Okay has to be good enough.

Things are... Okay. Not great, not good, but okay.

Some days, Okay has to be enough.

I'm struggling with quite a few things currently. Parenting, body issues, depression and anxiety, and motivation to change my current situation. It seems like I just can't reach that escape velocity that I need to really slingshot me out of a shitty headspace and into making progress.

The girls continue to grow and grow and grow. They are whipsmart and silly and all of the things I love most. They also are 4 and 2, and with those ages comes what my friend Katie calls "Developmentally Appropriate Asshole." They are totally in  DAA phases right now, and to be brutally honest, it's KICKING MY ASS to parent them effectively. I am trying and trying to be more soft, more kind, and even more soft and even more kind than that. I find an edge creeping into my voice and I feel my eyes tighten and my mouth make a line when  I can't get Bea to stop being unkind to Edie or climbing on my body or can't get Edie to stop hitting her sister or the dog or carrying the cat around. This week, I had what I think might be my worst day ever. I lost it at the kids. I broke down crying on their floor after a yelling match and just held them while we all cried. I am worried that I'm ruining my relationship with them forever, that this is the mom they're going to remember.

See, it's not just that I'm overcoming parenting patterns. I'm fighting my bipolar, I have several friends who grew up with bipolar mothers, Their memories are terrible and their stories are the kind of nightmares that kept me awake when I was expecting Bea. I would lay there, one hand cradling my swollen belly and the other on my heart, praying to be worthy of the love of this little tiny life I hadn't met yet, this person that had yet to be a person. When they were babies, it was easy to see that they loved me too. They were tiny, they needed me, they reached for me whenever they saw me and I didn't need words to understand that longing and trust. Now, they're bigger. They have words for the opinions they have always had. I worry about one day being the day to finally push them into losing that love for me, into turning towards their dad instead and leaving me totally out of the picture. I don't want that! These are my babies! I want them to still love and need me like I love and need them and always will. I don't want it to be broken. I don't want them to be 8, be 14, be 19, be 27, be 38, and feel out of touch with me or heartbroken at our connection. I don't want them to tell their friends the horror of having a bipolar mother, of living in a house of mental illness their whole childhood.

So beyond the normal parenting blogs and seeking help, I look to therapy, I look to friends I respect in regards to their parenting. And I find myself so lacking. I keep thinking "what if this is as good as I get at this and I'm actually just harsh?" And my heart breaks over again.

This parenting shit isn't for the weak for the best of people. So what happens when the not best of people get into it?

And that's why Okay has to be good enough to be good. Because I don't know how to be a great parent. But I know how to be an okay parent. Today, my same friend who coined DAA told me that in the parenting classes she has taught through various organizations, they've found no discernable difference in kids with great parents and kids with okay parents. Okay just has to be good enough sometimes,

I don't have the energy to get into my body issue stuff today. I will, but that's another post for another day and all my heart currency is going into the problem of how not to be a shitty mom tonight.

This shit is hard.