perspective, and stop judging them for the way their soul is trying to level up in this lifetime.

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A Dream Come True

I had to do that same-day, emergency passport-renewal thing yesterday because, out of thin air, I manifested a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Ireland next week.

I know, right? Holy-moly-awesomeness, Batgirl!

It came up fast, so I had to decide quick. I’ll share more about how and why that went down in future posts. But for now, just know that I had to drop everything these last few days to hustle and get my expired passport renewed, stat, if I wanted to visit my ancestral homeland, for which my spirit has desperately longed to see since I emerged into this sack of flesh and bones 46 years ago.

Let’s just say it’s been a whole thing orchestrating this renewal, plus a lot of money. But totally worth it for a million reasons, even despite the seven hundred meals I feel obliged to pre-make before I leave, which might nourish my family in my absence.

I haven’t traveled alone and away from my kids since 2017, and have never done so for longer than a couple of nights or even outside the tristate area. I certainly haven’t been outside the country since before they were born.

And never have I envisioned so many black-sky flights over the Atlantic Ocean going catastrophically awry…

This trip, in other words, has become a Very Big Deal for me.

It will be healthy. It will be expansive. It is a dream come true…

A History of Self-Sabotage

Same-day passport renewal requires that you report to one of not-that-many federal offices in the U.S. which offer the service.

Thankfully, I got an appointment in Buffalo, New York, which is only a four-hour drive from my home in Pittsburgh. (This was a way-better option than the alternative offer: Houston, TX.)

My ‘interview’ was set for 11:30 a.m.

No bigs. I woke up at my usual ass-crack-of-dawn 4:00, caffeinated myself part-way, gathered all my important documents into a banged-up folder my son no longer uses for Math class, and hit the road before 7am.

My mother, a fierce and hilarious Manifesting Generator with Sacral Authority, an unstoppable Gate 20 (the Gate of Now), and with whom I share a Right Angle Incarnation Cross of Tension, escorted me on the road trip. And thank God.

Not only did we crack each other up and tell stories the entire time, and not only was she totes game for an impromptu visit to Niagara Falls during an unexpected break so we could kill time, but she did a lot of the driving in her speedy little Honda, not-so-cleverly named Blue. (Am I lucky or what?)

I could’ve never done this trip alone.

Despite my over-preparedness, I was a panicky mess.

One of my lifelong habits, a shadow ‘thing’ I have worked to overcome but still carry, has been Self-Sabotage By Way of Paper Work.

In other words, I ruin things unconsciously by failing to follow stupid-ass, picayune rules laid out in fine print. Pfft.

I once kiboshed the chance to take a court stenography job in the state of Washington by not-exactly reading the legal job description that stated I was required to have a particular kind of license. Oops. That significantly, albeit temporarily, wrecked my finances since I’d already relocated across the country thinking this job was a go.

I’ve effed up tests by not reading directions. I’ve been sent around the city to various government offices to clean up administrative messes because of overdue things, unsigned other things, and because my brain simply says “paperwork is stupid and irrelevant.”

That’s part of being a Human Design Manifestor. To us, red tape is just dumb. Why can’t people just make things happen? Why all the fuss and particulars and slow-downs and procedures? What a waste of time and effort!

I digress. This time, I promised I wasn’t going to let my toxic pattern of administrative self-sabotage wreck me from going to Ireland.

I filled out passport applications twice. Printed everything twice. Paid extra to have my photo taken precisely correctly. Checked and rechecked my banged-up folder of documents at every mile-marker on the journey to Buffalo.

My stomach churned. I was convinced I’d forgotten some important piece of evidence that would prove my citizenship or my legal, married, name change.

