Mom Guilt
Let me set the stage for you. I’m upstairs, lying down in the dark. I’m on the edge of the bed and the edge of a panic attack. My heart is racing and I have to keep changing positions to convince myself that I am, in fact, still able to breathe. I’m freezing and sweating. You can hear a pin drop and the silence feels violent. The rest of my family is awake, downstairs.
What brought me to this state? Mom guilt. No joke.
My kids were all home that evening, so I felt like I should be downstairs spending time with them while they were all awake. Let me set THAT scene for you. They’re watching a scary movie. I don’t do scary movies. I can’t. They trigger my anxiety and I absorb the stress of the plot line. They’re teenagers. They got up for the day sometime around 10:00am and I’d been up and busy for 5 hours by then. Also, I have a chronic health condition that severely limits my energy levels. I’m not worth much after about 9:00pm. My brain sends everything to voicemail until I get some sleep. The end of the day is not the time to talk to me about things you need from me. I’ve got nothing left by then. So in this scenario, it’s about 10:30pm. I’ve already met, and exceeded, what I know and respect myself to be capable of. I had been downstairs a few minutes earlier getting snippy with my people and struggling to have and maintain a conversation. They had excused me - respectfully - and encouraged me to remove myself and go to bed.
So, if you’re paying attention up to this point, you know that we’re all getting exactly what we wanted and that I’m having a panic attack about it.
Inadequacy. That’s my predominate feeling in this moment. I’m thinking that a good mom would be spending time with their kids. This downtime is precious and more fleeting than ever as the teenagers begin to spread their wings. I’m also being tortured by my brain. “Remember when they were so little? Remember when you put them to bed every single night? Remember when you would tuck them in? Read books? A good mom would tuck them in. When was the last time I sang our song to them? Did I have a “last-one” of those experiences and not know it? Did they need me and I wasn’t there?” I’ve got spicy armpits just typing those thoughts out.
If I had gone back downstairs, it would’ve been weird. They would have asked me why I was back up. They would’ve reasserted that I should take time for myself to rest. I wear out a lot faster than everyone else. It’s not weird to allow myself the care my body requires. It would be weird not to. Even though I KNOW this, I laid there wide-eyed in the dark because of mom guilt. Gross. The toll this takes on my body is undeniable. High levels of stress make me physically ill and then any energy unit stores I’m distraught about are going toward immune support and not the memory making activities I’d like to assign them to.
There is zero percent chance I’m alone in this. I’m going to challenge us all - to stand firm in the knowledge that we are worth the love and care that we would insist upon for a loved one. The goal, loves, is to MODEL what taking care of ourselves looks like for our babies. They need to see it in order to do it. We don’t want anxiety, guilt, and burn out for them. We don’t need it for us either.