“You are crushing the mom thing!” The friend who said this to me had no idea the power of those words, said to me in passing on the pick-up line. Even though I barely knew her at the time that compliment sunk deep, and more than two years later I can still feel the warmth of validation and acknowledgement that was so needed, and yet so infrequently received. Somehow, this woman’s kind words struck at the heart of what I needed to hear, had been longing to hear for so long. I felt seen and validated and appreciated all in a millisecond. I got in the car and could not stop the tears from welling up.
For me, everything I do is in the service of being a better parent to my children, and having someone call that out, genuinely and spontaneously…not only was it entirely unfamiliar to me, it was so heartwarming that it healed a piece of me that I didn’t know was wounded.
All mothers deserve to hear words of affirmation like this and not just on Mother’s Day. Each of us works hard at parenting and all of us are doing our level best, yet far too often this goes unnoticed, unacknowledged, and is dismissed or minimized by the greater world. At times it is also disregarded by our family which is more painful that perhaps we are able to name. It certainly doesn’t help that in our society, mothers are laden with guilt and self-blame, regularly reminded of all the ways that we can do better, or more, or all the ways that we probably screwed up in those first few years - which of course we can do nothing about now, and many of us were offered little to no support for at the time.
Somehow, we have been tricked into believing that effective parenting is proprietary knowledge, so if only you follow what one person or another’s copyrighted approach is then you will have a happy life with a happy family. Except when that doesn’t work, you are left feeling even more discouraged and full of guilt and self-blame.
Double helping of mom guilt anyone?
The truth is that those first few years are chaos. Babies are learning how to be a human and you are learning how to be a parent. Physically it is demanding. Emotionally it is taxing. Despite whatever preparation you went through, there is very little you can do to prepare yourself for the emotional component of becoming a mother. Moving into that role activates all the wounds you carry from your own childhood, some of which you may know about, and others which may not present themselves until you are faced with an inconsolable toddler who won’t eat because they are struggling with oral motor sensitivities, or a hyperactive preschooler who doesn’t respond to gentle parenting and escapes out the back door every chance they get, or the exquisite distress of your kindergartener when you have to focus on your newborn, and all of a sudden you find yourself transported to the way you felt when you were a little kid in uncomfortable situations. And then you hit adolescence and a whole new wave of triggers awaits you…
If you come from a family that modeled healthy regulation and utilized supportive limits in the context of unconditional positive regard, you likely will have greater capacity to navigate these experiences. However, if you are anything like me and come from a family that meant well but had their challenges in terms of emotional resiliency, then these more fraught moments of parenting will likely activate those memories for you in a way that can be difficult. And this is ok, normal even. It is the part of parenting we don’t talk about enough.
This is the repair work of intergenerational patterns of dysregulation – because while you do not get to choose what activates these old wounds, you do get to decide how you respond when confronted with the pain. Do you allow it to take over and dictate how your child feels in their difficult moment? Or do you offer some grace, some compassion, and some comfort to yourself so that you can stay connected to the parent you want to be, now, in this moment, for your child. Maybe, even, the parent you wished you had at your painful moment.
Because the truth is that you are a good mom, having a hard moment, with a kid that is also having a hard moment.
There is this idea in psychology that I’ve written about called the good enough mother. DW Winnicott coined the term and it is worth revisiting. Being a good enough parent doesn’t just mean being accepting of your mistakes, it also means being accepting of your innate humanness. Being human includes being wounded. In order for us to abandon the pressure we get from society to do more for our kids, be better parents, cherish every moment, or take a time machine and redo those first few years, we have to accept that our wounds and imperfections are what make us good enough for our kids.
Whenever I think about this, I think of the Japanese art Kintsugi, where they repair broken pottery with gold, making the piece more beautiful because of the fractures. This is the work of parenting. This is how we repair the intergenerational patterns of dysregulation for our children, we heal the wounds with something more soothing – like patience, like acceptance, like affirmation, like understanding. We don’t ignore our wounds, we acknowledge them, we grow into them and with dedication to ourselves develop into something so much more beautiful because of them.
This is how we begin to see ourselves as being exactly the kind of mom we aspire to be. And how we start to see it in each other.
If you haven’t heard it yet, or even if you have, allow me to tell you:
You are a good mom.
Parenting is hard. You are crushing it. Happy Mother’s Day.