I wrote this post back in December and am now adding to it in the wake of recent events. We are human first and we should feel anger at the state of our current affairs, both here in the US and across the world. That anger is not a flaw, instead, it is a signal that something is wrong. Change can still happen. There is still room to make this world safer, more compassionate, and more humane. Let’s make that change.

“They can feel what we don’t heal.”

I heard this on a podcast featuring author Eli Harwood with the creators of BigLittleFeelings. I think about that line often, especially in the quiet moments with my kids, when nothing is wrong but everything is felt. The way they watch me when I’m tired. The way they soften when I soften. The way their bodies mirror my nervous system long before my words ever reach them.

Eli Harwood talks about this so beautifully, how our children don’t just experience our parenting choices, they experience our inner world. What we rush past in a tense moment. What we carry silently after a long day. What we never learned to name when we were uncomfortable. And somehow, they feel it anyway. I see it at home. And I even see it at work.

In December, I sat with a patient who was pregnant with her third, heading into this horrendous sick season (please get your flu vaccine!!), worried about a newborn surrounded by older siblings and their inevitable germs. We talked about the practical things, of course. Prioritizing handwashing, having lowered expectations for the holiday, and continue to monitor fevers, decreased intake, or decreased output. Mainly a lot of reassurance. But then the conversation shifted, as it often does when two mothers are sitting across from each other.

I could see in her eyes the sadness she was feeling, missing out on the holiday experience with the older kids. I felt bonded to her in that moment. I feel this sense of attachment to new moms, perhaps because I never had the reassurances when I was a new mom from those that I craved it from. I told her quietly, how as moms, it isn’t easy, how we lose ourselves, our desires. We have the internal struggle, “I feel like I’m already disappearing again.”

Because it mirrors what so many mothers live without ever saying out loud, but weighs on us so heavily. The slow disappearance of self under the weight of all the responsibility, the mental load, the remembering, the anticipating, the managing, the knowing of all the things that keep the family feeling safe, happy, and regulated. Even when both parents work full time and even when partnerships are loving and supportive. Somehow, the invisible labor still finds its way to us.

I had also just watched All Her Fault, and it captured this so painfully well, how mothers become the emotional and logistical manager of the household, absorbing all the worry, the blame, the vigilance, until it becomes invisible because it’s just expected.

It reminded me of something close to home. A family member I love deeply recently told me she just needed time alone. She wasn’t planning a trip or a spa day, she just wanted some space. And the place she chose was Target. Wandering the aisles alone slowly without anyone asking her questions or needing anything. That was her version of solitude and self-care. I was happy to hear when she was able to find a yoga class instead, because she deserves that and so much more. But I could totally relate to how browsing through Target “alone” can qualify in our minds as the time off we crave.

And that stayed with me, how even our “alone time” is folded into errands, productivity, usefulness. How we have to justify our rest, how we have to disguise choosing ourselves as doing something practical at the same time.

And in this new year, that is the change that needs to be made. We need to do better for not only ourselves, but to model that for our children. They need to see us resting, because they deserve to know that self-care is important. They need to see us manage our emotions, because they deserve to know that self-regulation is vital. They need to see us delegate and state what we need, because they deserve to know that being honest is necessary.

They will model what they see.

Some parenting books I have been reading/listening to really hone in on this. John Gottman talks about emotional attunement, how children need us to notice their inner world without fixing it, dismissing it, or absorbing it as our own. We have to remind ourselves to allow them to learn, to rise from even the most minor difficult experiences. Dan Siegel reminds us that secure attachment isn’t built through perfection, but through repair. I find this so important, how coming back after a blow up, naming what happened and even apologizing for it, shows our children that emotions can move through us without breaking us.

But here’s the truth I’m learning, slowly and imperfectly. I can only offer my kids the regulation I practice myself. When I’m constantly overriding my own needs, my body knows. When I’m managing everyone else’s emotions while silencing my own, my nervous system knows. And then my kids feel it.

“They can feel what we don’t heal.”

As this new year begins, I’m realizing that part of this work is learning to parent my inner child at the same time that I parent my children. The part of me that learned early to be quiet, capable, and agreeable. The part that learned to keep going even when she was overwhelmed. I’m trying to offer her what I offer my kids now, some gentleness, patience, permission to rest, and reassurance that she doesn’t have to earn care by being useful. It’s really hard work. Much slower than I expected. And some days, deeply uncomfortable. I even still lapse and go back to my old ways. But I need to do this work because it feels necessary.

So I’m working on it. Not in some grand, transformative way but in the small, daily choices. Pausing a minute before reacting. (I know I failed at that a few weeks ago.) Naming what I am feeling when I’m overwhelmed instead of powering through. Letting my kids see me rest without guilt. Saying out loud, “I need a minute,” and trusting that this doesn’t make me less present, but it makes me more human. And I see them naming those feelings too, after I mention it.

As a pediatrician, I spend my days reassuring parents that they are doing enough.
As a human, I am finally learning to believe it myself.

Healing, I’m now realizing, isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about reverting back to yourself, to the version that existed before you learned to carry the whole world’s weight on your shoulders quietly. And when I do that work, albeit imperfectly, something shifts. Both my kids and I can feel it.

And maybe that’s the real embrace. Not fixing everything at once, but choosing, again and again, to heal what we can so they don’t have to carry it for us.