BAD MOTHER

As I’m doing my laundry this evening, I happen to see my daughter’s bath toys hanging in the net holder in the tub. I catch myself pausing, staring at them for about 20 seconds then I continue on with my chore.

Interesting?  I suppose not.  Random?  I suppose yes.  A good reason to write?  For sure.

Seeing her bath toys hanging there provokes a deep emotional response and I almost cry. I miss her. My lovely, interesting, funny, comforting 7 year old. But before you jump to the conclusion that she has passed on from this world to the next, she hasn’t. She lives with her father.

That bit of information, I assume, makes you wonder why? Is it because she’s not a good mom? Does she have problems why she can’t look after her own kid? No good. Poor kid. BAD MOTHER. Those are some of the things that I picture people wondering or saying. Why? Because I have confronted it before.

Here’s a little more to the story. I left my marriage and moved away from my community and my 2 youngest still live with their father there, the oldest lives with me.

Has the sympathy or empathy for me diminished yet? Probably. Most of the time I’ve accepted other people’s opinion of me and tried to toughen up and not let it bother me. I’ve done my time in “explanation mode” and learned to stop trying to defend myself, because after all these years later, as long as we make it work behind the curtain, then it’s really no one else’s business.

But just because we can make it work, doesn’t mean that it’s easy.  Not at all.  Most of the time, it takes a lot of energy to get away from the feeling of giving up and taking the plunge in the self-pity abyss of thinking you are a bad, terrible, horrible parent. I do have to say though, that this happens much less frequently as the years pass, but it is one of the toughest things I have experienced, and I have allowed myself to feel it when I need to.

I’ve also reconciled and put to rest the feeling that because I made decisions about my life, my marriage and my family, I deserve to feel the pain of missing my children. Only bitter and negative people would think that. But, they wouldn’t think that if they were in that situation themselves.  So no, I don’t buy into that. I love my children and I am totally allowed to miss them. I will find a bit of clothing, or toy or some other kind of keepsake lying around the house from their time here and I pause. I don’t always cry but I do always get the feels.

It may seem as though I am in “explaination mode” with this post, but I assure you, I am not.  Realistically blended or divorced families are becoming more abundant and I am beginning to realize that maybe I am not the only one who feels this way. Maybe I am not the only one who suffers through the episodes of guilt (in addition to the regular bouts of parenting guilt), the loneliness and pain of missing them.

I can’t speak for my kids but I know it’s not always easy for them either. I keep my comfort in the one thing we have all silently agreed on, and that is that we are going to put love first. We may butt heads and there might be a lot of raw feelings, tears and hurt, but we will always love one another, and we will always put that love ahead of anything else.