Facing Feelings of Failure
I’ve been avoiding posting a new musing because it’s been embarrassingly long since I last wrote something for this site. Yes, shame overtook me, and I continued down avoidance alley.
“What did you do all that work for?” I’d ask myself.
The answer never really came which gave me permission to continue my well-devised plan of “do nothing.”
It’s a classic move for me. When I’m overwhelmed or feel like I can’t see a path forward, I default to do nothing or say nothing. Fortunately, there aren’t many facets of my life where I am stifled, and because I can keep myself very busy with work and managing my household, it’s excusable to do nothing when it comes to a side hustle like writing.
What I didn’t realize, though, was that I had been robbing myself of a critical outlet—a therapeutic expression of myself that was helping to calm the internal storm of my mind.
Chasing the Dervish
Though I long for calm and a feeling of internal peace, I’m not great at sticking to a practice of meditation. Sometimes my desire and my ability are not in sync. So, while I want to feel connected to the universe, I’m completely unable to get out of my own way. That’s when things go sideways for me.
Recently, I had a sideways day—a day that I nearly ruined for my daughters.
We had set the date for back to school shopping so that we all had something to look forward to—and so that they wouldn’t ask me 10,000 times when we were going.
But when my older daughter was talking about her upcoming appointment to get her braces off and asked if she could get Starbucks that day, I snapped.
“I have asked you so many times to please stop seeing everything as an opportunity to spend money,” I said in a raised and very frustrated voice. The valve to my anger was opened, and all it took was a little turn of the knob before both of them were drinking from a fire hose.
“And by the way, I have to leave work and get back to work to take you to the appointment. It would be nice if you could recognize that. But no one seems to care that I have work today. Daddy has the luxury of going to an office every day, and because I don’t, you both think I’m here to just drive you around and spend money all day.”
Ugh. I hated myself more with every word that spewed out. As we drove, they sat in silence.
Doing a Little Less Damage?
But if I have to face my failures, I should also be entitled to see all that I’ve done well. It wasn’t long before my daughter broke the stillness with a bit of levity. It worked. We all laughed, which then launched us back into conversation. And as the ride went on, they both felt comfortable enough to say to me, “Mama, you didn’t have to freak out like that.”
It’s true. I didn’t have to…but I did.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said. I apologized because it’s the right thing to do but also because my therapist once told me that when parents take responsibility for their own bad behavior, kids are more willing to let it go. So, yes, I sometimes fail as a parent, but facing my failures honestly is helping us all to be better humans.