Guilt

Motherhood, it’s a wonderful thing. Wonderfully difficult. Wonderfully rewarding and wonderfully filled with guilt.

I’m always amazed at the power love has over us. It’s this power that will lift us up high and drop us back down. And it’s this power that causes self doubt and a horrible spiral of guilt. Unjustified, self destructive guilt.

Yesterday I had a particularly difficult bought with this guilt. Yesterday, I was walking out with the littles, Big Brother ran ahead and Little Sister tried to follow… in a parking lot. Granted it was a relatively desolate parking lot, but still. I was trying to get Big Brother to get in the car and Little Sister was flailing to get free. I only had a grip on her sleeve and not her hand so she yanked free falling face first on the pavement. Cracking her tooth, bleeding and crying. She was fine, cried less than 15 seconds and the chip is barely noticeable. But…

But I spent the rest of the night contemplating my failure. I should have held tighter, carried her, held her hand instead of the sleeve, and on and on. Then the guilt spiraled into other parenting failures beyond Little Sister and on to Big Brother. I had a fitful night of sleep. I am a terrible mother, I have ruined my daughter’s smile and her future. At least, that’s what I had convinced myself of (and I’m still struggling with a bit).

I have no words of wisdom here to fix this. More just rambling observations. We are all flawed, we make mistakes and to that there are consequences. Justified and unjustified. I believe this guilt is unjustified, but that doesn’t stop it from rolling around my psyche.
If you are also going through this, take heart, you are not alone.

On a happier note, I’m hoping Jen posts up some photos of the world’s most amazing baby shower we had in honor of Jamy’s soon to be little one.