by Tara Shafer posted in Parenting

I am sitting here in my kitchen and the rain is drumming on the roof. My back is seized up and my shoulders are somewhere around my ears. Earlier today, I sat crying in the car because I was so sad. It feels so lonely, this.
I am doing it all, but badly. So I want to write about love. And kindness.
I think there is virtue in copping to the fact that parenting can feel unrewarding. I love my children more than anything. They are my first priority, always. I am keenly aware of the miracle of their existence. Sometimes, though, corralling them and trying to teach them things -- life skills, multiplication tables, a moral code -- while trying to keep track of soccer gear and swim gear causes a kind parental wall of fear that feels like a tsunami. The looming deadlines for ordering kid custom holiday art on a T-shirt/mug/etc. feel as real to me as any traditional work deadline. But there are so many things to remember.

It makes me want to stick tight to the love.
Sometimes I get broken. Sometimes it doesn?t work and my empathetic child asks, worried, if I?m okay. (This makes me sadder).
I really think that we all get broken. Today I was the mom crying in the car. I know what it was about -- it was about money and stress and time and kid social acceptance and that whole toxic mess of panic that makes me inadvertently hold my breath.
My mother-in-law wonders (with her eyes) if we have gotten too elaborate in our parenting. People of a certain ...