This week has been a doozy. With an injury to my dominant hand ongoing, the dishwasher, lawn mower and car all needing to be repaired, a family member needing lots of extra support, a very long to-do list and that’s before my kiddos are even accounted for!
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a moan fest, but it feels essential to help build the picture.
At times like this, I have to go to the tools I’ve learnt and remember to say ‘no’ more. I have to give myself grace and kindness.
This week has also been a week with heavy emotion. I’m grateful my mental health is generally pretty good and I have built up some great resilience, but there are times when I can’t smile or push my way through my feelings, and I have to remind myself, that like I tell my children, it’s really important to feel our feelings.
So this week, I’m tuning in to my little inner child and showing them the kindness, support and understanding that they needed but didn’t receive when needed. If you’re not familiar with IFS (internal family systems), it’s recognising there are different parts of our brain that make up who we are, and in understanding these parts and integrating them can help with self-compassion and understanding.
And like all parents, we parent based on our own childhood. There are generally things we try to replicate as they were good or great, and there are plenty of things we do differently due to our own experience of them. I know there are things I do and have done that my own children will do differently despite my best efforts, so it’s not about blaming, just about learning.
For me, I tried to be perfect and easy as a child to keep me safe. I internalised my feelings and emotions and solved my problems alone. This is something that underpins how I parent my children. I work to foster a collaborative relationship where they (hopefully) feel seen and heard. Where they are told that it’s good to cry, it’s safe to feel sad and angry as well as being supported through these emotions or given the space they need and support afterwards.
I let my children know they won’t feel like this forever and that feeling the way they do is completely normal and there is nothing wrong with them. I let them know that I feel this way too sometimes.
There are so many things that are easier now my children are older, and there are so many other things that are harder. I definitely am enjoying watching the people they are becoming, and am grateful they trust me to hold their emotions and secrets. As we move into the teenage years, I hope this continues. It’s brutal *being* a teenager. I remember how out of control and lost I felt. I didn’t know I was neurodivergent, I didn’t understand the ‘rules’ or why it was so hard to fit in, but I masked hard and managed to keep under the radar for the most part, but boy am I grateful to learn about myself as an adult, having so many ‘ah-has’ and things making much more sense in retrospect. I am grateful I can help my children navigate their neurodivergence and feel content and proud of who they are, in their full fledged beauty! They don’t need to be a square peg trying to fit in a round hole.
So this week I’m reminding myself and my kiddos that it’s safe to feel sad or angry, and there is no rush to move through these feelings and emotions. We won’t stay like this forever, and resisting the reality only causes us more harm in the long term. We can move to action once we are through the other side.
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