Trusting the Mother in Me

Learning a new way

The essay I share today is one I wrote in response to a recent invitation I received from a writer I admire here on Substack. If you aren’t subscribed to

Stephanie Jucar Cooley from Unpacking

- go check her out. Her voice is fresh, honest, hilarious, and so insightful.

When

Stephanie Jucar Cooley

posed this question to me: When did you f*%k up (as a mom or as a human being) and what did you learn from it? - I had to sit with it for a bit even though I had an immediate answer. I find it hard to rubber neck my own wreckage of mistakes in an attempted drive by.

If I had to distill the answer down it is this: I passed a core flaw of my own onto my daughter - the automation of internal distrust. I am working hard to undue the multiple ways I taught her to not trust herself or her big feelings. 

My daughter is 10. She came out of the womb with sensitive feelings. Sensitive skin. Sensitive digestion. Sensitive nervous system. Her antennae stuck straight up right from infancy. I didn’t know how to parent a child who felt so much. Her older sibling was as chill as they come (he still is). My many attempts to quiet my daughter’s distress came directly from my own fear of what she was mirroring to me. Out of fear of what she was teaching me about me. What I am learning is that underneath fear is despair. The kind you don’t want to look at. Or let out.

“Put your tears away”

This phrase was on refrain for years in my house. It leaked out of my mouth and her father’s - she heard these words over and over. Because - well, oh so many tears fell. I hold so much regret and shame over slinging these words her way habitually. I can look back and recognize that I was doing my best. And I can offer myself grace because now I know better. And now I do better.

Things are different these days. I will sit witness to her thoughts, emotions, moods and exposed fears.  Because I know they will float by. And because I know that when they are yours - it doesn’t feel that way. They can feel like an elephant on your chest stomping on your emotional rib cage. And I don’t want her to think she has to be in that place all alone. Like I did. Like I sometimes still do. 

Before, I wasn’t inviting all of her into my arms unless it was on my terms. I was sending her to her room or a time out. To hold all of that all by herself.  

As a child, I would curl up inside myself. In mothering her in those earlier years, I must have instinctively felt that is how she should also cope. It was familiar and seemed to work for me, right? (NO!) Watching my daughter’s display of emotional spillage threatened my stability. Because I didn’t know how to do that. Because I don’t know how to do that. I still bottle it all up.

Somewhere deep in me, this was a big threat. I am the elder. The teacher. I am supposed to guide her growth - this all feels backwards. 

So, I dismissed it. Squashed it. Instead of witnessing it and allowing it to move through both of us. 

The time outs. The go to your room and come back out here when you’ve calmed down. I fear all that taught her is to not trust her inner compass. That the overwhelm inside boiling up is too hot to hold. A message that her flame is a threat to intimacy. No one wants to touch that heat so she needs to hide it. Extinguish it herself with no one by her side to dampen the flames. 

Instead of just naming and noticing the emotion as a sensation, instead of observing it as just a feeling with breadcrumbs that she can trust to follow, I would leave her be within her whirlwind of thoughts. She was left alone while her nervous system was on high blast.

I can now recognize that I was trying to tame her wildness because for so long mine had been caged. I couldn’t and wouldn’t admit that my daughter threatened my security of self. 

I was never given permission (explicitly) that it is safe to expose my underbelly with all its latched-on fear. So, decades later, I wouldn’t allow myself the freedom to be an intuitive parent. Clean emotions were what I wrote right into my parenting plan. Now, I know emotion is energy in motion. When we suppress it - don’t feel through it, that energy gets trapped with nowhere to go. Eventually it boils over, scalding hot and wreaking havoc. Burning everyone in its path.

My biggest hurdle in parenting now is loosening my grip on control. I want guarantees and warranties that my kids won’t be neglected and defective.  For many years, that looked like muscling my way onto their paths. Cushioning all the falls.  Telling them how to feel and when. Dismissing all the tears. Not wanting them to fail at anything. Micromanaging how they play, dress, emote in public. Because I didn’t know how to hold all of them, I assumed the world wouldn’t and couldn’t either.

So, I am left with holding this question - how can I teach my daughter to face her fears in a world where tears aren’t welcome? Therapeutic models tell us that the only way to dissolve resistance is to face it. I want her to see me holding all of it with her. Let’s look at all of it together. Let’s pop the tension right out of each tear drop. Sometimes the tears on her cheeks are mirrors and I see my own fears spilling out. This is not just about her.

Now we dance together differently. I let her see me cry. I encourage her tears. We hash life out together. We don’t close the doors of our inner bedrooms.  It’s a lesson for both of us. One I had to learn the hard way.

YOUR TURN:

~How would you answer the question: When did you f*%k up (as a parent or as a human being) and what did you learn from it?

~Do you let yourself cry? If you know me at all, I’m all about the crying ;-)

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