Someone asked me, “If you could do it all over again, would you have children?”
My answer was: If I did not know how much I loved my children, I would not have had them.
As Rhea and Harper’s mom, my heart breaks every single day. They are almost 4 and 2. My heart breaks when…
I don’t feel the way I want to feel in their presence. I am so goddamn tired when I want to be excited and happy.
I would rather be lying down on the couch than let my face be used as a sticker canvas.
I think about how big they are compared to the photos on the fridge. And how much bigger they will be in just a few months. And then years.
They cry for mommy when I leave the house for a date.
I find myself raising my voice when they are so slow, and I am in a rush.
I cannot find the words to have a conversation that would express how much I love them.
I find myself lacking the energy to teach them Korean the way I’ve been advised by countless people.
I feel so deficient and helpless in the face of how much I want to give them.
And then I laugh at myself for not giving them more because the reality is, I could. I could honestly be giving them more.
The thought that haunts me every single day: “I could be doing more.”
I could stop going on all these dates.
I could take a moment to calm the fuck down and stop being in such a rush all the time.
I could really discipline myself to teach my kids Korean the way I had planned.
I could change my thoughts so that I can feel the way I want to feel.
This back and forth between the million parts of myself is exhausting.
Exhausting.
The last time I felt like I had permission to really, truly relax was when I last gave birth. That was the time when everybody paid attention to me and prioritized my body above everything else.
I am starting to forget what that feels like.
I can count with my fingers the number of days I actually had a good night’s sleep since my last delivery almost two years ago for Harper.
Even if they are sleeping through the night, which they are doing a great job of, I still wake up to sporadic and random cries here and there.
I still think about how anything could happen to them while I am sleeping. It’s almost like I don’t really have permission to fully sleep.
I have a chronic headache that shows up at the same time every single day since Harper was born. I have tried every medical care and treatment, alternative medicine, you name it.
All of this despite the immeasurable privilege I have, primarily: my class privilege to find care and support whenever I want, and my partner privilege where Dan and I make quite the incredible team.
Parenting is a bitch.
And to think that I entered into parenthood with not even the slightest knowledge or understanding of how shitty it was going to be…simply because it was just the “right” thing to do?
I am hesitantly but profoundly resentful of the fact that I thought this was the only option that was available to me.
Of course, there is a pure part of me that really wanted children for the purpose of procreating with someone I love and as a way of building something together.
But I wonder how much of that was a result of the conditioning that bearing children is *the* way to build something amazing in my life.
“Motherhood is so rewarding.”
“Your parents are going to be so happy to see grandkids.”
“You will not know a greater form of love.”
“You’re going to go through so much growth in your life.”
“You’ll regret it if you don’t have children.”
Just to name a few.
And even if all of these things are true to the person saying these things, how do you know it will be true for ME?
So many declarations. Not one question about what I really want in MY life.
In the process of following the countless declarations around how I needed to live my life, I erased myself. I watched my wants, my needs, and my intentions slowly slip through my fingers.
But ultimately, my decisions are my responsibility. I made the decision to have children. The way I take responsibility for my decision is to look at what happened and decide how I want to show up differently moving forward.
What happened was that I had children primarily because I wanted to belong. I used my children as a means for me to fit in. That meant putting on blinders from looking at what it really meant to have children, what the physical, emotional, and mental toll really looked like.
Because I was so desperate to fit in and collect all kinds of approval, ranging from my own family’s approval to that of strangers at large.
It was filling a hole that felt empty because I was hungry for distractions. I needed to distract myself from the work of belonging to myself.
I found myself taking several moments here and there to grieve the parts of me I erased. The parts of me that I lost by refusing to inquire about what I really wanted.
And in that grief, I found myself sitting side by side with that pure desire to belong.
Now that I knew what I really wanted, I got to actually ask questions what that looked like for me:
What does belonging mean to me?
How do I want to find belonging?
Am I willing to be messy in search of the kind of belonging that I want?
And here is some version of my answers, at least some form of a starting point:
Belonging means I feel at home. Where I feel safe to experiment and where I can ask questions not out of judgment but out of curiosity.
