I’ll give you one guess for the time lapse since my last post…
I am praying that I am coming out on the other side of what has been a terribly challenging, exhausting and at times excruciating frustrating rough patch with parenting.
It’s discouraging enough to make a woman wonder if she’s really cut out for this whole motherhood thing. When the crazy starts stirring up notions of how maybe you aren’t the best person to be raising two little boys, it’s all you can do to not scream.
But by then, you’re already expired most of your ability to hold yourself together so what does a mom do? In the better case scenario, she might make sure her kiddies are safe and then flee out the door to the sanctity of her car and have a couple minutes to expel her discouragement in a puddle of blubbering madness. Then, hopefully, she can practice those deep breaths she is reminded of by friends and family and collect of remaining fragments and particles of patience left within her and brave through the front door.
Or…
In a not so good case scenario…
She can yell at the cupboard as she slams it amidst the spirit crushing whining and crying from her two little ones. The words that snap from her mouth do not show her toddler how to deal with his own frustration in a healthy, effective manner, nor do they display the love the mother so deeply feels for her child. This scenario immediately instills the dreaded feeling that is nearly impossible to shake – failure.
God, how am I going to get through the next 18 years??? I’m only two flipping years in right now and I’m already losing my mind.
Something that occurred to me as I experienced these feelings is that I spent 24 years learning how to make myself happy, how to deal with letting myself down. Uh yes, now just to shake things up a little, figure that out whilst being responsible for two little people. In other words, find new ways to make yourself happy because you just don’t have the time to make yourself happy the way you used to and get used to falling short of that amazing parent you vowed to be. Others might tell you that you are but you are the one who has to let go of the times when you were anything but amazing, unless it was amazingly frustrated and tired.
Yes, I am giving myself a pep talk.
It is incredible to me how I can go from being engulfed in a sea of love for my boys one day or even one hour to wanting to jump ship the next.
It’s not rational, it’s just what happens when the brain is starved of the necessities that encourage calm, logical behaviour.
So, take some B12 (thanks Lilli;), sing not shout and do not shut yourself in.
when we were young... 