Having children destroyed me

And this is how I am experiencing being destroyed into smithereens

Unlike most parents, I don’t have my children as my home screen picture on my phone.

When I look at my phone, I don’t want to be reminded of the reason I don’t have the kind of freedom I actually desire. Instead, I have a photo of a tangerine tree that I can look at for a micro moment of peace and nature.

I also never go into the living room, which is basically a play area for the kids. My body already goes on high alert whenever I step into that area. Cleaning up after the kids? Forget about it. Not happening.

No matter how much fucking “mind work” or “nervous system regulation” I do, triggers will be triggers.

Why am I so triggered?

Because there is a solid part of me that feels spoiled and entitled to freedom and comfort.

I am an only child. Growing up, I would always say I never wanted siblings because I wanted all the attention to myself. I was also the youngest out of all my cousins. So I was pretty much given everything I wanted and was tended to as the precious baby.

And then when I got married, Dan treated me like royalty. I also did whatever I wanted with the generational wealth I was born into. Law school that was fully paid for, and all the praise and pedestalizing from family friends who thought I was so smart and accomplished for being a lawyer.

I was like, “I am the shit, y’all. I am untouchable.”

So imagine this spoiled little princess all of a sudden having to take care of two small humans who are determined to use me as their personal chauffeur, couch, and punching bag.

What a jarring transition.

I could no longer move to anywhere I wanted anymore. I was such a nomad before kids. In the span of a decade in the US, I lived in four cities.

I could no longer travel at the drop of a hat. I used to go on road trips every single weekend, especially when I lived in Las Vegas and there was majestic nature everywhere.

I could no longer sleep without mentally preparing for the worst every single night. Panic checking the baby cameras to make sure they were fine.

Dan and I could no longer go on a spontaneous date (or any date, for that matter) without paying for a sitter with the guilt of spending money for ourselves and being away from the kids.

I was also no longer my own person. I am constantly measured against all kinds of standards on the role of being a mom.

Not to mention April 11, 2021, at 11am on a Sunday, when I fucked up at a cosmic level.

If you’ve been in my orbit for a while, you may already know this story. If not, it was the worst week of my life.

Rhea, my firstborn, had just turned one a couple weeks back. She was waddling around the house, and I was cooking soup. Korean ramen (Nongshim shinramen) to be specific. When it was done, I put the boiling pot of soup on the dining table placemat and went to the fridge to get some water. In that split second, Rhea pulled the placemat, and the soup spilled over her face, and she suffered second and third degree burns.

We rushed over the the county general hospital, and they told us to wait until the Johns Hopkins burn unit team came to pick us up.

Rhea didn’t stop wailing.

I remember stepping into the ER asking frantically for attention, and the receptionist would be asking for the name and date of birth. She asked several times because I couldn’t hear her through Rhea’s bawling. People started yelling at the receptionist to just let me in and get the specifics later.

So they let us in, and they got to start treating Rhea. But she was such a small baby that they had trouble finding her vein to administer the proper medication. It felt like they were piercing my own heart as they kept poking the needle into her tiny arm about a dozen times.

I had never felt more helpless.

Eventually, they gave up. They told us to wait, and Dan and I just sat there speechless. Unable to feel. Unable to find words. An unspeakable amount of guilt, shame, worry, and feeling like the world was crumbling down right before our eyes. Desperately wanting to turn back time just two more hours just so that I could have done things differently.

Rhea had finally fallen asleep from the exhaustion of crying at the top of her lungs for over an hour.

The Johns Hopkins team finally arrived. And when we got there, they again took another 30 minutes trying to find the proper vein. They told us to wait outside, and the room they took her to was supposedly sound proof. But there was no way I could mute out the crying that, again, just would not stop.

There was not a single second that went by where I did not think, “I could have prevented this.”

And while we waited, the staff took turns asking us what happened. I learned later that this is a common procedure to ensure that there was no abuse or neglect.

There was a part of me that just wanted to scream that yes, I was neglectful. This was not supposed to happen. I am so fucking clumsy and messy, and I caused this. I should be in fucking jail right now.

My baby was in the ER crying at the top of her lungs because I couldn’t get my shit together.

There was nothing in the world that could change my mind on that.

Absolutely nothing.

We stayed in the hospital for a week. I was still a lawyer at the time, so I remember asking for time off and my boss being very understanding. But the knee-jerk capitalistic guilt of not being a “good worker” was layered on top of the profound guilt of not being a “good mother,” and I kept asking myself, “What business do you have being a mother? Rhea doesn’t deserve this.”

“What business do you have being a lawyer? What a clown you are.”

“What business do you have moving through this planet if you’re going to cause this kind of mess? Get the fuck out of here.”

The voice was shame was relentless.