I want to find belonging by asking what I want right this second without making it mean that there is any part of me that is “wrong.” That means I can fuck up, and it also means I can change my mind anytime because I am no longer subscribed to rules that lie outside of me.
Yes, I am willing to be messy because that is the only way I practice love.
This meant questioning every rule that I was supposed to follow, including rules I needed to follow as a parent. So every time my heart breaks with my kids, I typically get information around a rule that I’m “supposed” to follow but was never mine to begin with.
Here are some new declarations for myself from reflecting on some of my heartbreak:
I am allowed to want to be excited and happy around my kids. That doesn’t mean I need to feel those things right now. Requiring myself to feel a certain way can be a pathway to requiring my children to feel a certain way.
When they have big emotions when I make decisions that prioritize myself, this is an opportunity for me to trust their capacity to handle big emotions. (Even if this is traumatic, worst case scenario, they’ll turn out to be hilarious because trauma makes people funny.)
The way I show love to them is my business, and I trust my children to experience love in a way that feels generative for them. I trust that we will be able to sharpen our practice of loving each other even more competently with time as we continue to share space and grow together.
Of course, words are easier said than done. As I craft my own declarations on how I want to show up in the world, I will continue to feel like shit because that is simply a feature of life.
But I will still show up because that is just how I exist as a human being. Also because I am consciously saying yes to feeling like shit so that I may experience my own humanity.
And because I am consciously saying yes to feeling like shit so that I may experience my children and my aching love for them.
I am willing to be heartbroken if it means I still get to love them over and over again.
And as I practice remaining faithful to my own sense of agency and live by my own declarations, I settle into the most profound sense of belonging.
Because, when my voice is what I honor and prioritize first and foremost, there is no one who can take my sense of belonging away from me. Nobody has that power. Even my own children.
And in that recognition of my own agency, I start experiencing the freedom to make my own decisions, take responsibility for them, and build only what I want to build in my life.
It follows that the way I love my children is no longer rooted in any sense of obligation but from a sense of freedom to witness them on my own terms.
I have found this approach to yield more space for the unexpected. More space for magic. More space for laughter.
If I could go back and do it all over again and did not know how much I loved them, I would not have had children because it was not a decision that was rooted in my own sense of agency.
But there is a bigger part of me that believes that I had to learn the hard way what it really looks like to honor my own sense of agency. There is a very large part of me that believes that I needed to witness this magnitude of love to break me open so that I can finally see what it looks like to honor myself.
It was almost as if I was forced to honor myself in the endless pit of pain that is called parenting so that I can truly know what love is.
And, at the same time, even if I didn’t have children, I would have probably arrived at a place of honoring my own agency some other way because that was just what was meant for me.
Of course I’d like to imagine that there was an easier route to that destination other than parenting. But here I am. With a pinch of regret but also an overwhelming certainty that I am where I need to be because I am unable to imagine myself existing without knowing the love that I know now.
I find that regret is a natural part of our humanity, but it often accompanies a stronger feeling that creates certainty around where we are now. It’s almost as if it exists to ask, “What do you feel even more powerfully that contrasts from the discomfort of regret?”
The answer to that question often speaks to our resilience in the face of our love for our messy and imperfect humanity.
***
If you are feeling so resentful and frustrated to the point where you are unsure if you are capable of love, chances are high that your sense of freedom and agency are being compromised.
Your resentment and frustration are not coming from some lack of ability on your part. Love is an inherent skill and birthright that we are born with. How much capacity we have for loving and being loved depends on how we take responsibility for our decisions.
What does it even mean to take responsibility for your decisions? Like I said above, it’s about looking at the decisions you’ve made and extracting relevant information to move forward so that resentment and frustration are no longer feelings that are interesting to you.
Imagine a world where resentment and frustration are boring because you are so good at filling your own cup, and naturally, expanding your capacity to fill others’ cups. This is the kind of work we do together. Find out how I can be your relationship coach: angela-han.com/offer