Many people tell me that they are amazed at my calm and
humor and grace in the middle of life as the mom of the Bennett crew. And,
because I am working on not having a self-depreciating attitude, I will say that
they are right. I am good at generally keeping it together in what is a pretty
high stress mothering environment.
That doesn’t mean I don’t fall apart sometimes. Sometimes I
fall apart in a big big way. It would probably be a bad sign if I stopped
falling apart because there are days life is seriously awful and if I wasn’t
falling apart it would be because I had stopped feeling anything at all. So
sometimes I do fall epically apart. Mostly in private because of my
personality, but sometimes even in public I just lose it.
I had a such a day two weeks ago. It had been a rough 24 hours with our oldest
son. It was time to get to the bus and he wasn’t having it. His anxiety and disruptive
behaviors were at a premium. It took the whole village that is my neighborhood
to get him on the bus. I had no idea what I was going to do if he didn’t get on
that bus. I was panicked. When the bus doors finally close, with him safely on
board, I broke down in tears. My neighbors gave me hugs. I cried all the way (super
late) to my double preschool drop offs. I cried through drop offs. I cried
clear through the Starbucks drive thru window.
What happened next, though, is the important part. I stopped
crying. I did my next things and while I did, I started to deconstruct the
morning. I asked myself a lot of questions. What triggered the child? What made
me feel the most upset? What could have changed? What couldn’t change? Where
could I call in some resources? Who could help me? And with those questions I
started to create an action plan. A plan of people to call, places to go, a plan
of what I was going to do for my own spirit after it had been so totally
stomped on that morning.
With those thoughts, the clouds in my head and my heart
started to clear. My soul was coming back to where it should be. To be honest,
the problem wasn’t solved. I had no clear answers or promises that this wouldn’t
happen again. Getting the answers to my questions and getting a plan in place
took a few days of hard work, and it took some not taking no for an answer.
All the while I still was doing my regular next things of parenting
and life. The taking a deep breath, the thinking through the events, the analysis
and refocus, those I would argue are the healthy result of falling apart. Now,
it would have been easier to give up on that day. To go home and eat a bunch of
junk comfort food and watch a movie or bury myself in a book. Those are the not
healthy responses to falling apart, those responses take you from falling apart
over one thing to a life falling apart and a depressed spirit, if I may be so
bold as to say.
We don’t have to put on a wonder woman face to the world, we
don’t have to have it 100% together, we can, and should, fall apart sometimes. Where
we go from there, though, can have a huge impact on our souls. So, I will keep
falling apart AND I will keep putting myself back together. Hopefully an even
better version, a wiser and new lesson learned version, of myself.
