“Your life isn’t yours anymore,” my late mom used to warn me whenever she’d see me trying to answer a phone call while driving.

She would then go on a lengthy lecture about how I should make sure I get home to my children safe everyday. “Because they need you, and will depend on you for the rest of their lives,” she would remind me.

After years and another kid, I realized how true this is. And how much I would like others to make this realization as well.

Your life isn’t yours anymore, not yours alone to squander, not yours alone to waste because you are a parent now. You have to take care of yourself because your children need you.

Beyond providing for their needs your children need your love. They need you to hold them when they’re broken hearted, to cheer them on through life. They need you to be there to tell them it’s going to be okay. They need you to hold their hand through their journey. Until such a time they can make it on their own, then you can let go.

Your loss will be devastating to the little people who depend on you who love you to the moon and back. As someone who lost both parents, and just recently a mother who meant the world to me, I am telling you now that the pain of losing a parent so dear is something you do not want your little children to go through early in life. It’s devastating, heart breaking, something you should not make your precious kids go through when they’re not ready yet.

Think about this: how important is that phone call from your boss? How important is that meeting? How important is that “urgent” work issue that you are willing to risk your life to answer it?

Is it really that important that you can risk not going home to your children tonight, you risk breaking their heart, and having them scramble through life without you?

This should also go out to all the fathers and parents in general who, in an effort to prove to the world that they are right and the other person is wrong, would resort to road rage, or argue with another motorist over something they could’ve just forgiven and brushed off.

How often have we seen these arguments lead to someone lying dead on the pavement?

Yes maybe you’ve proven to the world that you were right for sticking to it and not letting this man cut in front of you, so you got off the car, kicked his door, demanded that he come out, so you can settle this mano a mano, and you won, but he didn’t accept this loss so he pulled the trigger. You won the argument, but now you’re gone, never to come home to your children ever again.What good is a father who won a fist fight but won’t be coming home ever?

Dear mom or dad please choose your battles. Please step back and evaluate if this is something worth fighting for , or if you think you can brush this off because coming home to your children alive is much more important than your bruised ego.

Or maybe you’re the person behind the other end of the gun. Because you couldn’t let it go, you pulled the trigger. Do you want to spend the rest of your life behind bars? A life you could spend watching your children grow instead? Are you willing to see the anguish in your children’s eyes when they see you rotting in jail?

Is your pride and ego really worth it?

Mom and Dad, whenever you’re tempted to answer an “important” call from your boss while you’re driving, or get off the car during an argument with another driver, remember at the end of the day your kids are infinitely more important than that meeting, that phone call, and your ego. Remember that your kids need you. They need you to come home safe, and alive.