An Abuse that Every Mom Needs to be Aware Of

The tears came quickly after I heard the first few words.  “You cannot ever get this right!  You fail at this mothering thing over and over again.  Who do you think you are?”  Each sentence stung and fresh waves of emotion washed over me. “I have a long way to go.” I thought and went back to work cleaning messes because that’s what I do when I cannot measure up. I try to clean up my messes.

The abuser’s words were fresh in my ears and I rehearsed them over and over again, letting them sink in.  It was a depressing cycle that turned my day sour and made life seem worthless but what could I do?  What do you do when the abuser, the most negative person in your life, is you?

On a particular day after an especially harsh mental thrashing I had a flicker of a thought that woke me up to the truth of what was going on.  “Do you hear yourself?  No one else that knows and loves you would ever be that hard on you. Ever!  Is it possible that you are having a hard time forgiving yourself and loving yourself?”

The pain that came in that moment was like the good kind of pain that you feel when you have a knot in your back that is being worked out. It hurts but it hurts good because soon it will be gone.

In that moment I realized that I was holding my mistakes, weaknesses and imperfections against myself and, no matter how easily it was to forgive and accept others, I wasn’t offering myself the same grace.

How could I not forgive myself 70 times 7? It can be harder to do than to forgive a wrong from someone else.

That day I broke the power of my abuser by realizing the truth of what I was doing and by letting go of so much unforgiveness.

To hold yourself to impossible standards is to kill dreams and squash potential before it’s even begun.  You can never measure up therefore you never even try.  No one should live under that kind of impossible weight to bear.

Sometimes the thoughts come back but now they just seem dark, where as before, they felt familiar and true.  I no longer agree with them and give them power. I choose grace and live in a new-found freedom.  My mothering has been transformed and no longer has the restraints of lies that keep me in an awful cycle of regret and shame.

I wonder if you know what I mean when I talk about my abuser?  Perhaps you just realized that you have been bullying yourself just like I was. Do you think you could take some time today to identify any ways that you might need to forgive yourself?  Do you hold your actions and shortcomings against yourself?  Does your mothering suffer because you cannot get off of the abuse cycle?  There’s a way to get off and it’s such a better way to live.  Let it all go. Give yourself grace to make mistakes, to get it wrong sometimes and to fall.  You will be a much better mom when you do.  It just may change your life. 

Let’s call out the lies and bring them to light so that they lose their power over us. What are some of the lies that we tell ourselves and agree with that keep us in an abuse cycle?

In this with you!

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For more on the subject of becoming a good mom read this.