I find it annoying when people blame other people or their childhood or whatever external factor is convenient to shift the responsibility for their own life to other people. The most popular that you will hear is "I failed because I had a crappy childhood. But, ya know, we don't pick our parents."

This excuse is disingenuous because almost everybody had less-than-perfect childhoods. Some, like me, had parents that divorced and some, again like me, weathered abuse at the hands of an alcoholic parent. If you talk with those who had what externally appeared to be THE perfect childhood, they can find something to complain about.

But, getting to the title of this article, I do believe we pick our parents. No, not at the hospital, but before we are even a twinkle in our daddy's eye. In my belief system, on the Other Side, where our souls dwell when they are not learning lessons down here, we decide which lessons we want to learn to further our soul's evolution, which can be anything from being a good parent to changing social consciousness as an agent for change.

It doesn't matter what a soul chooses to learn, but everybody on Earth right now is here to learn something before ending our physical lives here. When we decide what we want to learn, we go about planning our lives. But, first, we must choose where and when we are going to be born in order to be born with the right personal characteristics and predispositions for this life. There is a lot of planning involved, which is why some people are born far away from where they end up spending some or most of their lives.

Perhaps the biggest choice we have to make in that regard is who our parents will be. While our parents are also on the Other Side, we make an agreement with them to be their child, knowing up front what their challenges will be for their corporeal time down here. If we want to learn how to stand our own two feet and fend for ourselves as adults, we may choose crappy parents, one of whom is an abusive alcoholic, and neither of whom gives us any real skills to go out into the world. (Personal story there.)

So you see, our childhoods are planned from the beginning and we do choose our parents to facilitate our first years on this planet. If we had a bad childhood or didn't get all the things we thought we should have as a child, maybe there is a good reason in the Big Picture. Maybe, just maybe, we need to stop blaming others for our challenges and failures and get on with the reason we came down here.

(If you are interested in reading more about this subject, I recommend that you read books by Sylvia Browne, Doreen Virtue, and Louise Hay. Google "Hay House" for the publisher of many good, rather informative books about the Other Side.)