Meeting my match: anger & toddlerhood

Thoughts, feelings, and reflections about facing anger in motherhood.

Hi, I’m Emma, if you are new to this space, welcome, you can learn more about Being in Motherhood here. I’m a mother, writer, and artist. I have studied trauma, therapeutic tools, and mindfulness. I am moved by honesty, reflection, slow living, and a deep connection to the earth. I hold space for mothers to share their truths and be in their experiences. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe and join me on this journey.

My husband came downstairs a little while ago and said “you’re free to go,” which in this house means…he will take over and I can take a break. I came outside, opened up my laptop and stared at the screen for five minutes, fiddled around with a few things, and heard a voice inside me say…you’re procrastinating.

FUCKKKKKK.

I said it because I do not want to write about this topic, but I need to write about this topic.

I am drowning in toddlerhood. I am exhausted. I may have met my match.

I was chatting with a friend recently and we reflected back and forth on how our children serve as mirrors. It left me wondering what my child is showing me.

His self expression and confidence are fierce. I was never allowed to have either of those things. When he is being himself, playing excitedly in a game when I am trying to be a serious adult who needs to get things done, I boil.

I have been yelling more than I want to. I hate being angry. Angry was also something else I was not allowed to be growing up. Since my son turned two and the heat has been raised, I have tried to make my anger go away.

Because good moms aren’t angry.

There is the good mom bullshit again, sigh (I literally sighed out loud while writing this).

My mother was often angry with me, and usually it was because I was being a kid. I would get a tongue lashing if a dish was left in the sink after eating, my toys were not put away after playing, or at anything she found displeasing.

The thing I least want to be as a mother is angry. I sat on a call with a dear friend and mentor last week who talked about responding vs. reacting. I shared how I understand I am about to react and I can take a pause to respond in most situations, but with my kid, I am usually reacting.

She helped me see I assume my anger is bad, wrong, and not supposed to be here. A good mom does not get angry. This is the belief I am holding. Anger in the face of toddlerhood is normal, toddlers are maddening (she used this word and I love it). It is completely reasonable to be angry when there is a small human constantly testing your patience.

And there is still a part of me whining inside about not wanting to be angry at all. There is a part of me that assumes I should be able to face anything my toddler throws at me without flinching. I should be able to endure his tests and remain calm.

Holding space for what is

I desperately want my child to unabashedly be himself. I do not want to create a home where his self-expression and creativity are not allowed.

I do want to face what I feel in my body, so I do not willingly get locked into a power battle with my toddler. Sometimes when he digs his heels in on something, I do too. He holds up the mirror to the parts of me that want to win, be right, and in control. It is exhausting.

Holding back my anger is also exhausting. Thinking I can be anything but angry in the face of a defiant toddler is wild. I am only human.

And so is he. I have been trying to hold my anger inside of my experiences. When my buttons are pushed, instead of letting myself go off, I take a deep breath and say out loud, I am frustrated or I am angry.

I remind myself how human it is to feel anger in this current situation whatever it may be. I remind myself this is part of of my son’s development. I remind myself there is a difference between feeling anger and punishing my son because of what he feels.

This is the key difference between my mother and I.

She punished and blamed me for what she felt. When I feel angry, I try to not tell my son it is because of something he did. Because it is really about how what he did stirred something up inside of me. I do not want to incite shame in my child because I am not willing to be responsible for how I feel.

(Although, yesterday, I did tell him a lizard was going to get him so he would stop pulling the plants…it was not my finest moment and in my own defense, there was a lizard right there.)

Motherhood is hard

This whole motherhood thing is incredibly hard. Lately, I feel I am failing. I crave to move through life more ease, and most of my interactions with my son feel bumpy and clunky. I am not sure what I am doing and I have to keep showing up.

I do not want my son to remember me as angry. I do not want him to say I would get mad about ridiculous things. I want to be bigger than my anger, I want to rise above it. There I go again, I am having a hard time accepting this part of me as human, because this part of my mother wounded me so badly.

I heard recently how studies show emotional abuse has longer lasting impacts than physical abuse. Based on the experience I have in my body, I can tell you this is true. When I think about my mother, what hurts the most are the wounds the emotional abuse left behind.

And while the emotional abuse took many forms, unchecked emotions, anger particularly, were a big part of what hurt. It felt unnecessary and unpredictable, because she deemed what made her angry. I learned to adapt and I kept a long list of things not to do to make mom mad, but new things were often needing to be added.

I do not want this experience for my son. And I am vowing to stop blaming myself for feeling angry or thinking there is something I need to fix. My mind spins off into thoughts of…if I do more therapy, more meditation, more alone time, etc., I will be angry less.

And maybe I will, but I am not sure that is the point of what I am experiencing. What is needed is including my anger, holding space for myself as I feel and reminding myself, over and over again, how human it is for me to feel angry as my patience is being tested.

I do not have to yell. I do not have to shame my son. I do not have to say words I will later regret. I can try and hold my anger, not onto it, but hold it in my body, state I am angry, and see if there is anything my anger needs from me to move through me.

This anger in the face of my son’s self expression shows me where I hold back and how expressing myself is something I am still working on. It is also a reminder I did not get to have those experiences when I was small, and I have decades of anger to move through me because of the self-suppression I endured to survive.

Finding compassion

I am not a bad mother for feeling angry.

How many times do I need to remind myself I am human until I believe it?

Until you see her anger as human too, a voice inside me whispers.

Sometimes I hate motherhood for the compassion it seems to force me to generate towards my mother. Because of course, her feeling angry was normal. Her taking it out on me was not. But she is human too and she was allowed to feel frustrated. She shouldn’t have shame me and blamed me with her frustration, but she did.

Because when my anger rises, I feel one with her. Actually, I am quite certain I become her. I imagine what is moving through my body is similar to what she felt in those moments right before she exploded at me. And when I have released my anger in my son’s direction, I hear her voice slip through my mouth.

It is not only my anger that is unacceptable to me, but the fact I could ever act like the woman who hurt me the most. Her voice rises up faster than anything I have ever felt move through my body, my tone changes, I hear her. She might as well be in the room with my son and I.

The shame that runs through me when she takes over has not been enough for me to change. Because shame does not want change, and change isn’t the point. Is there a point?

Gentle here, something whispers inside of me. There does not need to be a point, a goal, because I remind myself there is nothing to fix here. There are a lot of feelings to be with. There are stories to unravel. There are inner children who need attention.

How human of me to feel angry.

How human for anyone to feel angry in the face of toddlerhood.

And if you experience anger as part of motherhood, I see you.

Let’s remind each other we are not alone in the comments (or reply to this email).

Love, Emma

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