I played out all the worst-case scenarios as I gazed down the highway, like having the federal agent at my interview tell me that, “No, unfortunately, ma’am, your request for a new passport could not be processed after all…”

Overwhelming Environments, Esp. for HSP’s (Highly Sensitive People)

When we finally arrived in Buffalo after the thankfully-smooth sojourn, we discovered exactly what you’d imagine out of a federal passport office:

Crowded waiting area. Long lines. People from all over the world who, just like me, were desperate to be given the greenlight to travel for all kinds of reasons. Armed officers barking orders and eyeing people suspiciously. Loud announcements suddenly blaring over a speaker.

It was an overwhelming and highly stressful environment for anyone to walk into; one that would’ve been particularly challenging for a child, an empath, or a Highly Sensitive Person such as mois.

By that point, I was glad I hadn’t dragged my kids along like I’d fantasized about doing; I’d pull them out of school to play hookie for a one-day field trip with Gaga and me on the open road. I’d pop in and out of the passport office to take care of business while they peacefully waited in the car. We’d grab lunch, gaze across Niagara Falls on the American side to Toronto, maybe check out a wax museum, get ice cream…  

It definitely wouldn’t have gone down like that.

Hopefully I never have to drag children into that office while they’re still underage. I felt bad for the parents who did. It wasn’t a terrible place for kids–there were a few present, and some weren’t even crying.

It’s just so hard to wait patiently for a long time in such a place. And while this bureaucratic experience was, indeed, rather smooth and efficient for it being a red-tape-a-thon, it was still a lot to process for our human hearts and emotions.

You weren’t allowed to use cell phones in the agency, so nobody had a screen to numb their anxieties. Imagine us all sitting there, lined up shoulder to shoulder on cold, hard chairs; people of every stripe, creed and color, all biting our nails.

And so, we chit-chatted. Eavesdropped. Shared stories of our travel dreams.

She’s trying to get to Mexico. He drove in from Michigan. They need to be with family in Egypt. This one never had a birth certificate. That one was here last week and got sent away…

What none of us knew in the morning was that there’s a Phase I and a Phase II to this process: You arrive for your interview at whatever time early in the day, hand over all your applications, documentation and money.

And then you get told you have to wait around a few hours and come back later in the afternoon to pick up your passport.

Shit.

All parties there had either long drives ahead of them or flights to catch immediately after this. Some of us were supposed to pick up our daughters from gymnastics practice because surely we’d be home by then…

Every single one of us was already exhausted, high-strung and worried we’d be sent home empty handed, told we were unable to go on our respective trips.

So Mom and I grabbed lunch at Jack’s Corner Cafe down the block and scarfed some avocado toast. Then we went ahead and did the Niagara Falls thing, sans wax museum.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s so dramatic.”

Now it was 3pm, and we were all cued up at the metal detectors, back for the afternoon phase. Once inside, I took one of the only open seats, next to a mom with her two little blond boys who were both (rightfully) restless and squirming.

“If you can’t handle this,” the mom warned them as they fidgeted, “then you’re never gonna be able to handle the trip to England. There’s a whole lot more waiting you’re gonna have to suffer through if you want to go there.”

The younger of the two continued whining. “This is the worst day of my life,” he said.

I chuckled to myself because I could totes understand why he felt that way, and because my son, too, utters this same phrase often.

I looked at the boy and smiled my best “I feel you, kid” kind of smile. 

The mother argued his point. “You say every day is the worst day of your life. Just because you don’t get what you want, you say it’s the worst day of your life. You have no idea how good you have it.” 

I chimed in and muttered to the two boys, both much younger than my own kids, “It’s really hard to wait. It’s been a long day, huh?”

The younger one agreed and started to reply; us sharing a tender moment of mildly-unpleasant camaraderie.

But the mom interjected. “Oh, he’s so dramatic. Don’t listen to him.”

In Desperate Need of a Perspective Shift

I winced. This is why I wish more parents knew about Human Design.

There was a perfectly logical reason for this little boy’s discomfort and whining. It was valid and entirely warranted, from my perspective as both a parent and a Human Design reader.

I’m not criticizing this woman’s parenting technique. I actually empathize with her because we all felt like crap in that situation.

