For the Love of God, Don’t Call Me a Good Mom

Guest writer, Melanie, shares about parenting through trauma.

Hi, it’s me.

Today I’m proud to bring you a guest essay by my friend, Melanie, who lives in Minnesota. I went to high school with Melanie’s husband, John, and we were all in the same church youth group together — though they were both a year ahead of me in class.

After years of being out of touch after high school, Melanie and I reconnected at some point in the early 2000s, probably through my first blog or maybe when Facebook started? At any rate, whenever Bryan and I are in Minnesota to visit my family, we make time for John and Melanie. Our connection is always as if no time has passed since we last saw each other.

I wish I had photographic proof that we exist together in the same time and space, but despite the fact that I take pictures of everything, I can’t find a single one of us together. Weird.

My latest favorite thing about Melanie is that she replies by email to my newsletters with loooooong and sometimes stream-of-consciousness thoughts. I never fail to follow her logic — we constantly have moments of feeling like we share a brain. In fact, this essay started as a long email she sent me, and I was like, can I post this? 😂

So here we are, with her daughter’s permission.

I know several parent-friends who have walked alongside their kids through traumatic experiences, and I’m sure a few of you can relate to this as well. It’s a difficult topic to talk about publicly, because these experience are private, sensitive, and when they happen to our kids, they’re not our stories to tell.

I’m grateful to Melanie (and her daughter!) for being willing to share this slice of her experience. It was a good reminder to me to think beyond platitudes when supporting friends in my community.

If this speaks to you in any way, I’d love to hear from you in the comments or you can reply to this email. See you down below!

Until next time,

Jen

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For the Love of God, Don’t Call Me a Good Mom

Written by Melanie Hardacker

My daughter recently broke up with her boyfriend. We expected it to be hard, they had been together three years. What we didn’t expect was to be asking her to skip class and come home from college over an hour away mid week because he wouldn’t leave her alone. We started seeing red flags the year before but were not prepared for the harassment and stalking that followed even after she came home. 

A few days later I was in a hotel room near the college with her, preparing for an early morning meeting with the Title IX Dean to discuss her options. Until that week I thought Title IX was created only for girls’ sports. Turns out it broadly allows girls to safely access the same education opportunities as men, which includes attending school without fear of harassment, abuse, assault, etc. (your random bit of information for the day.)¹

Melanie (r) and her daughter.

As I was laying on the hotel bed, I texted a friend sharing about the meeting and what we hoped to accomplish. At the end of the text, feeling exhausted from all the very hands-on parenting I had done the last few days, I wrote this: 

"For the love of God, do not tell me what a good mom I am. I can't endure another "you're such a good mom" while my child is in crisis. I am so tired of being a good mom. I want a life that allows me to sit back and be a mediocre mom. Drink some wine, not care where my kids are and have them stumble down a relatively normal childhood path where they figure it out themselves and the ramifications are minor. I want to be that mom. Mediocre mom." 

It isn’t that I mind terribly much if people tell me I am a good mom. I am a good mom. I’m actually an awesome mom. But so often it is in the midst of doing those really hard, uncomfortable, often unfair things, things other moms don’t have to do, that I hear, “you are such a good mom.” And at this point in my life it just reminds me of how much parenting trauma we have had. In that moment I could not take another “good mom” comment reminding me of how many times I have had to be a “good mom.” I was just fucking over it.

I honestly never once swore until my 40s. But it turns out "what the fuck?" is one of the more valid questions you can ask in a crisis. See also: Things are fucked. What the fuck is wrong with you? How the fuck did I get here? And just broadly, Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck. All extremely relevant and necessary uses of the word fuck and, I might argue, a word given to us by God for such a time as this. At the very least God certainly understands. 

(Hi, this is Jen again, interrupting to share my favorite “fuck” swearing scene in all of television, from The Wire season one.👇)

The truth is we have had a lot of hard parenting days. We have fallen into deep pits with our two children, with this child in particular, and a stalking 19-year-old ex-boyfriend is far from the worst parenting moment we have had. And through it all I have been a great mom, and my husband has been a great father. We have banded together and fought for our children when they couldn’t fight for themselves and alongside our children when they were ready to push away from bad stories. As our daughter moves into adulthood, we hope that more and more we will stand on the sideline, cheering her on as she fights her own battles. 

I’m an out loud processor, so as I have walked these hard roads with my kids, I have shared with friends along the way. Sometimes after the fact, sometimes as it happened. Sometimes with confidence, sometimes through tears and doubts and fears. And I understand that people don’t know what to say in those hard moments. Hearing a mom share how she is fighting for her child, guiding her child through a hard thing, surviving traumatic experiences, feels like a very appropriate moment to name what you are observing: that mom is a good mom. A great mom, even. I get it.

