Tag Feelings

I Am Not Okay – Stuck on Repeat

Intentergy 4 Comments

Listening to the radio is often frustrating because I feel like the same songs are played over and over. Like most people, my drive times are pretty consistent. Two days a week I drive my son to his 6:00 p.m. practice. When we get in the car, we jokingly place bets on what songs we will hear first because they are always the same.

In the past few weeks, there has been one song in particular that I haven’t minded being on repeat. It is “I Am Not Okay” by Jelly Roll.
(If you haven’t heard it, please give it a listen, but be sure to listen all the way through.)

While singing along with the gravel, grit, and pain in Jelly Roll’s voice, I started to feel something loosening in my heart last week. I looked at my 11-year-old and sang, “I am not okay. I’m barely getting by. I’m losing track of days and losing sleep at night… I know I can’t be the only one who’s holding on for dear life.” My sweet boy laughed at me and said, “Mom, you are okay.” As I sang the rest of the lyrics to him via my in-car concert, I felt like I couldn’t stop until the last verse. When I got to the last verse, I couldn’t go on. My heart hurt too much to sing.

As we pulled into practice, I told my son to go on in. I would be in shortly.

He went in. I broke down.

Continue reading “I Am Not Okay – Stuck on Repeat” →

Regret as Anger ?!?!

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Regret as Anger

After a particularly difficult weekend of parenting, I confided in my friend Joy that I felt like my child’s irrational behavior seemed to be a reflection of a parenting fail on my part.

My child could not accept that they had to stick to their commitments. (Never mind the fact that they had cried, begged, swore on their grave that this was the ONE thing they were born to do and HAD to do it or their pitiful life was over.)

Now there was a new, “I’m gonna die if I don’t do this” thing and I was officially the “meanest, most unfair mom ever.” (Exact words of my child.)

The words didn’t bother me. The anger behind them did.

I wasn’t as worried about the fact that they thought I was being mean; it was the fact that my child was so quick to change passions in the blink of an eye.

Joy pointed out that maybe there was some regret there. My child now saw a new opportunity and regretted making the previous choice. My friend shared that her kids had demonstrated similar behavior and accused her of “forcing” them to do the very things she knew they loved. In her kind and wise way, Joy said, “I think sometimes they (the kids) have regrets and they use it as anger towards us, but it’s not okay for them to be angry with us for what they regret.”

WOW! Continue reading “Regret as Anger ?!?!” →