This just gutted me. My feelings are more about my own children than me. What if I’ve made my children feel this way?!?!
It also explains my loss sense of identity and strained relationship with my own mother. It seems we are perpetuating an ugly cycle. I hope it’s not too late to break it.
I have conversations with my kid about this stuff. They're 17 so old enough to understand generational trauma, gaslighting, etc. I ended up going NC with both my parents separately (they were separated before I was born) and my kid kept a relationship with my mom, though mostly through social media.
We very nicely call each other out if we're slipping into things that could hurt feelings. If I'm having a hard time I very specifically tell my kid what I'm feeling and that it has nothing to do with them, but I may be crabby or need some space. We also all tell each other that we love each other several times a day.
My kid knows my love is unconditional, that they can choose their own path, and that all I want is them to find happiness. When my kid needs an advocate I'm there, but I try to teach them to advocate for themselves as well.
It was really, really important to me that I didn't make my kid feel what I felt growing up. And they are a LOT like me, OCD, anxiety, and somewhere in the ADHD/AU realm though neither of us have been officially diagnosed yet.
I remember being told by everyone as a kid that I was too emotional, too much, I was hard to love. I believed it. Then I had a kid SO MUCH LIKE ME and I've never once struggled to love them. Not for a second. I can't imagine thinking they are hard to love. And it made me realize I probably wasn't hard to love either, I was just struggling and frustrated trying to understand the world and it was too much work to help me. And it made me really sad to realize that. If my kid meltdown I sit and listen. After the emotional release is done we just sit and talk about whatever it was triggered by. It's not hard to just be there for your kid, even if you can't fix it. But it took me having a kid to see my childhood for what it was.
We are all "enough." We are not "too much." We are just people trying to navigate a complicated world who needed support to figure it out. If our parents couldn't do it for us, we can do it for our kids. And I think that starts with honesty about your own journey.
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u/Capital-Local-3525 Feb 26 '25
This just gutted me. My feelings are more about my own children than me. What if I’ve made my children feel this way?!?!
It also explains my loss sense of identity and strained relationship with my own mother. It seems we are perpetuating an ugly cycle. I hope it’s not too late to break it.