This week, I slipped.

Over the weekend, on Saturday, I felt triggered, and instead of pausing, I reacted. Quickly. Sharply. I thought briefly in my mind to take a pause, ground myself, walk out of the room to take a break, and in that moment, my work in therapy showed up as I knew I should pause. But I couldn’t resist that urge to react, the engrained urge in my brain that has been wired since childhood. And unfortunately, it happened in front of my kids. That part sat heavy with me. Because once the moment passed, I had to do the work of repair, by naming it, owning it, and reminding them (and myself) that grown-ups mess up too, and what matters is how we come back. Most of all, apologies to my husband, I am sorry.

Then came another moment that shook me in a different way just an hour after. I found out my eldest had been watching AI-made videos on Youtube on his school’s chrome book. He was given screen time for being helpful and was supposed to be doing some educational games. I come to find out he opened up google, typed into Google 6-7, which led to a video on Youtube and the clickbait began. The video was of K-pop idols morphing into demons. He actually didn’t want me watching it because he was worried that I would be scared by the content. That stopped me cold. We talked about it extensively: what he saw, how it made him feel, what was real and what wasn’t. But it scared me. Not just what he had already seen, but how much more is out there, how convincing it all looks, how easily it slips past filters and into young, impressionable minds. All by a simple click. Click.

I’ve been reading The Sirens’ Call by Chris Hayes, and in the book and in a podcast he hosted recently, he talks about how AI has fundamentally changed our relationship with the truth. These images and videos no longer require reality to be a starting point. They look real, feel real, and yet are entirely fabricated. Our eyes, which once were our most trusted sense, are no longer reliable. And that realization felt heavy on me as a parent. A simple click can lead to the destruction of their innocence, a change in their expectations of the world. The world our kids are growing up in asks for a kind of vigilance that we are still learning ourselves. Simple screen time really needs to be monitored. There goes the ‘virtual’ babysitter we rely on. Really, this is why I limit screen time. You just never know what will be clicked on next time. I also want to encourage open discussions. Even if this had been some video that wasn’t just a cartoon, but something more inappropriate, even sexual, we have to be open and honest about how such videos are not real and can warp our expectations of ourselves, of others, of future relationships, and of the world in general.

Then, Sunday, as if the universe wanted to pile on, after a morning of cooking and cleaning, when I wanted to take a break, the washer broke. Because of course it did.

And yet, amid all of this, there was a glimmer of beauty. We celebrated a friend’s 40th birthday Saturday evening. She brought together people from so many different chapters of her life, throughout childhood, early adulthood, motherhood, and now. Watching those worlds collide so seamlessly was deeply moving. It reminded me that we are not just who we are today, but we are the sum of all the versions that came before. Someone I met that night said something to me that has stayed with me:

With age, we may not see as far, but we see clearer.

That really resonated with me. Because clarity isn’t about perfection. It’s about perspective. Suddenly I could see what had really been happening that weekend: I was overwhelmed. I let myself get triggered. I chose to react instead of pause. And then I spent the entire weekend beating myself up over it, and beating myself up over everything. Forgetting to oil the waffle maker. Ugh, burnt waffles. Not flipping the pancakes right. Ugh, another imperfect breakfast. Every tiny misstep felt like evidence that I wasn’t doing enough, being enough.

But the truth is, I’m not perfect and honestly, I have a lot to work on. Really, I admire those of you who have the strength to stay calm, the tolerance to hold space, the steadiness to respond instead of react. I admire you for that. Truly, I mean it. I hope I get there one day.

But here I am. For now, I’m embracing the slip, the repair, the learning, the clarity that eventually comes with time, and the grace to keep going anyway.

This is what motherhood is teaching me, about slipping, repairing, and learning. It is not about always getting it right, but about repairing with love, seeing clearer with time, and choosing, again and again, to embrace who I’m becoming.

I share this with you because we all have those days. And we all deserve some grace. At the end of the day on Sunday, my eldest asked me if he could give me a hug as he saw the wear in my face. There was no algorithm distorting that moment, no screen fabricating it. It was real, not AI generated. And that was a simple reminder that the art of working through repair sculpts the clarity in life.