Everyone loves to use the mask metaphor in relationship to parenting. Like oh ya know make sure you take care of yourself first, get your mask in place first, then do the thing for your kid, or whatever. But that is all a fantasy as far as I can tell. Cuz the thing about parenting, and masks I guess in this example, is that they actually do not fucking work until you have gotten that mask on and working on every single one of your kiddos. It just doesn’t work like that. Not in these years when they are under my roof at any rate. TBD on how well our release into the world goes and how good a job I will have done at transferring the tending of the task of masks to my offspring. TBD. But no matter what, I am only ever as good as the kid of mine who is struggling the most at that moment. It’s just a fact. And yes I believe in self-care and taking care of me and regulating my own gd nervous system, and yes I am indeed the sun around which the planetary bodies of my children, spouse, and pets orbit. But even so. I haven’t taken this hip that has been cranky for the past 10+ years to a PT because there is someone further up in the line than me. Same with this ridiculous ear that is going on its sixth month of being either boggy or completely occluded. I spent the time and resources that I may have spent, in some alternate universe, dealing with me by instead making sure that my kid got the physical therapy and conditioning she needed for her bum back. It is a moving target but I have my priorities right now and I signed off on them when I decided to become a parent. It is just how I do it.
And while I am at it, here is another popular trope that I say is bs. This idea that our kids, or any of us really, are resilient. Durable, yes. Resilient, not so much. Especially not when it comes to our emotions. We have, however, become expert at compartmentalizing and stuffing away for later, but that just doesn’t really add up to resiliency, does it? Trauma is trauma whether it leaks out today or not, whether we choose to productively address it in this lifetime or no. And again, I do think that this too is part of the deal with parenting to begin with. And why it should forever and always be a choice and it is up to each one of us to be in conscious and dynamic relationship with that choice. It is tricky terrain to be sure. Many of those among us think that they have this whole putting themselves second thing dialed in as a parent and yet that has just been a smokescreen to meeting our own needs via our children in some codependent, shame and blame-riddled act of inheritance. More often than not hidden so deeply from our awareness generally as part and parcel to the belief that we are indeed resilient. I beg to differ.
I guess I take issue with the notion that “we are who we are”. We are incredibly sophisticated, nuanced, intelligent, and profoundly capable creatures. We can craft our behavior around our emotional responses through the repeated effort to stay awake to our lives and to modify and shift our responses per the outcome data. Of course we can. Maybe the update is something like: I am who I am, and also so much more.
End rant for now. Brought to you by a weekend on my own with my toddler, processing big feelings about my teens, and also maybe a lot of cannabis.