Let’s just cut to the chase here: I’m insecure about my parenting. I struggle to feel that I’m a “good mom.” I sometimes feel that I’m not good enough – at anything, really. I feel that I’m not a good enough mom, a good enough wife, a good enough Christian, a good enough blogger, a good enough PERSON. I share these thoughts not to get pity or sympathy, but because I think this is something that we ALL struggle with at some point in our lives. We all want to know if we are good enough – if we are doing enough – and I’m just here to say that I’m in the same boat.

Sometimes these thoughts and these worries about whether or not I’m “good enough” send me over the edge. As a textbook overthinker, it’s hard to shut those thoughts down when they come up. And so sometimes I let them stew a little. And I let them stew until they turn into something far bigger than they would be if I just acknowledged them and shut them the heck down.

When things feel too hard to bear

I had a rough week last week. It was worse than rough, actually. I was experiencing mom guilt like I never have before and I was a complete emotional wreck. There were multiple things that just sort of built up. Last week was the culmination of weeks of beating myself up, NOT taking care of myself, and feeling extra insecure about my parenting. It was last week when circumstances and my own thoughts finally broke me and I couldn’t keep up the façade anymore. I couldn’t fake it. I couldn’t just smile and laugh through the hard and pretend that everything was okay when it obviously wasn’t.

And it felt heavy. It felt SO heavy. It felt like too much for me to bear.

It started with the tantrum-to-end-all-tantrums in the library. We were sitting in the children’s area of the library and the kids were playing nicely with toys. That is, they were playing nicely, until they weren’t. M (age three) smacked a boy right in the face when he took something that she was playing with – and by “playing with,” I mean it was sitting next to her and she was GOING to play with it. I saw the whole thing so I stepped in and got her away.

This resulted in a full on screaming, crying, kicking, weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, full-blown tantrum. It ended with me ushering all of my other kids out of the kid’s section and physically picking up my thrashing three-year-old and dragging her out of the library. All the while keeping a smile on my face: because if I’m smiling about it then I’m not crying – which is exactly what I wanted to do in that moment.

God sent angels

And even in that moment of feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted, God sent me angels. Sitting at one of the tables in the kid’s area was a girl from the running group I was attending (before tendinitis put a temporary stop to my running) along with her friend. That friend happened to be the mother of the boy M had smacked. But instead of judging me for my child’s behavior and tantrum, they were so encouraging. They smiled and nodded in understanding and empathized with my plight. And that was what I needed in that moment.

I could do this.

The next day, I took L to her first appointment of play therapy. See, L has “gestational trauma” (undiagnosed, mind you) from experiences that I had while I was pregnant with her. Some of you might remember when my husband got lost in the woods for a few days (when I was 28 weeks pregnant with L) and the impact that had on me. At the time, I didn’t write about the mental health struggles I was having, because I didn’t recognize them. But I was struggling. And it resulted in a solid year of me hating being a mom.

And so we finally got her in to see a play therapist. I was so excited. I was excited for her to have professional help with all of her emotions and the things that she was struggling with. I was excited for me to be able to be a part of her healing. I was excited to have someone to turn to for information on what I can do to help my daughter. We found a play therapy clinic in our area that doesn’t require a referral from my daughter’s doctor (that might not seem like a big deal, but my military friends will likely understand why that’s significant).

When therapy doesn’t work

So we showed up, I sat in the lobby with the other kids, and L went back with her therapist. And I was SO HOPEFUL.

25 minutes later, L comes back out with her therapist who wants to talk to me. Yikes. Things must be worse than I feared if she only spent 25 minutes with my daughter. I went back not really knowing what to expect.

And 15 minutes later I’m walking out of the play therapy room, completely distraught. Because what the therapist HADN’T provided me with was any information at all. What she HAD provided me with was a blunt and harsh criticism of my parenting. Her response to me was: “YOU are the reason your daughter is having these issues.” When I asked her what I needed to change, her answer was simply, “You need to not get angry. You need to not yell.”

Cool.

Here’s the thing: could I yell less? Absolutely. Do I love that I sometimes yell at my children? No. I think most of my fellow-yelling-moms would LOVE to be able to just stop yelling. And also it’s really hard. Add in the fact that I have five kids and not yelling EVER feels like a total impossibility.

I asked the therapist about the gestational trauma – you know, the WHOLE REASON we came to therapy – and she literally didn’t have any response to it. She just told me once again that I need to not yell ever – and she told me that’s something I can work through in my own therapy sessions with MY therapist.

Something you might know about me is that I am PASSIONATE about mental health. I’m passionate about therapy. And I joke that one reason I have so much passion about these things is because I’ve been to so much therapy in my life and my mental health has been my number one struggle for years. I LOVE therapy. I believe in therapy. I never understood when people would tell me, “I’ve been to therapy and it didn’t work.”