For months after leaving the hospital, we would have to change her gauze and balm out twice a day. And for about two years, we would make over a dozen more trips back to the hospital for bi-monthly laser treatments. We also had additional treatment in Korea, where it was even more painful.

And they told us to keep her out of the sun. She had just turned one, and it was getting to be a beautiful summer. And she had to stay home. Because of me.

Each time I looked at her face, I saw the more permanent scar right below her lips that none of the doctors was sure how long it was going to last. Every time I changed her clothes, I would see my inordinate fuckery etched into her perfect baby skin.

There would be days where I felt normal. And there would be days where I bawled my eyes out yelling, “What did I do to my baby?”

That was all I could say.

There was no hole I could crawl into to feel any less like a piece of garbage.

So I would find ways to still be “functional.” I would go to work, run my business, and meet people. It was how I tried to convince myself that I was doing fine and that I was totally a master of my own emotions.

It was also how I dealt with the magnitude of shame. The shame was telling me that I was not deserving of being functional, so being functional was the only way I knew how to fight it, which was to prove it wrong.

I was so busy making this whole thing about me and not about Rhea.

I didn’t even know where to start asking the question about how I wanted to love Rhea because I was too busy fighting my own shame.

At which point the shame deepened, of course.

There came a point where I had no idea what to do with this shame shrouding over me like the devil’s own two eyes, so about a year and a half after April 11, I enrolled in a class called the Shame Clinic, hoping to address my shame.

Out of the hundreds of people in the class, I raised my hand first. I was desperate.

And in front of hundreds of people, I told them the story. I shared what felt like a boulder of shame that weighed me down wherever I went. Every time I saw Rhea’s face.

I don’t even remember what the teachers told me. I just remember being witnessed. Bawling my eyes out. Sharing the dirtiest thoughts and judgments about myself.

After a while, I found two things:

1. I was no longer interested in “getting rid” of my shame. Sometimes I hate it, and sometimes I have a conversation with it. I decided to keep my shame because it almost felt like getting rid of the shame also meant getting rid of the anguish, humiliation, and dejection that I experienced with Rhea’s trauma. I was not interested in deleting or fighting any part of my humanity. If those feelings are here, I want to experience it. It is part of the full spectrum of experiences that my humanity has to offer.

2. When I am witnessed emptying my pockets and putting everything on the table, I no longer feel the burden to hold it all myself. Sure, there may be judgment. But that is their business. What I experience in the witnessing is that I am not alone. That I get to take up space in sharing my story. Whether anybody has judgment about it has no bearing on the fact that I decided to take up space to share my story. When I am witnessed, my story now has a place in the world. I feel belonging.

So I slowly learned to carry the boulder in a way that allowed me to encounter myself more deeply. Meaning, I was making the conscious choice to carry the shame that felt like a boulder instead of fighting it and trying to fix it. Whenever the shame took the driver’s seat, I observed the emotions come up. I watched myself throw tantrums. I watched myself hold them skillfully. I watched myself grapple with my own humanity, unwilling to ignore any part of it.

That brought me to a place where I built the skill to honor my own kids’ agency and their capacity to experience their own humanity. I began to have more trust around Rhea’s ability to move through the world with her scars.

But that didn’t mean that I stopped grieving.

It just meant that I was willing to carry additional emotions like delight and pride alongside grief.

And while I expanded my capacity to hold different emotions, I found myself expanding my capacity to love more deeply.

The way I define love is the willingness to extend oneself for another’s thriving.

Feelings change. Which is why love is a decision.

So, for me, making the decision to love Rhea, and myself, each time I showed up to our relationship, was bold and real because it was not shaken by the turbulent storm of emotions.

Because the love is that much real, I am that much willing to experience the turbulence.

Which is why I find myself in smithereens overwhelmed by the emotions that come up while deciding to love each moment.

Like when I lash out at Rhea because I am tired, I feel like shit. But that doesn’t mean I stop loving her. I keep going back to asking myself what it looks like to practice love and care more effectively next time. What it looks like to be less tired. What it looks like to hold my exhaustion. What it looks like to honor my capacity while honoring my love for Rhea.

It’s a lot of fucking questions and a lot of fucking emotional labor to ask those questions.

But the decision to love remains unwavering. I don’t find that I have a choice, really.

So it’s an ongoing onslaught of endless emotional and physical labor in the name of love.

Yeah, love has destroyed me. It has left me ripped apart, ragged, and dilapidated.

But the heart remains beating.

The heart refuses to die and is instead doing very well inside this exhausted body.

And without that heart, I wouldn’t be alive.

I wouldn’t be here to experience the fullness of my humanity, including the shame and the anguish.

So I am here, honoring the will of my heart, to love deeply.

Even if my body breaks, I know that my heart won’t when I stand firmly in the power of love.