But what a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a different way of experiencing and looking at our kids–even when they’re at their whiniest–which can totally shift our perspective and entirely change how they receive us, which can totally enrich our relationship with one another.

If our kids feel differently because of how we’re looking at them — i.e., if they feel seen, heard, understood and supported by their moms and dads — they’re at far lesser risk of growing up with low-worth, toxic, self-sabotaging shadow issues like the ones I’m still working to overcome.

And they’re far more likely to grow up as secure, confident, well-adjusted beings who are poised to take the world by storm, solve big problems, enter into healthy relationships and do all the other successful shit we parents want for them.

Besides, kids are more in touch with their spirit selves than adults are. They’re still closely connected to the purpose their souls emerged into their bodies to achieve.

They’re simply trying to live out that cosmic purpose right from the get-go. Sometimes that looks like selfishness or stubbornness or whining or ‘being dramatic.’

Kids, and even some adults, are just trying to level-up on their soul’s journey in this lifetime. They’re trying to live more authentically and aligned now by doing right by themselves and others, so they can resolve the pains of their past incarnations.

Who are we to criticize that?!

In this mother’s defense, perhaps her son is ‘dramatic.’

Or, or, or, perhaps there’s a different explanation. I wanted to offer this mom an alternative way of looking at him. One that might open up some space in her heart for a little more tolerance and understanding.

“Maybe he just has a ton of open centers in his Human Design chart,” I wanted to tell her.

“Like, he might have a totally open Spleen, which means he’s absorbing everybody’s angst in this room, so he’s feeling all our fears three times more intensely than even we are…”

But you can’t just say that to a stressed-out mom in a passport agency. Not unless you want to get punched in the mouth.

“Or maybe he has the Channel of Emoting,” I would add if she had actually come to me looking for help with her ‘dramatic’ son.

“That means he’s here to feel all the feels, and there’s a superpower in that. People with Gate 55, in particular, are here to show the rest of us what healthy, unapologetic, emotional expression looks like.” 

(Because how many people can you think of who are walking around like cold, emotionless robots? I can name a few dozen…)

But this mom didn’t ask to be my client, so I wasn’t going to just tell her this.

“Or maybe he has Gate 19,” I also thought, “which makes every other part of a person’s chart more highly sensitive, so his ‘dramatic’ streak would make sense.”

“Does he also hate wearing tags in his shirts?” I would’ve asked. “Does the texture of a blanket, for example, matter a lot to him?”

She’d have probably said, “OMG, YES!” and her eyes would’ve lit up with recognition and understanding. She would start to get it, and her heart would open up big and wide and soft and squishy. She would look at her son a little differently now…

But that didn’t happen.

“It could be that he’s an Ego Authority,” I might offer as well, “which means he is driven to feel that his needs ought to be prioritized, because deep down he is intuiting that whatever situation feels ‘wrong’ for him is actually functioning to illuminate all the stuff that’s also wrong for the rest of us…”

This is when I’d have gotten punched in the mouth, probably.

“So, by being what you might call ‘dramatic,’” I’d have continued with a slight lisp due to the blood pouring out of my lip, “he’s actually expressing to you that his job is to go first in life because then he can look over his shoulder back at you and let you know whether this thing is even worth your time and effort, and so by whining he’s telling you this is no good…” 

But I didn’t say any of that because you don’t shove Human Design down people’s throats.

You wait for them to ask for help when everything else they’ve tried hasn’t worked.

Or you wait for them to want to understand their children through a different lens.

Or you wait until they decide their challenge is unbearable enough that it’s worth digging deeper to solve.

So I bit my lip instead of risk getting punched in it.

Then my number got called over the blaring loudspeaker, just as that stressed-out mom started tearing into her ‘dramatic’ little boy again about how he’s always whining…

I smiled at the kid, wished them all good luck, tucked my banged-up folder under my arm and reported to window number 2 to pick up my passport.

I’m going to Ireland in two days and nothing’s going to stop me.