Guilty As Charged

Admittedly, I stalk some blogs of people I don't know. One of the blogs... well, there's no excuse. I just find this woman's life oddly interesting. The other is one of my friend's, Erin, friend and she has lots of people she doesn't know reading her stuff so I don't feel so creepy. She writes honestly -- sometimes it's humorous, sometimes it's raw, but its admirably transparent.

She wrote today about stopping nursing in order to take care of herself (getting on some medications that her doctors had strongly recommended). She mentioned the horrible mommy-guilt, the feelings of failure, all those feelings to which I'm pretty sure most moms can relate. What struck a chord with me is that she felt so terrible over making this one decision -- as if not nursing negated all of the other wonderful things she does for her daughters. Mommy-guilt (I don't know enough about daddy-guilt to speak for it) is an interesting beast -- we beat ourselves up for things we have no control over, for worrying that we don't care enough -- or too much, for being fallible, for having to make hard decisions. One of the biggest mistakes we make is substituting one decision for all of the other work and love we give our kids and thinking we've failed them big time. Intellectually, we may know that we're making the right decision or that we should cut our losses and move on, but that doesn't always translate into emotional recognition or forgiveness. When I left Jack with John for a night a month or so ago, I was fine with it... and then I felt badly that I was fine with it.  Of course I shouldn't have felt badly about leaving him with his dad (and didn't) it but that all got swallowed up by the fact that I felt guilty about not feeling guilty, like I didn't love him enough (not true, obviously). It can be a ridiculous, tail-chasing good time.

I don't think we'll ever get rid of mommy-guilt but I do hope that we can keep it in perspective for our own sakes. Our children are the culmination of lots of things that we do for them. Sometimes, we are forced to make a difficult decision and no outcome is going to be completely satisfactory, other times a decision gets made for us and we are powerless to go in another direction, and still other times we unknowingly commit empathic failures. Any way you slice it, though, the other acts of of love, compassion, and care very likely make up for those less than perfect times. Just because one aspect of parenting didn't go as planned doesn't mean that our kids are destined for the dust pan. That's so much easier said than done but the more we talk about it, the more we take the power away from the bad feelings and leave more room to celebrate the positive things we do for our little people.