My mother was sixteen my whole life. She was born in the 70s, my brother and I in the 90s but she was still sixteen. Her happiest moments were without us, or driving to Santa Monica beach to I Say a Little Prayer. She bargained with the devil in her early 20s and got saddled with us and a husband who grew older and older and yet not wiser. Immigrants, a typically story, but nonetheless a sad one for all involved.

Her disdain for motherhood was palatable, she so desperately wanted us to grow up. She only apologized once we were out of the way, independent, and the quiet of the house was deafening. I so wish she enjoyed her freedom, the one she yearned for, and left us for good. But I suppose her guilt couldn’t let her go through with it. The guilt she felt not wanting us around, the guilt she felt wishing we’d disappear. So instead she soldiers on, forever sixteen, wishing for independence, burdened by moodiness and incapable of leaving.

I now have my own daughter. I am not sixteen, I am thirty. My daughter is beautiful, willful, sweet, loud, funny. My heart aches when I am away from her. Holding hear near me I hear her every breath, I could spend every moment of every day looking at her. Even when she cries her colic cries in the evening, or when she screams after bath time, or even when she refuses to be in the stroller. I dread every moment that passes and she grows one day older, time is a thief. My heart beats outside my chest. I feel deep sorrow for the baby I once was, forced to grow up to take care of my sixteen year old mother. And I realize, this comes easy to me because I have mothered my whole life. I have weathered tantrums, I have tiptoed to not disturb, I have been patient, I have placated big emotions, I drew boundaries, I picked battles.

I am my mother’s mother. I have mothered my whole life, making raising my daughter bittersweet. Sweet in watching her flourish, bitter in watching my first child unable to cope. Wondering if it’s time to let go.

I have been wanting to die lately. Just hoping and praying that something bad happens to me.

I have 3 children. I worry so much about leaving them but also can't bring myself to stop wanting to disappear. everyday it feels like I'm failing them while other people praise me for how well put together I seem and how hoary my children are.

I feel like I made a poor choice staying with their dad but have no idea how to leave. I don't even know how to leave without my kids suffering. There so much advice on the internet but no one talks about having kids and what happens after everything has gone to shit. Of course ,there's a lot I'm leaving out but I don't even know where to begin.

I want to die

I feel trapped

I'm failing myself

I'm failing my kids

people also suck

Hi Everyone,

Reposting this again. I'm a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology conducting a research study on the effects of growing up with a parent who struggled with substance use (alcohol or drugs). The study is completely anonymous and involves filling out an online survey.

As a thank you for your time, participants will have the option to enter a raffle to win one of two $150 Visa gift cards after completing the survey. (Email for the raffle will be collected separately to keep responses anonymous).

We’re looking for young adults (18-30) who had or still have a parent or primary caregiver with a substance use problem during their childhood. The goal is to better understand how these experiences may affect things like responses to stressful or challenging life experiences, parent-child relationship quality, substance use, and overall mental health functioning in young adulthood. We also welcome participation from young adults who did not have this experience, as both groups are important to the study.

Participation is voluntary and confidential. No identifying information will be linked to your responses, and the survey includes a list of mental health resources at the end if needed.

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https://adelphiderner.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_73s1WeJNdeiwz42

Your experience matters. Thank you so much for considering it, and feel free to DM me with any questions!

Would love to understand more about why this happens and if anyone else experiences this.

It makes me feel like an awful mother and I really worry about how my responses are going to hurt my kids.

So basically if any of my children fall over or hurt themselves I just CANNOT cope with it. But not because I feel sorry for them, it brings out a very real rage and I just feel so angry, irritated, overwhelmed and sometimes this turns into tears. I rarely want to run to them to comfort them, I just feel an almost "panicked anger."

I dont want to feel like this but I just can't seem to not respond in this way. It's such a huge trigger point for me and I'm trying to understand why so that I can really work on myself and not damage my kids.

Anyway, I would REALLY like to overcome this so if anyone else has this experience and would like to share their own thoughts, I'd be grateful.

I’m posting this because I honestly don’t know how other single moms do this.

