One of my kids went through something hard recently. They bounced back in a day. Meanwhile, I carried the emotional residue for a week.
I call it the parent hangover, the delayed processing of feelings we take on when we love someone deeply.
Yes, it’s a motherhood classic. But really, it’s a human one. Partners, friends, children, we’ve all felt the ache of carrying what doesn’t technically belong to us.
I explore how I’ve become free of this (well, almost).
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Transcript: The Parenting Hangover No One Talks About
I will never forget the first day of kindergarten for my son, when I dropped him off at school. We were able to stay for a couple of minutes, and there were kids playing at different tables. One was Magna Tiles, one was blocks, and one was drawing.
He went from table to table and recognized that each table was full. The number of kids corresponded to the number of chairs, and I could just see his little face every time he said, “Oh no, this table is full.” He would go to the next table, and that table was full.
I could feel my insides for him, because the first day of kindergarten is a scary thing, and I could just see it on his face. He was so brave about it. Finally, I left, and when I left, he hadn’t really quite found his place. I was left for the entire day with that feeling of, “Oh gosh, am I ever going to fit in?” on behalf of my child.
At the end of the day, I came to pick him up from kindergarten, and he bounced out of the room, smiling. I said, “How was it?” and he said, “Great.” What I realized in that moment was that the feeling probably lasted about ten minutes for him, but for me, it lasted all day. It wasn’t my feeling. It was my feeling on behalf of someone else.
Nothing could change it for me, because I wasn’t there to see the kids say, “Hey, want to come play over here?” or to see how that fear or struggle resolved itself. It wasn’t mine. It was his.
I reflect on that now, almost twenty years later, when I have these moments of worry with my children as they go through something hard. Even though I know it is theirs and not mine, as a mother, I try hard not to feel things on behalf of my child and not to take everything on as mine. But I am a human being, and I am a mother, and it is impossible not to feel something for them when your child is really struggling.
I am still connected to them in that way. They still depend on me, and they still depend on me for emotional support. Recently, one of my kids went through something really hard. They felt it, it resolved quickly, and they went back to feeling okay. But I had a strong and long hangover from it.
The message is that even if we know our children’s feelings are not ours to hold for them, we are empathic beings. We cannot help but have some of it trickle over. Even if we say, “I trust my child and their ability to get through this. I don’t need to fix it for them. I can just be here to support them and to listen,” it still penetrates us.
I also have to say, my kids listen to my voicenotes. So to my kids: it is the greatest joy of my life to be here for you in your hardest moments, even if afterwards I feel hungover and need to recover. There is nothing I would trade in the world for the fact that you are willing to be so open with me, that you are willing to share your hardest stuff with me.
I say this because I don’t want my kids to protect me from the emotional toll it takes to be open with your parents. It is not your job to protect me. It is my job to protect you. I am resourced, and I am okay. The whole emotional ride, being willing and able to go on it, is what life is all about. And I love that I can do it.
Caveat, over to my kids: don’t listen to this and say, “I better not tell Mom about that hard thing.” No. Please, please, please, keep telling me about the hard things.
For the moms out there, I think there is a perception that once everything feels better for our kids, it is supposed to disappear for us. It doesn’t. It has to metabolize through us and work its way out.
I have a practical suggestion. I use TV shows and sad things to help bubble it up to the surface, cry it out, and metabolize it. I will find myself tearing up at the silliest things, but it is just stored stuff that needs to come out. It needs to be felt and expressed.
The message here is that if you are a parent, give yourself the time and the grace. Recognize that your processing often happens on a delayed basis, because you are not in the moment resolving the struggle you are observing. Your child resolves those feelings in real time. You don’t have the benefit of being in their body and resolving it. You have to artificially resolve the feelings you have taken on after the fact.
So give yourself the time and the grace to process that stuff out of your body, because it is very real and it is very hard. It might make you feel tired, and you may wonder why. But holding the emotional lives of children is a very big output.
I am a real doer. I can get a lot done in a day. But if one of my kids is having a hard time, my bandwidth for everything else narrows. Holding someone’s emotional life, being present for them, and resisting the fixing takes a huge amount of energy. But it is the number one part of my job as a mom. It is the most important part of my job, and it deserves the time and space it needs.
So, moms, give yourself grace. And not only moms. Moms and dads and caregivers and parents and siblings and friends and supporters and daughters and sons. If you are holding a parent’s grief or illness, or walking with anyone you love through a hard time, recognize that you will have your own arc of processing those feelings. You need the space and the grace to process them, too.
Alright, thanks for listening. All my love.
