Haha for real, I have seen that a lot and fought not to be that person the second I noticed I wasn’t good at this and it wouldn’t be different.
I went out of my way to have a pretty rough time where I was basically burned out for a couple of years so my kid would always be met with safety and love. But it nearly killed me and is exactly why I only have one.
Those years are too formative to be fucking around with “I’ll just damage you for my own selfish desires.”
Even still I live with guilt most days worrying about the damage I do not really being wired for this. I wish I’d had better self awareness before I got into it all.
I feel like she did the best she could. We weren’t close but I don’t feel traumatized by it, and I enjoyed having kids. When she died, the priest was asking my sister for some adjectives to describe my mom for the eulogy and suggested “nurturing” and my sister laughed and said no, not really. And she WAS close with mom, it wasn’t an insult just an observation. We weren’t neglected, certainly not by the standards of the time. And I was so close with my dad, and he died when I was a teenager so I’m glad I got that time with him.
The ex of my husband loved babies, little kids, was a cuddly sort of mom to babies but was an abusive nightmare of a mother to the older kids, like they don’t even talk to her now. He said she loved them only as long as they couldn’t talk back or be their own person - I think that’s so very much worse.
Are you my mother? I asked her once, after I had kids, “I don’t remember you being nice or, like, I dunno, cuddly?”
“I don’t like kids”
“But you had so many!”
“Well I like you all NOW, I knew you would grow up.”
Haha for real, I have seen that a lot and fought not to be that person the second I noticed I wasn’t good at this and it wouldn’t be different.
I went out of my way to have a pretty rough time where I was basically burned out for a couple of years so my kid would always be met with safety and love. But it nearly killed me and is exactly why I only have one.
Those years are too formative to be fucking around with “I’ll just damage you for my own selfish desires.”
Even still I live with guilt most days worrying about the damage I do not really being wired for this. I wish I’d had better self awareness before I got into it all.
I feel like she did the best she could. We weren’t close but I don’t feel traumatized by it, and I enjoyed having kids. When she died, the priest was asking my sister for some adjectives to describe my mom for the eulogy and suggested “nurturing” and my sister laughed and said no, not really. And she WAS close with mom, it wasn’t an insult just an observation. We weren’t neglected, certainly not by the standards of the time. And I was so close with my dad, and he died when I was a teenager so I’m glad I got that time with him.
The ex of my husband loved babies, little kids, was a cuddly sort of mom to babies but was an abusive nightmare of a mother to the older kids, like they don’t even talk to her now. He said she loved them only as long as they couldn’t talk back or be their own person - I think that’s so very much worse.