It has taken me a while to recognize my mistake. When Steve died, my grief was raw and ragged, but I had a 13 year old son just starting his freshman year of high school and a 11 year old daughter in the throes of middle school. I grieved at times, but tended to throw myself into my kids lives, putting grief aside does not lessen it or make it go away, it simply waits. It catches you when you least expect it, when you take a moment to catch your breath, it jumps in. Putting my own grief on hold was not a mistake, it was a necessity.
My mistake was made with good intentions so I don't beat myself up. well not too much anyway. As the saying goes hindsight is 20/20. Having made the mistake and now recognizing it, I must now attempt to rectify it as best I can.
My kids well-being was utmost in my mind. Mom's will do anything, I mean anything, to take the pain from their children.....this was my mistake. I tried to take away the hurt, I tried to make up for their loss, and I ended up making life now harder for me and for my kids. You see I didn't know at the time that I could NOT take away their grief. It was theirs and they had to embrace it and wade through it.
It is horrible to see your kids suffer, be in pain, be sad....because of that I took too much away, thus prolonging their difficult times. I kept us busy, I gave them everything they wanted, if I could. That is my biggest mistake. I made them less self reliant, less independent, too dependent on me, allowed them to substitute things for their grief and thus caused their grief to be prolonged. I am deeply sorry for that.
There are no instruction sheets birthed along with your children, no FAQ's sheet.....every child is different and must be parented in different ways. I know this. I have been 'accused' by my children of favoring one or the other of them. I don't, I simply give differently to each of them.
We continue to struggle at times, each new loss, grandmothers and grandfathers, compound the grief, opening the wounds and making it all new again. We struggle, we make mistakes, we travel backward but ultimately we will win. Perhaps through our lives any loss will seem more intense because of the many losses we've had but we will persevere. We are strong and we move on eventually. We make mistakes that have to be rectified. I must now let my children move into themselves, become independent of me. I am always here if needed, always willing to help, but must now let them stand on their own two feet. I hope this is not misconstrued as not caring, of pushing them away from me....it is because I love my children so much that I will move forward and allow them to do so as well.
We make mistakes, we are human, we recognize our mistakes and hopefully we will rectify them as necessary. I love my children, I hate to see their pain but I must let them move through it, give them tools to survive and refrain from 'fixing' everything..
"Making mistakes is a lot better than not doing anything"
~~Billie Joe Armstrong~~
Day 65 of 365.
Do your best.....K
Do your best.....K
No comments:
Post a Comment