Over the weekend I started working on a piece about hitting "rock bottom" as it relates to eating disorder recovery. In the piece I waxed eloquently about resilience and approaching an emotional low as an invitation to be a better way of being.

And then we had THE MONDAY FROM HELL.

[Tweet "How the MONDAY FROM HELL made us more resilient. #motherhood"]

I'm not even kidding.

In all my years of staying at home with the kids (going on 5), I've never had a day quite like Monday. It wasn't that something particularly BAD happened--there was some yelling and hitting and sibling angst and messes--I just didn't handle it particularly well.

I'd had a great run. Spent time meditating in the light of the rising sun and walked in the door with the expectation that we were going to have a GREAT day.

And the the SHIT proceeded to HIT THE FAN.

And I didn't respond like a "good mom" I was a "horrible mom." (Or at least these are the title my inner critic gives me. Perhaps our inner critic gives all of us moms?)

The thing is that when I feel like a bad mom. I feel like a BAD EVERYTHING.

Suddenly I'm not just discouraged about motherhood but I was discouraged about:

my marriage

our finances

the future

my friends

my writing

my businesses

my running

my hopes and dreams

See that's the problem with me is that I have to be good at everything (I'm working on this because it doesn't serve me very well.) and when I'm not it devastates me and I feel bad at EVERYTHING.

I'm the same when it comes to criticism, especially in the things that I believe myself to be competent in. It takes me an amazingly LONG time to process criticism. Even the "Oh, hey I noticed you spelled that wrong," leaves me questioning my self worth--for a split second. And then I have to reign in those super negative thoughts, stop projecting my insecurities on to other people and get a F*UCKING GRIP.

Once I process criticism and realize that I'm still competent and talented, I start to look at the feedback for what it can do to make me a better person.

The problem with motherhood is that you're pretty much alone all day with small children and all the criticisms are in your OWN HEAD. There's no one there actually telling you you're doing it wrong (well, maybe there is), just the overwhelming sense that YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. And then your child's insane behavior that seems to confirm that thought.

[Tweet ""You're doing it wrong." -Every Mom's Internal Critic #motherhood"]

On Monday I was anything but resilient. I wanted to run away, ditch this stay-at-home, homeschool gig and get a 'real' job so I don't have to be with my kids all.the.freaking.time.

So not being resilient (which is something I pride myself in being) combined with these "Horrible Mom" thoughts of wanting to run as far away as I possibly could from my own children (Like, Canada looked good and not for the reasons most people are thinking of moving to Canada these days.) had me feeling pretty low.

But the thing about feeling low, hitting those rock bottoms is that it IS an invitation. If you really examine where you are and how you got there, then you open yourself up to finding a better way.

That was Monday for us. We are finding a better way. I'm finding a better way. For me that looks like letting go of expectations, staying open and when the shit hits the fan, walking away.

And it's working, for the past few days we have been living the new "better." It came because we lived that low, we looked at how we got there and decided we don't want to go back there. It is an empower thing for both me and my kids.

Sometimes you have to stop fighting the lows and let them lead you to better.

--Sarah

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Life Lately: Finding Resilience as a Mom

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