One evening not too long ago, we did our twice weekly walk at the riverside bike/hike trail. It’s something we’ve been doing for a couple of months now. Our four Littles are used to it, even if they don’t always enjoy every moment. We’ve cobbled together a combination of scooters and strollers, snacks and water bottles, wet wipes and even a first aid kit. It works for us most days.

Even with all the supplies we bring, that there are always a few places on the walk when someone isn’t happy. Everyone has their moments, but usually, it is Six. He doesn’t like any situation where he isn’t in control, and he knows if he slows way down or refuses to continue, we have no choice but to either wait for him or try to cajole him into some alternative – whether it’s walking a little further, going a little faster, riding in a stroller for a bit, or taking a piggyback ride.

This particular time, he was at it again. We were very near the parking area after an especially long walk – we’d gone further down the trail than we ever had before, and all the kids were tired.

Six was fed up with walking and stopped off on the side of the trail and refused to go any further. If we weren’t in sight of the end of the trail, we would be around the next corner. Two bikers loaded down with gear bore down the path, riding side by side. One of them spoke loudly as he approached us where we walked, a hundred feet or so in front of Six on the trail. We were the only other people in sight. “Whose kid is this anyway?!” He shout-spoke.

We’d already had our parenting called into question on the same walk. Near the turnaround on our out-and-back walk, there was a picnic bench. When we got to it, Four and Five asked to sit and take a break. We left them there to go a little further up the trail. We wanted to see what was up ahead. We never intended to go out of their sight, and we knew they would stay put; they’d been walking for two miles and I’d left them with cookies and water.

A man sitting at a table a little further down the trail gestured back towards the kids as we walked toward him. “What about the babies?” he asked. “They’re fine,” we replied, “we aren’t leaving them, and we know they’re there.” The Chaplain and I looked at each other to say, “Did he really think we were abandoning our children?” We went as far up the trail as we could while keeping them in sight (not very far) and then turned back. They hopped off the bench as we passed them coming back and we walked together back down the trail.

This summer, I listened to Brene Brown’s shame book, and a big section of it was about mother shame and parenting shame. As I was listening, I was thinking, I don’t really stress a whole lot about my parenting – I know I’m not perfect by a long shot, but I’m intentional about how I’m parenting my kids and am pretty aware of my biggest weaknesses.

One of them is that when I am feeling ashamed, I will often reflect this as anger back onto my kids, and I’m trying to stop doing it.

Example: we are trying to leave the house for church and are late (again). When we get into the car and I see the clock, it is obvious we will never make it on time. I feel a rush of shame that our huge family will be straggling into church late. We can’t do anything with a degree of subtlety. It doesn’t matter that our priest is often running late as well, and even on Sundays when it seems impossible for us to make it before the service starts, we often still manage to slip in moments before the opening hymn.

Instead, I think of all the little ways everyone, including myself, failed in the morning. The kids who waited till the last minute to get dressed for church, who ran around the yard when I sent them out to get into the car and get buckled to go. Me, with my questionable time management, doing things for everyone until the last minute so that I am the one trying to eat breakfast and apply mascara at the same time as we should be loading up the car and pulling out.

As my kids have gotten older, the biggest ones, especially Two and Three, have come to understand what they need to do to help get us places on time, and they often start loading up the car while I run around doing last minute things.

But on days when things don’t work out – the last-minute dirty diaper, or the one kid who isn’t getting with the program – we climb into the car and I burst out in frustration, “Why wasn’t anyone helping me?!” and that’s just the first sentence of a rant that doesn’t make anyone feel better about the state of things.

Some version of this often happens when I feel a rush of shame about something to do with my parenting. But it typically happens in private, so I don’t associate public experiences of shame with my parenting. I regularly judge my OWN parenting, but I don’t feel judged by other people about my parenting on a daily basis.

So on this day, standing on the trail, that man biked by, calling me out for leaving my uncooperative kid behind. A kid who was within line of sight if I were to turn around, as well as earshot, and was not on the trail but at the side, and therefore not a risk of being run over. A three-year-old who had just walked a very long way. And a mom who was being accused for the second time that evening of leaving her children behind.

I felt a hot rush of shame. I wanted to scream at Six to get up the trail to where the rest of us were. And I did call his name. He was standing stubbornly, singing some hallooing song, not a care in the world.

He wasn’t aware that I was spitting mad, thinking of all the rude comebacks I could have shouted at the biker, fantasizing about putting a stick in his spokes. That I was wondering what on earth the man’s problem was that he had to be so passive aggressive. I was so upset I was fighting tears. But I was also so upset that instead of reacting, it was like I was seeing my feelings in slow motion.

One thing I knew, was that I didn’t want to take the toxicity I was feeling towards that biker and throw it at my kid. While Six wasn’t by my side, I knew where he was, and that he was safe.

I started to walk towards him, then wheeled back, trying to breathe and center myself so he wouldn’t get the gale force of emotions that were swirling in my heart.

I finally turned back to him. When I reached him, I squatted down and he climbed onto my back. He rode piggyback for the rest of the walk.

Why did that biker bother me so much? Why does some parent judging roll off my back, and other times, it seeps right through and nails me to the wall? Maybe a couple of journal entries, some personal reflection, and eventually I would dig to the bottom of it.

I do know that I broke a cycle. I felt the shame – it was big, and ugly. But I did not take it out on my kid.

**********************

The Chaplain saw how upset I was after the encounter with the biker. He asked if I wanted to drive his car  to pick up our daughters while he took the Littles home. I agreed, relieved, and took my time pulling out and driving the short distance to the dance studio where Two and Three were. On the way, I saw a man walking on the sidewalk wearing a weighted vest.

I wondered if there would ever be a time in my life when I would feel so light that I would choose to wear a weighted vest to make a walk more difficult.

My walks are already difficult, and more than that, it often feels like I’m wearing a metaphorical weighted vest every day from the moment I wake up until the moment my last child goes to sleep at night. Once all this responsibility has receded (will it ever?), I’ll be so light I might float away.

I sat on a bench outside the dance studio. I watched the sunset as a cool breeze gave me goosebumps. I was reading Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero. (It will get its own post down the road.) He was talking about having a daily practice of dwelling in God’s presence multiple times a day and what that could look like. One model was St. Ignatius’ Prayer of Examen.

My wall went up immediately as he described the process of reflecting on your day with God at your side. The previous section of the book had talked about recognizing ourselves as no better than anyone else, the worst of sinners. I was still a bit raw from my Mother Abandons Three-Year-Old On Bike Trail And Causes Responsibility-Free Bachelor Biker to Feel Disgruntled moment.

I was thinking about all the things I had done wrong, a score I often take at the end of a day.

But that isn’t what this practice is for. It is to reflect on the times when you were able to dwell in God’s presence, and to express gratitude for those moments.

I took a moment to feel gratitude that in the midst of a veritable storm of shame, I had recognized that it was not about my kid, and I extended us both grace in the face of it. (Perhaps eventually, I’ll also be able to extend grace to the biker, but I wasn’t quite there yet).

It’s bound to go the other way many more times. Awareness sometimes increases guilt initially without helping much with behavioral change. But I’ll keep hacking at it, allowing the murderous thoughts to flow through me and not OUT of me. And eventually, hopefully “through, not out” will be my default.

Maybe, even the metaphorical weighted vest will disappear. Wouldn’t that be something.

This post’s photo is from our walk that day.