Healing

Very much in my feels today so I'm just going to use this as a brain dump.

Parenting is difficult, especially in the beginning because as the parent you are always needed. The Littles are relying on you for so much because their brains are trying to make sense of our entire world AND they are trying to make sense of all their big feelings.

Healing is hard. Healing and therapy feels like a full-time job, especially when the abuse have lasted since childhood. You have decades of neural pathways that need rewiring. Decades of core beliefs that need shifting.

Parenting WHILE Healing sometimes feels impossible. It feels like the messy middle has no end. It feels like it will always be this hard. I will always be so conflicted. I will always be struggling. I will always be apologizing to my son for reacting instead of responding. I will always be crying for feeling shame that I'm not doing enough, or that I'm getting overwhelmed with something small. Having to reparent myself while parenting a child for the first time is NOT what I imagined. I imagined that all my wounds would just be washed away when I saw my beautiful baby. Turns out for me it's quite the opposite.

But then something amazing happens. In the midst of all this uncertainty and worry and sadness, I see my son smile so big and in that moment I smile too. In that moment I am reminded that I am so grateful to be making these memories with my son. I am so lucky to be the one to create and share these moments with him. The one where we sit in my trunk and watch construction trucks for 10 minutes. The one where I am sitting on a bench watching him run around and go down the slide at a park with a big smile. The one where I see him hug our dogs tight. The one where he hugs a stuffed animal I bought him. In these little moments I am reminded that I can't keep saying "I can't do this", because these moments are proof that I AM doing it. The person I was five years ago would be so proud of the mom and wife that I am today. I'm going to keep making her proud.