I come from a culture where screaming at your kids was totally ok so despite all my efforts of being a different parent than my parents were, the screaming became a pattern…
When I embodied the old Angelica before cancer, I was:
A hot tempered mum
With a very short fuse
What I didn’t realise was that my kids were getting the worst of me…
I was hurting them, my husband and myself
And the issues weren’t theirs but mine…
But until I realised that, the way I was parenting my kids wasn’t serving them or myself…
I couldn’t change….
𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘬𝘪𝘥𝘴?
This is how I felt all the time…
I couldn’t get out of the loop of trying to be different and going back to behaving in the same way with them.
I was exhausted…
And mostly I was living from a place of lack…
Lack of energy, lack of physical strength, lack of emotional balance, lack of emotional happiness…
𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙄 𝙗𝙚𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙙𝙞𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙚?
Well, I just couldn’t…
And that is clear to me now but it wasn’t then.
𝙄 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝙥𝙝𝙮𝙨𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙫𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙡 𝙥𝙪𝙧𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙚𝙨….
Slowly I could see the shifts in my behavior as mother…
I had more patience…
I had more mental strength to work out how I could change…
I had more emotional balance to work out different strategies in how to deal with my kids…
It took me some time to create a different relationship with my kids…
It took me some time to rebuild a new relationship with them…
As I worked through my own issues that came from childhood, I started asking myself:
𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙢𝙮 𝙠𝙞𝙙𝙨 𝙨𝙖𝙮 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙢𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙩 𝙖 𝗽𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆𝘀𝘁’𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗸?
Within that, I started working through a plan to become a different mum.
I am not claiming perfection here by any means…
I am claiming acceptance and recognition within myself that once I was mum that behaved in a way that didn’t serve her kids….
She decided to changed that…
And she did….