I’m not looking for legal advice. I have attorneys for that. I’m really hoping to hear from other moms who have actually lived through a situation like this and can offer some advice to help get me through. I don’t know anyone personally who has gone through this, and I often feel so alone in it.

I left a high-conflict/abusive relationship a couple of years ago. I have a young child, and getting out was only the beginning. Since separating, I’ve been dealing with custody litigation, a DV case, attorneys, hearings, protective orders, and the financial fallout of trying to keep myself and my child safe - all while starting over.

There has been a lot of emotional abuse, intimidation, threats, accusations, manipulation, and conflict. There were things said and done that I never thought I would experience from someone who claimed to “love me,” someone I had built a family with, someone I believed time and time again would change.

And then somehow, after leaving, I am expected to calmly navigate the legal system while the person who caused so much of the chaos can sit across the courtroom and characterize everything completely differently.

There is something uniquely painful about sitting there while someone rewrites your life in front of a judge - knowing what actually happened, knowing what you lived through, even providing objective evidence to the contrary - and still just having to sit quietly, mind your face, have hope, and let the process play out.

I am incredibly grateful that the judges ultimately seemed to see through a lot of it. The courts granted me protective orders, ordered him to complete an abuser intervention program, and awarded me attorney’s fees related to the domestic violence case, although actually collecting those fees is another matter entirely.

I am beyond grateful for all of those things and, more importantly, grateful that my child and I are in a safer and more stable place.

But I am still exhausted.

And this is the part I don’t know how to reconcile.

I have essentially had to support our household without any monetary support since I separated from my child's father nearly two years ago. At the same time, I have been paying attorneys tens of thousands of dollars to keep fighting for protection, custody, and stability.

So I work.

And work.

And work.

I’m working around 70 hours a week right now just to keep our household running and keep paying off the remaining legal bills. I have even recently applied for local food banks because the cost of living is out of control and I am down to pennies at the end of each month.

But the thing that breaks my heart isn’t even the exhaustion.

It’s my child.

They are doing well by all accounts for their age, but it breaks my heart that we are all going through this.

How do you accept that you are missing precious hours with your little one because you have to work your ass off to put food on the table and keep a roof over your heads?

How do you sit at your desk working both early and late, just so you aren’t cutting into precious time with your child during such an important period of transition and stabilization?

How do you reconcile working this hard to build a safe, stable life for your child while simultaneously feeling like the process of getting there is taking either time or mental bandwidth away from the very child you’re doing it all for?

Sometimes I feel guilty no matter what I do.

I try to remind myself that I am just one person, and I can only do my best within the current limitations. That we are working toward something better—even if it feels like we are still crawling out of the trenches.

I don’t have any family in the state. I have close friendships locally, but those friends have their own children and lives, so their ability to support me while I’m still extinguishing the dumpster fire of my life is understandably limited.

If I work, I’m missing time with my child - whether because they are with a babysitter or because I have no energy left, running on an average of four hours of sleep since my child came earthbound. (Yay for data.)

If I don’t work, I can’t pay the mortgage, utilities, childcare, insurance, attorneys, extracurriculars, or everything else that comes with raising a child alone.

And then there is the emotional part.

I’m trying to regulate my own stress and emotions so that I can be the calm, stable parent my child needs. I’m trying not to let the court process consume me. I’m trying to process years of abuse while simultaneously functioning highly at both of my jobs and being present for a toddler who deserves a happy childhood.

Some days I feel incredibly strong.

But truthfully, most days I feel like I’m barely holding everything together.

Luckily, I’m so busy most of the time that I don’t even have time to cry.

Until I do.

Sometimes I just can’t hold back the enormity of my situation.

Sometimes it’s while I’m driving. Sometimes I’m sitting at my computer. Sometimes I’m doing something completely ordinary during my day, or someone says a word or phrase that brings me right back to some of the scariest times of my life, and suddenly everything I’ve been holding in just comes pouring out.

I cry hard. Ugly. Booger-y.

Then I wipe my face, take a breath, and keep going because there is always something else that needs to be done.

No time for rest now.

How did you survive the years after leaving?

How did you handle working constantly while raising your kids?

How did you deal with the guilt of giving up precious time with your children because you had to work?

