Joe describes parenting as a “deep tissue massage” — the more you resist, the worse it hurts. Children systematically tear away identity, assumptions about control, and ideas about what’s right. “You think you control this? Nope. You think you control how you sleep? Nope. Everything was just taken.”
The spiritual journey of parenting is “allowing all that stuff to be let go and to have it ripped from you so that you can find out what your essence is.” Joe acknowledges most parents don’t take this path, but those who do find it profoundly transformative. He states with complete confidence that he could not do his coaching work without having raised children — all his emotional work originated from watching kids process emotions naturally.
Parenthood opens you to “unlimited heartbreak whether you lose the kid or not,” and that breaking of the heart is breaking it open, increasing your capacity to love. It’s an involuntary ego dissolution that, if surrendered to, reveals essence beneath identity.
Related Concepts
- Parenting is the deepest ego work
- Parenting as self-development practice
- Heartbreak is expansion
- Emotional numbness can be a survival gift, not a deficit
- To not harm your children, love yourself
- Teaching children to reference themselves builds their internal compass