Mamas, I was already an anxious person even before I had kids. But being in charge of babies, toddlers, preschoolers and even high school kids can take anxiety and fear to a whole new level.
If you add in a child’s chronic illness or medical condition, a severe allergy, a sick/aging parent, or mental health worries, it’s like pouring gasoline on the fire. I don’t think most people have any idea how much fear moms try to manage every single day.
On this Friday 13th, the day-to-day anxiety you may be feeling as a parent has a much bigger impact on your life, your health, and your kids than any scary movie ever could.
As moms, we can help each other talk about the inevitable worries that come with the job so that we feel less alone in it. We can also pass along resources from other moms who are studying this issue and writing about it so we can all understand it better. Here are two links that might help:
We love the raw honesty and profound quotes we found in this article by psychologist, mother, and writer Yael Goldstein-Love in Slate Magazine. Here’s one of them: “Loving my son is terrifying because I have never known such joy and plenitude. And I know this joy and plentitude because I live on a knife-edge of fear. I found my way to this realization and the steadiness it brings to my sense of myself as a mother when I stopped trying to separate the wonder and the terror. I learned instead to accept them for what they are—inevitable and inextricable.”
Click here to read the full article on the Slate website.
Here’s another interesting interview we found on the website Momwell about why moms are so anxious and how to help yourself lower fear. Host Erica Djossa of Momwell (who is also a registered psychotherapist) interviews a psychologist named Dr. Lauren Cook who authored the book “Generation Anxiety.”
CLICK HERE to read the article or hear the Momwell podcast episode about moms and anxiety.
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