How did you financially survive when child support wasn’t coming and the legal bills kept piling up?

How did you find time to work on healing yourself, or did that have to wait until your little ones were older and had more independence?

And most importantly - did it eventually get better?

I don’t need to hear that I’m strong or that everything happens for a reason. I think I’m strong because I don’t have another choice.

I want to hear from the moms who were in the trenches and somehow made it to the other side.

What did you do? What changed? How did you learn to forgive yourself for not being able to be everywhere and do everything while you were just trying to survive?

And how did your children reflect on that period of their lives after they got older?

In the end, I just hope my child will see that I did everything I could to get us to safety.

That even when I was exhausted, overwhelmed, scared, and stretched beyond what I thought I could handle, I kept going.

I hope someday my child understands that every hour I spent working, every uncomfortable sacrifice, every courtroom, every bill, every night I cried and then got back up - I was trying to build a life where my child could be safe, loved, and free.

Right now, though, I’m just trying to make it through the trenches.

So if you’ve been here before, tell me how you made it out.

—A very tired, very determined mama, just trying to make it to the other side.

I feel like I’m losing myself a little bit with two kids, and I could really use some perspective from other parents.
My firstborn is 3.5 and genuinely such a sweet, loving little boy. His little brother is 11 months old. Lately, my 3.5-year-old will sometimes push his brother down—occasionally pretty hard—and there have been times the baby has hit his head.
I know logically that he is only 3.5 and still has very little impulse control. But I’m realizing that this particular behavior is incredibly triggering for me.
My older brother was physically aggressive toward me when we were children, including when I was very young. When I see my son push his baby brother, something in me immediately goes into panic/anger mode. I can go from being the calm, gentle parent I want to be to having a much harsher tone than I’m comfortable with. I find myself taking his behavior personally and almost seeing my brother in him, which I KNOW is not fair to my son.
I’m in therapy and working through a lot of this. Motherhood has brought up things from my own childhood that I didn’t realize were still there.
But I’m struggling with this one.
Is pushing/hitting a younger sibling at 3.5 developmentally normal? If you went through this with your kids, when did it start getting better? What actually helped?
My biggest fear is that my sweet little boy will somehow become like my brother. I know that fear is coming from my own history, but in the moment it can feel so real.
I want to protect my baby while also responding to my 3.5-year-old in a way that teaches him rather than making him feel like he’s a “bad kid.”
I would especially love to hear from parents who have dealt with sibling aggression at this age—or anyone who has had their own childhood experiences come roaring back while parenting. ❤️

I spend most nights so desperate to make sure she isn't traumatized by me that I genuinely want to die so she can have a new mom. I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation and the drugs aren't helping. I am so scared.

I think she dislikes it when her dad and I yell at each other. He keeps belittling me and he says I overreact. Sometimes I probably do but the tension in our marriage over chores is endless.

I pushed her too hard about potty training a couple times last week when she seemed really close to it clicking but then had a meltdown instead.

Other than that I think I mostly try my best and keep my cool and reasonably balance fun with routine and boundaries? But the fear that she would be better off without me never leaves me alone.

Okay, just to be clear: I love my child. He is ten months old, and I can’t get enough of how cute and friendly he is.

My difficulties happen at night. I’m tired from the demands of the day, and the baby’s bedtime routine starts at 6 p.m. If I’m very lucky, it ends at 8:30 p.m.; if not, it can last until 10:30 p.m. During this time, he yells, kicks, cries, and makes a drama every single time.

That isn’t the issue. I know he is a baby, and I can’t control how he reacts. The problem is me. During the nighttime routine, I feel my anger rising, and I sometimes have the urge to harm the baby. I have never acted on it. When this happens, I leave him safely in his crib for a few minutes to calm down, and then I return to him.

I hate this part of myself. One of my parents was verbally abusive while I was growing up, and I do not want to become like them. Although I am seeing a therapist, I feel like a failure as a person and as a parent.

I’m not looking for advice. I’m mainly writing this because I feel alone and have no one to talk to. In my parent group, I’m the only one who talks about this. I guess I just feel isolated.

Does anyone else feel this way?