One of those mornings where everything is—or turns into—a nightmare. Staying asleep would be, at this very moment, a very good option. But no, you’re wide awake! On a scale of 1 to 10, your patience would score a 0.5. You’re fuming about just about everything (instead of crying). The mood is as negative as it gets.
Your kids can sense it, which is why they’re just looking for trouble. Deep down, they, too, can’t handle today’s routine anymore. There are mornings like this: nothing could make them any better—they’re just dark.
We’d love to just take a break. You don’t want to cry in front of them yet again this week. Instead of letting it all out, you tell them, “Stop messing around—we’re all going to be late!” And then you blurt out all sorts of clever things you’ll surely regret, like: “I didn’t raise you to be like that” or “Brush your teeth better than that—the tooth fairy is watching you.” And it all comes pouring out: “Let go of your sister—she didn’t do anything to you this morning. Why are you taking it out on her?” Everything to make sure that questions start racing through your head, too.
It goes on all the way to school, where you bitterly regret letting negative emotions get the better of you. You feel bad letting them go off to join their friends without a smile on your face, because this morning just wasn’t a good one. At that very moment, as you watch them walk away, you just want to jump out of the car, run after them, hug them tight, apologize, and tell them, “It’s going to be okay, my loves.” ” Instead, you try to convince yourself that maybe this will make them think twice, that you can’t be perfect. That they were pushing your buttons a little, too, with their pointless arguments.
That’s when you burst into tears because deep down, you know you’re going to miss them all day long, even if for now your ears are grateful for the break. How do you carry on with your day after a start like that? With a second cup of coffee, I suppose. You pull yourself together, enough to get motivated.
Everything becomes clearer. You sort through the biggest problems in your head and tell yourself, “I’m taking my lunch break to talk to my boss: I can’t take it anymore. Five days a week is too much.” Just the feeling of being lighter already makes you feel so much better. And then tonight, you want to make up for the bad start to the day. For dinner, you’ll have pizza. Takeout for a change—you don’t want to ruin it by cooking from scratch, with all that never-ending prep. Because even if you start the day off on the wrong foot, that doesn’t mean you have to end it that way.
Do you ever have one of those days that starts off on the wrong foot? No matter what led to it, there’s no point in judging yourself. A mom’s ability to turn things around—that’s our strength. We can cry and burst out laughing within the same two minutes, and it’s wonderful! That’s just how life is—and I love it that way, with all its ups and downs.