But, being told I’m a good mom while working through a crisis can feel as if you think I have some sort of God given super-power that others do not have to be able to parent through this crisis. As if I have known all along I would be able to sit in shit for days, weeks, months, years on end without breaking, that you believe  I have a skill you don’t, and if this were to happen to you it would be the end of the world.

Well, guess what sister, before this happened to me, I would have thought it would be the end of the world too. Turns out we rise to the occasion when needed. Hopefully you will never have to rise to this particular occasion but if you do, I promise I won't make you feel like somehow you are standing in shit because you were handed the spiritual gift of enduring shit (for the record I didn't say shit before trauma either).

John and Melanie with their daughter.

It isn’t that I don’t appreciate being told I am a good mom. I do! The truth is on some level I need to hear it. Because honestly, when your child is struggling it doesn’t always feel like you are a good mom. I remember early on during one of our first crises I heard someone say, “you are such a good mom” and immediately thought, “despite all evidence to the contrary.” But after my initial reaction, I could hear what they were saying, and I realized I actually was doing a good job.

It was the first time I realized being a good parent is not about having good kids. Whatever a “good kid” is. They are in fact 2 very different things. Being a good parent is about who you are, how you behave and react to the knowns and unknowns of raising children. A good kid is about who that child is and who God created them to be. Do we have some influence on how that goes? Some. But do good kids mean good parents and bad kids mean bad parents? No. And we all really need to stop telling ourselves they do. Sometimes that story actually keeps us from seeing who our kids really are, what they really need, and actually being good parents.

We often say in our house, "parenting is not for the weak."  This is true whatever situation you are in. But, dude, trauma and crisis parenting is next level parenting shit. It is the Ivy League education of parenting, the gold medal round. If you want to know how to be a good parent, ask a trauma parent. Don’t ask us how to raise a great kid. Trauma parents know they have no idea how to create great kids, and anyone who claims they do is lying to you or delusional. 

The goal is to be a great parent, not raise perfect kids. There are no perfect kids. Once you realize that you will enjoy both parenting and your kids far more.

I really am a good mom. But not because my kids are perfect. My kids are messy. I'm a good mom because my kids know I love them. They know I'll fight for them. I'll drop everything if they ask. I believe in them. I let them make their own choices, let them explore their own paths, let them take risks at times and keep them from making mistakes other times. 

I'm also a good mom because they know how to do their own laundry, cook scrambled eggs, wipe down a bathroom, make their bed, write a thank you note, brew a great cup of coffee, flip a butterfly knife, seek God, start a fire, put out a fire, ask for help, wait their turn, and find the answer to everything they need to know in a book. (Although they don't know why I keep pulling resource books off my shelf when Google lives in their pocket).

An hour after telling one friend I just wanted to be a mediocre mom another friend texted me,

 "It is redemptive to see a mother act on her daughter's behalf. She is blessed to have you." 

It was just what I needed to hear in that moment. Not just that I am a good mom but that all the energy I put into being a good mom has purpose. For my child, but also, as an example to other moms and daughters, and as a redeeming act to women whose moms didn't know how to protect and fight for them when they were struggling.

There is redemption in all the hard parenting years; moments when I get a peek at the story God is actually writing, that thread He is weaving through all my parenting. More and more I am seeing my hard parenting years as a gift rather than a burden. I see the value in what I am doing and have done. 

I am not just a good mom. I'm a bondage breaker, a bullshit detector, a trauma slayer, a truth teller, a redeemer, a protector and an empowerer. 

I am a fucking awesome mom.

Jen here: You know what to do, my friends! Give Melanie some love in the comments!

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Related Reading 🌼

Check out past guest writers here, like this one from Sara about starting and ending a small business, or this one from Elise as she reflected back on the years since her divorce, among others.

Call for Submissions 🌼

In May, I'd like to feature a guest essay on the topic of tricky mom experiences. Could be about your mom, or your wife who is a mom, could be your own experience as a mom, could be about choosing to be childless or about the grief and longing of not having children you always wanted, could be about an alternative journey to motherhood such as adoption or step-parenting, or about losing your child in some way.

I’m trying something new by opening up this opportunity rather than curating based on stories I already know about. We’ll see how it goes!

More details are available on this Google form, which you can fill out if you’re interested. I’m only leaving it open for a week, so don’t daddle!

1. “Examples of the types of discrimination that are covered under Title IX include sexual harassment; the failure to provide equal athletic opportunity; sex-based discrimination in a school’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses and programs; and discrimination based on pregnancy.” (source)