I thought I’d jump back in my blog with an interesting topic. But one that needs to be brought to light.
The benefit of therapy. Or, in the old days, counselling. Not a life coach. But if that’s something that works for you, by all means.
I’m talking about the kind of therapists who went to school, have degrees, and studied the brain and psychology and how the mind works, kind of therapy.
We are a therapy family. And had I said that 30 years ago, we’d be considered “broken” or damaged or have some trauma and abuse in our history or something. But that’s not the reason at all, because we don’t have those things.
Sure my path was once a three ring circus of chaos, but that wasn’t because of anything other than my own insecurity and self loathing, and body shame.
My girls are pandemic kids. They’re wildfire kids. They’re kids being raised in a generation of instant gratification, low levels of connection, and low self esteem, because rather than just one or two friends making you feel bad or good about yourself, they have dozens or hundreds, in their face, 24/7 with the world of social media. A constant state of comparison. A constant state of mind games with posts and likes, and a post being deleted or a comment made, and the insane mind fuck that comes with it! Could you imagine coping with this stuff at 12 years old?? I can barely cope with it at 48 years old!
Get ready with me. Trends. Dances. Lip syncing provocatively.. for whom? “Mom it’s trending”.. It’s a constant state of keeping up with something that really isn’t anything in the grand scheme of things, but to them, it’s everything.
I know I can parent my girls with both a firm hand and a soft heart, I can be their friend, and I can also be their worst nightmare, but there are gonna be things that they can’t, or don’t want to talk to me about. And that has nothing to do with our parenting.
Whether it’s boys, or their bodies, or school, or me, or their dad, or friends, or each other, or how they feel about something, which I might hear, but not really HEAR.
How many times have you as a mom, listened to your teen tell you something, but haven’t really been present because there are 300 other things going on behind the scenes of life, so you “listen”, engage in the conversation, and then jump to the next thing. Because we are so busy in this generation, we might miss that “thing” that they’re trying to tell us. That thing that is really bothering them but they aren’t sure how to say it. Because guess what? That is teenagers in a nutshell. These humans who have so many thoughts and so many feelings, but not enough experience to know why or how it’s making them feel, or how to express it.
Wayyyy too many teens are quietly suicidal. Self harming. Anxious. Depressed. Lost. Turning to substances far too early. It’s the real pandemic, and I refuse to sit back and think I can handle parenting in this world alone with my husband. We feel very foreign in today’s young people world. It’s changed that much.
And it’s not just social media. It’s little things like the fact that small towns never used to have monthly school lockdown drills. Imagine how terrifying that is for a child? But necessary. We’re in a world now, where practicing lockdowns is the norm.
There are some kids who have nightmares about lockdowns but don’t wanna talk about it to their parents, and instead fake an illness that day, or cry and parents don’t know why, just assume they’re tired.
A bus crashes, and kids wonder if it could happen to them, whether they were on the bus or not.
The world has such a huge lack of connection now. In so many ways. It’s lacking in work places. In schools. Everywhere. Human connection is a part of how the brain develops, and no matter how close we are to our children, they need that connection in other avenues of their lives too, and in today’s world, it’s just not there.
My oldest daughter is the one who suggested this path, because being an RN, she is in the business of people living life with therapy. She herself has some stuff that she needs to talk about sometimes. And even though we’re best friends, sometimes we also put up our own boundaries for certain discussions.. I might feel hurt, or vice versa, so we read each other very well. Can we have this conversation? Maybe. Will it hurt? Probably. And we do share 99.9% with each other, but there’s that .1% that we don’t.
A therapist knows how to decipher the boundaries. Or the things not being said, but actually being said in a roundabout way. They are trained in this. Meanwhile I’m not a professional mama, I’m a “ok, we will navigate each curveball as it comes” mama, and 99% of us are this kind of mom.
But that little percentage of the things our teens need to say could be the things that change their life.
So after years of my youngest navigating severe school anxiety and avoidance, we jumped on the private therapy wagon.
It has been such a game changer for her, that we thought hey, let’s all jump on this wagon. Did I ever think this would be our life? No. Never. I try and be the best possible mom to my girls, but I know deep down in my core that there’s a possibility that I might miss something.
I wish I had it growing up. Would my path be different if I had? Maybe? It was taboo when I was a kid. You were broken if you needed therapy in my day.
Did my mom know that I sat on my thick grey carpet on the floor of my bedroom against my bed, wishing I was a different girl in a different body? How would she? I had Roxette playing as loud as she’d allow it, and sat in my own self loathing, like most girls my age, and our mamas just thought we were listening to music. But I was flipping through a Seventeen magazine wondering why I didn’t look like the models in it. Why was my body so different? That self hate turned to much bigger problems down the road. Like a domino effect, that nobody could’ve seen coming, especially not a mama who is in the thick of parenting and juggling a million other things that come with being the family calendar and keeper of all things!
I do know now as a mom, that my own mom wore a counsellor hat too, but it’s different. We counsel and parent our children by our own pasts. Our own journeys. We compare to what we should’ve, would’ve, could’ve done in our own life moments, and we project that onto our kids in situations.. “well how I would handle this is…”
But the most amazing thing about a completely neutral person, who knows nothing about your family life, your past, your circle of friends, is that it’s like a clean slate and it’s only based on that exact event, and viewed by someone who has zero personal ties to any of it, therefore making their advice not skewed in any way.
My girls can say whatever they want. They can complain about me. They can talk about anything their little hearts desire, and it’s almost like a diary, except it costs a lot more and it talks back! Which hey, I’ll take it.
My girls and I are very open about it. I’m teaching them to never ever have shame where mental health is concerned. Ever! Say it loud and proud that yep, you talk to a therapist! So should every single one of the humans in your worlds!
The human brain is a fascinating thing, and each and every one of us have some sort of mental health trigger, or thing that we obsess over, or thing that bothers us, or feeling that we aren’t enough or…. and as a mom, I want my girls to have everything they need to have a successful future. One of those things is coping skills. Because without them, they could choose a path like I did, and have to fight their way back, so maybe my story is a little different, but every teen in today’s world could benefit from therapy, and being a person who wants to shed light on things that people don’t “like” to talk about, or god forbid your family look like they don’t have it all together, I’m here to say, it should be viewed as normal ♥️
The illusion of white picket fence families is a myth, we’re all just doing our best.
There is a very large group of moms in the world who chose really scary paths, and unless you wear the same shoes as these moms, you’ll never know what it’s like to worry about missing that one thing! The what ifs?
You can’t live in a state of worry, but being “present” is highly overrated and over simplified in today’s world, so if you need someone else to help you try not to miss that thing, I’m proud of you. Just like I’m proud of me. But I do know that I parent with a little bit of history sitting on my shoulder at all times, like there’s just something from our pasts that we’re trying to avoid for our kids, and that in itself isn’t all that healthy, but it’s also inevitable. It’s hard to separate and parent with a clean slate with each child, so please don’t beat yourself up about it if you’re like me ♥️
Sure we’re the Brady Bunch. We’re thick as thieves, happy, thriving, your average, everyday family living in a new generation, but sometimes we’re the Adam’s Family, and everyone is just trying to be their own unique self, and that’s normal and perfectly ok 👌🏻