I Had To Let Go Of Wanting To Be A Good Parent For My Daughter’s Sake
I came to realize recently that I needed to let go of the incredible pressure I had put on myself to be a good mom in order to be a good mom. I never wanted to be a mom. But I became one anyway so I had to become the best mom in order to stop the dominoes.
I believed most of my depression was a result of poor parenting but that my mother had also received poor parenting and so on. It was a domino effect that I was determined to stop. I’d be the one to end the lineage of suffering. It became my single greatest goal in life.
When I became pregnant I was scared. Really scared. I briefly considered abortion. I’m depressed, this child will be depressed, might as well save him/her the trouble of killing themself later in life. But I couldn’t realistically do it because I feared the regret too much. And I thought maybe, just maybe, I could be a good mom, the greatest mom really because I understood depression and thought I knew how to avoid it in my own child in the way I parent. That was now my single most important job in life. Because even before she was born, I loved my child.
But the undue pressure I put on myself made me a wreck. I wondered when she was a baby if my fear of creating a neurosis would indeed create a neurosis. I worried that I wasn’t following a very strict routine with her as a baby or that every cry meant her self esteem was diminishing. I told her things a bit too early for her age thinking I was doing her a service. I tried desperately to get her into something she could cultivate as a talent that would boost her self esteem but she saw it as me being disappointed in her when she didn’t want to do any of the things I suggested. Worse, she believed I was comparing her to her friends who were doing karate or taking music lessons (because I read music is insanely good for brain development I was determined to get her into that). She thought I was comparing her to them and she wasn’t matching up. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. I was just using them as examples. But I guess, “Why don’t you take music lessons like Meghan?” comes across as comparing.
And when she developed depression in middle school I absolutely blamed myself. I put ALL the responsibility on me when in fact her “depression” was probably more due to bullying in school and the fact that she didn’t have a best friend. Her “depression” has dissipated now that she’s 17 and has found that one best friend with whom she can share everything. I’m wondering now if it was depression or just loneliness.
But before that blessing of her finding a best friend, I wanted to be her best friend. I wanted to be the one to whom she told everything. The person she could confide in. I wanted to be her “secure base.” I wanted to be her punching bag. I was determined to take all the hits like a champ. But when I pushed her for the truth, it didn’t bounce off but rather sunk in. The truth was painful, too painful for me to endure without crying, without running to my bedroom saying I wanted to kill myself because I hadn’t stopped the dominos. That, of course, just made things worse for now my daughter was much too afraid to confide in me ever again for fear of saying something that would trigger me and cause me to kill myself.
I finally came to realize I was being a bad mom by worrying that I wasn’t being a good mom. So I decided to let go. Let go of the insanity that I had to be the best mom. Let go of the responsibility I felt towards her mental health. I had broken her, yes, but I couldn’t be the one to fix her. Because my “fixing” usually backfired.
So I let go and forgave myself. Because I’m only human. And an amazing thing happened. I began to feel like a real mom for the first time. I no longer needed her to confide in me. She had her best friend for that. And I didn’t need to be that best friend. I’m her mom and her mom I want to be.
Maybe I didn’t stop the dominoes but I believe I did slow them down. I believe I was a better mom than my mom and likely my daughter will be a better mom than me. The dominoes were never going to realistically stop immediately anyway but, over time as hopefully each generation improves on the last, eventually the dominoes may stop falling.
