Women often feel guilty about… well, everything. From the moment we’re born, we learn how to feel guilty—not good enough. We’re guilty if anyone else is not happy, which means we’ve failed at our primary job—making other people happy. As mothers, we’re guilty… just because. The list of what we’ve done wrong, how we’ve failed our children, is endless. And if we can’t figure out why we’re guilty, then we’re guilty for not looking hard enough.
I recently had an experience that was shocking—because I didn’t feel guilty. Guilt was absent in a situation that in the past would have left me ruminating over my “crimes” for days. Even though everyone around me played their usual parts in the bad mom movie, I didn’t accept the role of the guilty character. I didn’t play that part in everyone else’s drama.
The situation centered around a multi-location sporting event that my daughter was participating in. The event demanded tremendous effort from her, and also from me. As her emotional support system, president of her fan club, and of course, biggest funder and fundraiser, she and I had both been working for months to make her endeavor a success. On a practical level, I’d attended parties to celebrate the event, bought her inspirational gifts, champagne, and cards that spoke of how proud I was, We’d gone out to her favorite restaurants to celebrate her commitment and I’d even surprised her with customized t-shirts for all of her friends and our dog. I thought I’d made a really big deal out of her accomplishment.
The day of the event was cold and windy. Together with her sister and best friend, we shuttled around the city to multiple locations to cheer her on, all the way to the end.
I gave her everything I had, physically and emotionally.
But…
After she completed the event, which went beautifully, she still had to take care of a number of tasks, which included picking up her medal. It was entirely unclear how long that process would take or, amidst the sea of people, where we would even meet to reunite. Making it even more challenging, everyone’s phone was dead. For the time being, she was still inside the venue and we were waiting in the cold.
Freezing and exhausted, having run around the city all day, and also with my own work due the next day, I decided to take off. I told her friend, who stayed to carry the celebratory baton, that I would see her at home within the hour or whenever they got there, and I couldn’t wait to give her the biggest, most well-deserved, proud mama-bear hug.
It was a Sunday evening with no taxis to be found. I waited for public transportation for a very long time. When I finally walked into my home, bedraggled and exhausted, my daughter and her friend were already there. Somehow, they’d managed to find a cab. My husband, who interestingly had shown up at just one location, the closest to our house (and felt not a shred of guilt) seemed upset—with me. “What happened to you?” he asked. I explained that I’d left after the whole day because I was frozen, depleted, and had had enough waiting around. “Oh, I heard that you just disappeared,” he said. Without responding, I went upstairs to give my daughter her well-deserved hug.
My daughter was in the shower. Neither my daughter nor her friend looked at me. I was, however, asked to leave the bath area. Clearly, I was persona non grata. There might as well have been a flashing neon banner with “bad mother” written over my head. I had failed as a mother and failed her at an epic level. After several minutes waiting for her to emerge from the shower, I left… again.
And so I went downstairs, feeling terrible and bewildered. Later, she managed to tell me that she couldn’t believe she’d had to accept her medal without me or either of her parents there to see it (even if the actual medal pick-up happened inside the venue where only participants were allowed). Nonetheless, the fact that I’d not been there physically to greet her when she left the event area, was a crime for which I deserved to feel guilty. My 11th-hour departure indicated to the whole family what kind of mom I really was. (Always interesting too, how it didn’t indicate anything about what kind of father my husband was.) Alas… a mother’s journey.
“Are you f-ing kidding me?” was what I felt like screaming. But I didn’t say a word. I felt devastated, for so many reasons, but not one of which was because I felt guilty. Maybe for the first time ever, I did not feel like a bad mom, like I’d done something terrible to my child. The absence of guilt to contend with on top of all the other hard feelings profoundly changed the experience, for me. There was still a bumpy and painful road ahead, to make this right with my child and ease her sadness about my not being the mom she wanted me to be in that moment. But without the burden of guilt, it was a far easier road to navigate.
As women, and definitely as moms, we’re trained to feel guilty; we’re “supposed” to feel guilty. And we’re really good at it. Just in the last 24 hours, the list of my failings for which I’ve already felt guilty is long and winding.
To name a few… I’m guilty for not making the yams soft enough the way my daughters like them, guilty for not making “real” meals like their friends’ moms, and for not wanting to order in every night. I’m guilty for mistaking the date of the class photo and for the order from Amazon arriving later than she needed it. I’m guilty for not wanting to get a thirtieth streaming channel, and for requiring my younger daughter to walk the dog when it was raining. I’m guilty for not wanting to hang out and gossip at 11 pm, and for being a working mom who’s not always available. There’s no shortage of guilt for this mom—I’m not an exception to the rule.
But in this case, after the six-month-long, herculean expression of pride and celebration, and a job really well done, it just wasn’t possible to take on guilt, to be the bad mom I was being cast as in the family movie. Something had shifted in me. The blame and shame wouldn’t stick; I couldn’t focus on what I’d done wrong in such an infinite sea of what I’d done right. And without the guilt and self-blame, the experience was radically different. Painful, but bearable.
I pay close attention to anything and everything that feels different and signals change. So, what did I know and trust in this case, and what had shifted in me that made me Teflon to guilt? What is guilt’s kryptonite, the one thing it can’t survive? These are the questions I’ll address in part two of this series on guilt. Stay tuned… and buckle up. There is another way to feel besides guilty.
