When feeling woefully deficient as a parent

Because I am.

We were at the playground with our kids Rhea (3.5 yo) and Harper (1.5 yo). There were a couple other kids Rhea was trying to talk to, and here is how they responded.

Kid 1 (around 4 yo): Can you get out of my privacy?

Kid 2 (around 5 yo): You can’t be here. We don’t want to talk to you.

Rhea seemed to accept the situation and go play elsewhere.

The blind rage I felt towards those tiny children…and the shame for feeling rage at tiny children.

If my brain was an Epson projector, it would have projected the following question in big bold capital letters: “How dare you reject the most beautiful and precious human being ever to exist on this planet Earth?”

All I saw was red and gray.

I just kind of stood there saying nothing, attempting to hold my thoughts and bombardment of emotions. I kept telling myself:

• I am not going to force my feelings on her by swooping in in any capacity.

• Maybe I should?

• Nah.

• Should I go talk to the parents and tell them how terrible their kids are (even though they are not and they are just being children)?

• I am sure Rhea has also been mean to other kids, too.

• Is there anything I can say nicely to those kids that rejected Rhea?

• Why is it important to me that those kids accept Rhea?

• Fuck.

• IT’S FINE IT’S FINE

• Where’s Rhea? When should I check in with her? When is a good time?

I watched these thoughts and emotions move through my body.

The dust settled, and I confronted the truth: I was requiring other people to give Rhea everything I could not give her.

I had conveniently forgotten all the times that I rejected Rhea. The times I did not want to spend time with her. The times I told her to stop crying. The times I told her no even when there was a big part of me that wanted to say yes.

Well, my brain had forgotten all those instances, but my body remembered. My body kept score of the times that I refused to hold space for her bigness, and in this very moment, my emotions arising from my body reminded me that I was requiring others (small children, for God’s sake) to take responsibility for the effect of my rejections and accept her on my behalf.

I was outsourcing responsibility for my own parenthood.

In moments like this, shame feels like the friendliest and most familiar experience for me. Any other form of my humanity feels inaccurate and violative of my truth.

So I held myself in that thought: “I am so ashamed that I cannot give her everything she deserves. I am ashamed that there are things I know I could give her but am unwilling to give her those things. I am ashamed that I am so…human.”

I allowed myself to be ashamed of my own humanity.

Okay, so…if I was going to be ashamed of myself, what’s next?

For me, that just meant that I was going to carry shame with me. And if I am going to let it hang out, what other part of my humanity do I want to engage with for now?

(Please note: There is no correct way to experience shame. Sometimes we shelve it for later, sometimes we grieve it, sometimes we talk to it, sometimes we evict it, sometimes we experience it somatically. Just to name a few options. This is simply an account of my own.)

And here’s where I landed: You know what, if I am going to feel ashamed anyway, if I am going to feel woefully deficient anyway, I just really want to love Rhea right now.

Loving myself did not feel very accessible to me, but loving her seemed very accessible.

So on our way back from the playground, I talked to her.

Me: Did you have fun at the playground?
Rhea: Yes.
Me: Were the kids nice to you?
Rhea: Yes. Well, there were some friends that were not nice to me. They didn’t want to share.
Me: Are you okay?
Rhea: Yeah.
Me: How do you feel?
Rhea: Not good.
Me: Are you gonna be okay?
Rhea: Yeah.
Me: Well, I am so proud of you. You were so brave and kind, and I just love you so much.

I did not mean most of the things I said.

I wish I could have told her, screw them. You can find other friends. You don’t have to be okay. You don’t have to be brave and kind. If you want to cry and be sad, I am here for you.

But I didn’t. I just pulled things out of my ass because I was so desperate to show her how much she was loved. I just used the words that she was familiar with to communicate my own messy expression of love for her.

The next best thing I could think of was to hug her, so I did. She typically doesn’t accept hugs out of nowhere, but this time she did. She let me hold her for as long as I could. It felt like a gift.

This whole experience was just a reflection of a giant need on my end to feel better about myself.

Because she was gonna be okay. Well, I can’t say that. I can’t say what she is or isn’t going to be.

What I can say is that I will do my part in being aware of where I am making other people responsible for my own feelings.

So when Rhea needs to confront her own thoughts and feelings, she will have an example of what it looks like to experience rejection, isolation, shame, and any other human experience without the need to make others responsible for it.

I don’t know if that will ever be possible because we are communal and interdependent creatures. As human beings, we do crave validation and attention from other people even when it is inconvenient and uncomfortable.

But at least she will cultivate her own emotional resources to have her own back when what we want from other people are not readily available to us.

Some people call this resilience, some people call it self-sufficiency.

I don’t know what I want to call it. Maybe I also want to call it those things, but I also don’t want to teach her that any of this is required to be human.

Sometimes we won’t be resilient or be self-sufficient. Sometimes we will break. Sometimes the pressure will be unbearable.

And it’s those moments where I will attempt to be there for her. I also know that I will fail to be there for her in critical moments the way she needs me.

But what I can commit to is to keep doing the work with her: noticing where I experienced shame, relating to her when we are both available for it, and being aware of where I compromised on my own truth.

It will never be good enough, and somehow, I am fine with it. At least in the face of love, I know how to experience shame. I know how to experience heartache. As painful as it is, I am competent at it.

I want to walk with Rhea as she expands her capacity with me.

That’s all I can do, and I am delighted to do so.

**

You can find more of me at angela-han.com.