In all of this my husband and I found ourselves fighting to find each other again, amidst the demands of our children, our jobs, grief, and the paralyzing fear that grips you when financial insecurity threatens your core life systems.
Looking back, I can see how we should have or maybe could have sought each other out in the eye of the storms, grabbed our kids, and hung on for dear life. Instead, it became a competition of who needs more rest, who needs more breaks whose turn it is to do chores, or be the primary parent on duty...etc, each of us feeling under valued and invalidated until it spiraled into a disaster of anger and petulance, and indignance, which finally was noted to us, and to others, by our 3 year old son.
Whoa. kids are smart, and sensitive. And it hurt like a knife through the heart to realize how much we had not hidden from them during this time. So, we are using it as a teaching experience for us, and for them. We will use it to show that everyone gets angry or upset, and we have to try hard every time to be kind to ourselves, and to each other when we are having a hard day.
This morning I was livid that our 3 year old refused to get dressed throwing a full on tantrum, and running the entire household late, and drivng us all insane.
I sat in silence in the front seat of my car, after informing him of what the future consequences of that behavior would be (TV goes off, no morning fruit pouch store stops if we end up running late....)
As I sat there trying to center, waiting in traffic, my 3 year old said "mommy, you need to take a deep breath, and count to four, you're still angry".
True statement. Let the breathing begin.
