The past several weeks have been hard. It's my job as a mom to protect my kid, and some of that in this era is about not putting her whole life on the internet before she has a say in it, so I'm not going to go into the details. Suffice to say, it's been a whole lot of tension, accompanied by shouting matches, with healthy doses of tears, and even a massive kitchen explosion when a particularly time-consuming dinner prep didn't turn out at all well. (Word to the wise: throwing baked sweet potatoes mixed with quinoa and lentils at a popcorn ceiling isn't worth it, no matter how cathartic it feels in the moment.)
By the start of last week (when an additional layer of information added to everything else), Jeff and I had no idea where to turn. He's usually the skeptic, the one who believes that things are a phase--and he's usually right. But by the time we hit Wednesday, it was clear to both of us that we needed help.
Which is also when it became clear we hadn't asked for any. I didn't share with any friends what had been going on, and, when Monday's news just complicated everything further, I didn't know how to. All of the sudden, I could only see my daughter--my compassionate, sweet, creative, funny daughter--through the lenses of the concerns I had about her. And the result was that, whether I intended it or not, she felt the shift.
On Monday night, Jeff headed to a dance lesson, and my anxieties came to a head. The resulting evening with Lily was fraught with angst, and I provided no opportunities to hear her point of view. Frustrated and in tears, Lily raced upstairs before bed and slammed the office door.
Once the kitchen was clean, I dragged myself up after her, prepared for another battle. What I found instead was a note she'd slipped under the door and into the hallway.
Apparently, while I didn't know how to ask for help, my 7-year-old did. She'd learned something from her counselor at school (an amazing woman who joins her class regularly to help with social-emotional learning) called "I messages," in which she expresses how she feels and why ("way") she feels that way. And so, when she didn't have words--and when, quite frankly, I was steamrolling her spoken words with my anger, she found a way to talk to me. And not only that--she asked me to talk to her, too.
Over the course of the week, we went through a multitude of notes passed under doors at night--notes that revealed not her frustration but her heartache, not my anger but my fears. Jeff would come home at night to find stacks of messages on the half-wall upstairs and page through them, trying to decipher the conversations.
Finally, on Friday, I followed my daughter's lead: I asked for help. I reached out to her teacher about one issue and shared with a close friend about another. Both repeated the same words to me: "This is normal. We've seen this before. It's not your fault." They affirmed our daughter's character and spirit, reminding me of what I simply couldn't see.
Lily and I most recently traded "I messages" at the end of the week. In Lily's first one, she revealed her heart's hurt.
There were several messages that followed, a handwritten dialogue that allowed me the time and space to hear her. At the end of those many pages, covered in a multitude of marker colors and more than one with a few wet spots from tears, this one came.
When Lily was little, people told me it would take a village, but I was hesitant to rely on those around me in the early months--I thought I was supposed to handle it all on my own. On an epic night when Lily was several weeks old and Jeff was at work, I learned that just wasn't possible. Lily had pooped in the infant tub insert, then in the main tub (as I tried to clean the insert), then on the bathmat (as I tried to empty the tub). As the tears welled up and I looked at this infant that I was supposed to know how to clean and feed and care for, I sent an SOS text to her godfather who lives next door: "I know it's dinnertime, but can you send your girls to me to help?" Moments later, Lily's godmother and her daughter were racing in the door, the elder with a bottle of wine and the younger prepared to entertain Lily while I started loads of laundry.
We've told that story a hundred times--it's one of Lily's favorites--and it never fails to make us all laugh. But last night, when I showed Lily's godparents the image above, they both paused. And then her godmother reminded me of something: I can still text when I need a glass of wine and a friend to sit in the hallway with me while I cry or laugh or just try to ride the emotions as they come.
It takes a village. I'm glad I've been reminded of the importance of reaching out to mine.
