Last week I tucked my 8-year-old into bed, kissed her forehead, told her I loved her and I loved her beautiful face, and then said with warmth and sincerity (and a little guilt) “but I don't want to see it again until tomorrow. Stay in your room, please.” She looked up at me and said, without missing a beat, "Yeah, I know. I get it. Even moms need a break."
Yeah, kid. Exactly.
My "break" is not really a break. It's where I go to metabolize the day, to sort through the thoughts and emotions that built up over the last 12 hours of being needed, and to figure out what I actually feel underneath all of it. Some nights I journal, other nights I paint and let’s be real, some nights all I feel like doing is doom scrolling (which never makes me feel rested btw).
The other night, while journaling about all my inner struggles, I ended up writing advice to my daughters as if they were adults going through exactly what I'm going through. Somewhere in the middle of writing it, that advice cut right through my own nonsense and became so clear and so urgent that I wondered why I couldn't just say it to myself directly.
Stepping outside of myself, I can mother myself. It's one of the most useful things I do and nobody sees it, and it doesn't fit on a Mother's Day card.
This is the invisible work I want to talk about today.
Not the feeding and the driving, permission slips, and the tracking down the water bottle that's been in the bottom of the backpack for two weeks. That load is real and it matters, but we've talked about that one. Today I want to talk about the other invisible work, the kind that happens after the kids are in bed, the kind that requires you to look at yourself honestly and decide, over and over again, to try to do better.
A few nights ago, I walked to my night stand and saw the $5 that my daughters had given me earlier that day. I instantly felt ashamed of myself. Earlier that day I had taken $5 from each of my daughters as a consequence for not listening, for not cleaning up fast enough, for not bending to my will quickly enough. Sitting there in the quiet, I knew it was wrong, not because consequences are wrong, but because that particular consequence came from my frustration, not from anything that would actually teach them something. So the next morning I found both of them and I said, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken your money. That’s not the kind of mom I want to be. We were all on different pages yesterday and I think I was feeling unheard and stressed, and your money had nothing to do with that. I'm sorry. And I gave it back. Yes, we had a longer conversation about household contributions, expectations and made a plan together moving forward, but the main lesson wasn't in the plan. It was in the repair.
Right then and there I broke a cycle. As a little girl, I remember my mom would constantly hold privileges over my head if I wasn’t compliant enough. I don’t think she’d ever follow through with any of it but that constant threat was always over my head. I don’t want to be that kind of mom, taking things away out of anger. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I saw that $5 sitting there. But every time I do realize it and I rectify it, I’m breaking the cycle. I’m actively teaching my children how they deserve to be treated and that matters. This moment was just a quiet Monday morning correction, the kind that doesn't announce itself.
That's the invisible work.
My kids come home from school and all 3 of them want to talk at once, my 8 and 9-year-old daughters with a thousand things to share and process from their day, and my 3-year-old son just wanting to be in proximity to all of it (while screaming to be heard, too). Meanwhile, I’ve been in my head all day and most days I just want to lie on the couch and stare at nothing and let my brain go quiet. In these moments, I feel so overwhelmed and irritated. Yes, my overwhelm is valid and so are their ideas, their stories, the things they are dying to tell me. So I've been practicing catching my breath before I redirect them, or if I'm being honest, before I tune them out entirely, and reminding myself that I want them to share with me, that the reason they're bursting through the door talking is because they feel safe here, and that I am quietly, consciously rewriting something my own mother couldn't always give me. As a single mother, she worked a lot so I grew up feeling lonely, my imagination the only place my ideas had to go. I want my kids to always know I'm here to listen to their crazy tales, “what if” scenarios and what classmate forgot their folder at home. I want them to always know I'm here. Always.
I see my mother's anxiety in myself. Her angry blow ups when she was overwhelmed, her need to control what she could control, that tight grip that comes from not feeling safe. I know that grip. I feel it in my own chest sometimes. I'm trying hard to rewrite it and I haven't figured it all out, not even close. Keep in mind: I have an involved husband, a stable life and a doctorate in psychology. And I still take my kid's $5 and have to give it back the next morning.
Parenting is hard even under the best conditions. It's just hard.
My mom passed away two years ago now, and one of the things I carry with me is that she was good at repair. She said sorry, she talked it out, she made me feel loved after conflict, and she did all of that as a single mother carrying her own traumas, longings, worries, and unmet needs. She did a damn good job. I still fall short of what she modeled, some days, and I have so much more support than she ever did. Which tells you everything you need to know about how hard this actually is.
Here's what I want to say to you, on the week of Mother's Day, and I mean this for every mom reading this, whether you're breaking a generational cycle, managing a hard diagnosis, showing up for a stepchild who doesn't always want you there or parenting without a partner … however this message finds you, I want you to know there is no “final” arrival. There is no version of you that wakes up one morning fully patient, fully present, fully healed, done. The mom I'm becoming, one who is healthy, self-reflective, patient some of the time, present, and the kind of mom who genuinely likes her kids, not just loves them… she's not a destination. She's my North Star.
The problem with all those adjectives (e.g., the healthy one, the patient one, the present one) is that you're never going to perfectly be any of them. You're going to be some of them on some days, and miss the mark on others and the whole point, the actual point, is that you keep trying.
You’re doing your best. I’m willing to bet your mother did hers. Your kids are doing theirs. We are all messy humans who deserve grace, especially from ourselves, because no one else can give you the grace you can give yourself. Not your partner, not your therapist, not the parenting book on your nightstand. You.
Take accountability, yes, always, and give yourself grace for the ways you will never be perfectly anything.
The invisible work doesn't end. The metabolizing, the journaling, the quiet course corrections, the $5 returned on a Monday morning, the breath you caught before snapping, the moment you chose to be present even though you were exhausted… nobody sees it, nobody tracks it, nobody hands you anything for it.
This week, when you catch yourself doing it, pause for just one second and say quietly to yourself: I’m doing this. This counts. This matters.
Because it does. It really, really does.
If there's a mom in your life who needs to hear this - a friend, a sister, someone in your mom group who's in the thick of it right now, feel free to send this her way. This one's for all of us.
Happy Mother's Day. I'm so glad you’re here. 🥹♥️
With love from one messy, still-becoming mom to another,
Dr. Jazmine
P.S. If this landed for you, just hit reply and let me know. I'd love to know who I'm writing to this week.
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