Lance-from hero to bully

“I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles,” – 2005 Tour de France victory speech, taking aim at “the cynics and the skeptics.”

 

The way our children see us is the thing that gets us through the hardest moments. Many many times I think about how I want to be and who I want to be more through the eyes of my children  than anything else.  It doesn’t matter to me that they find out or see all my moments but I think of them in everything that I do regardless. Just before  my eldest went off to University and we were discussing goals, as we always have around Labour day weekend, I told her I was going to make her proud of me while she was away.

So when Lance Armstrong tells us that his defining moment was when he overheard his eldest Luke, 13, defending his father to everyone, I get it and I assume all of you who are parents do too.

And although Livestrong quit him, and Nike and several others as he put it- his friends and family did  not. Our children don’t quit us – we know that the child with an alcoholic/abusive/addict/neglectful or otherwise mom/dad will still defend/support and uphold a perfect image of their parent long after evidence/doubt/suspicion rears its ugly head.

How our children view us is ridiculous it is so amazing but they also are the last ones to bail so we can hardly use them as the measuring stick of who we are.

He is a cancer success story, he is a superior athlete, he is a dad. But he is a liar first and a bully too. And that has a way of erasing everything else.