But I get it now. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes you get a crappy therapist.

And let’s clear something up here: Yes, I’m defensive when my parenting is called into question – because as I said before, I’m a little insecure about my parenting skills. And so I know I took it harder than someone who is fully confident in their abilities would. But I’ve been to enough therapy (and I know enough therapists personally and I’ve had enough friends whose kids have gone to play therapy) to know that shaming the parent and putting all the blame on them isn’t right. It’s not constructive and it’s not helpful and it’s ethically wrong. One of the first rules of being a counselor is to “do no harm” – and this counselor absolutely did harm.

In one 15-minute period, I let her crush every little ounce of confidence I had in my abilities as a mother. And I wish I hadn’t let her. I wish I was emotionally capable of standing up to that criticism with confidence and recognizing that I’m a good mom. I’m an imperfect mom and I’m a good mom. But in that moment – and in the days that followed – I didn’t have the strength. I didn’t have the confidence. I’m working on it. I’m in therapy and we’re working on it. But I’m not there yet.

So did that counselor do harm? Absolutely she did.

Do I have a lot of work to do on myself? Absolutely I do.

When my brain was being a jerk

I couldn’t handle the rest of the day. I felt physically sick. And I felt alone – so alone. At one point, I Marco-Polo’d my sister-in-law, my mom, and my friend and cried to each of them and told them I wanted to throw in the towel. I’d been trying SO HARD. And I felt like I was drowning. Really I’d been drowning for weeks, but now I reached a point where I didn’t see how I would come out on the other side.

I texted some local friends about my situation. I let them know that I didn’t know what to do next – I felt I’d exhausted all options.

And I have to say: that period of time between when I reached out to people and when they responded was one of the lowest points I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was a short time before I received my first response. Honestly, it was a matter of about ten minutes. But ten minutes was enough time to convince my brain of the thing I’d always feared: I AM NOT ENOUGH. Thanks, jerk brain.

God sent angels again

And then I got my first response. It was one of my local friends and she was right there in the trench with me, empathizing and letting me know how sorry she was that I’d had the experience I did. Later that evening, I went to the church for the bi-monthly “Activity Day” that two other ladies from church (one of whom is the aforementioned friend that I texted) and I are in charge of for the girls aged 7-11. After the activity, both of those ladies talked with me and hugged me – and CRIED with me – as I expressed my discouragement.

The next morning I had a call with another friend (who is one of my dearest friends and also a life coach) and she held the space for me while I sorted out my thoughts and feelings. She showed me my brain and helped me see that my brain isn’t actually a jerk. Ha! And then I got to talk to my mom – who is finishing up her training to be a therapist and works a lot with children – and it was just what I needed.

Then we had a birthday party that we attended and another friend of mine hugged me and told me she was sorry for the experience I had. She validated and shared in my frustration at the situation and was just THERE for me.

And here’s the important part: none of these angel-humans were telling me that I should yell MORE. None of them were saying that my actions DON’T have an impact on my children. But each of these people (and many others that I didn’t mention) saw me as a PERSON. They saw me as a person who has strengths and weaknesses and who sometimes yells and who sometimes mutters bad words under her breath. They saw me as a mother who loves her children beyond all reason and who would do anything for them and who also doesn’t know what to do at least 65% of the time. They saw me as what I am: a loved child of a loving Heavenly Father.

And because they saw me as a child of God, they knew not to shame me. They knew not to criticize. Because they knew that families are a complicated and intricate web of circumstances that we don’t fully understand. And that all the problems in a family cannot be pinned on just ONE person. They knew to hug me and say, “The reason you’re struggling is because THIS is hard.”

If the Savior stood beside me, He would have hugged me

You know what’s weird? When they were hugging me and telling me that they love me and that I’m doing hard things and that I CAN do hard things, it felt like it was my Savior that was hugging me and telling me those things.

But I guess that’s not really weird. I guess that’s kind of the point. Because Jesus Christ isn’t here IN THE FLESH to hug me and tell me it’s going to be okay. He’s not here IN PERSON to tell me that there are better days ahead. And so He uses other people to do that. He uses the hugs of friends to show me that He hasn’t forgotten about me. He uses the kind and loving words of imperfect humans to let me know that I’m not forsaken – even if I yell and sometimes mutter bad words.

And so no, I’m not fully okay right now. It’s going to take some time to undo the damage last week had on my brain and on my confidence. But we’ll figure it out. I know we will.

Last week kicked my butt. But it was also an interesting learning experience. It was another reminder that the only way to get through the rough is to lean on others, including (and especially) my Savior. I need that reminder often. I wish I didn’t (or I wish there was an easier way for me to learn), but I do. I think we all do.

So don’t ever downplay the kind things you do for others. A smile, a hug, a kind word – it could make all the difference in someone’s day and in their life. You could be the angel that someone needs – and you may never even know it.

’til next time…

Ash