Hellobee

If there was one emotion that defined me for a very long period of time, from high school to grad school, it was guilt.

Some people seem to have a natural inclination toward certain emotions. For instance, certain people are angrier than others; their natural reaction to small slights or negative things is anger. Anger is often an outward reaction to negative events. Guilt, on the other hand, is a more inward reaction, often to the same events. Instead of getting mad at the world and/or people around them, one internalizes it and blames themselves. They feel bad about whatever happened, and often feel as if they caused it.

This is me. I have never really been an angry person, though I do of course get angry sometimes. But even the littlest things that I can’t control make me feel guilty as my natural inclination. My guilt is very tied to my anxiety, which I have had since childhood (though it wasn’t diagnosed until college).

My guilt often revolved around my health. I was sick from a young age, and I often felt bad about my symptoms. I wasn’t raised knowing I was disabled, and didn’t think of my illnesses as a neutral part of who I am like I do now. Instead, I saw them as faults in me, and this would drive how I reacted in so many situations. I over apologized and over fretted. I sometimes let the guilt wash over the smallest things, things I shouldn’t even be guilty about, and consume me.

For an already guilty person, guilt gets compounded in parenthood. From pregnancy, I started experiencing something that I (and others, I definitely didn’t coin the term!) call the “mommy martyrdom” complex.

There seems to be a popular attitude in being a mom that I kept encountering both online and in everyday conversations with other moms. It’s the idea that once you’re a mom, you’ll never get any sleep, you’ll never drink a hot cup of coffee, you’ll never take a shower. But these things weren’t just presented as facts: they were presented as badges of motherdom. Moms were lighting themselves on fire to keep others warm, and presenting it almost as a point of pride. The implication becomes if you are showering, drinking hot coffee, resting, and just generally trying to take good care of yourself, you’re not a good mom, and you should feel guilty. This wasn’t anything anyone explicitly ever told me, that I should be guilty about taking care of myself, but more something insidious and societal that was beginning to creep into my thought process as well.

“Mommy martyrdom” hurts all moms, and ends up hurting all kids and families too. It hurts chronically ill and disabled parents in a specific way, because rest and taking care of oneself are so vital for moms who are sick every day. All moms need rest, but if an ill mom doesn’t get rest, it can be ignoring an essential part of one’s treatment.

When I ignore my body’s cues because I’m guilty and overdo it, I can throw myself into a massive flare. I have a couple different kinds of flares. When I have pain flares, due to my Chiari malformation (a structural brain malformation) and my hypermobility disorder, among other conditions, I am in agonizing pain that makes it difficult to do anything. I also have times my other conditions flare up. When my gastroparesis (partial stomach paralysis) flares up, for example, I start vomiting uncontrollably and can’t keep anything down.

These flares would often be self-feeding: I would become guilty about my illnesses and my limitations, overdo it, go into a worse flare, feel guilty some more, and the cycle would repeat. It wasn’t until the end of 2017, so not that long ago, that I finally realized how destructive guilt over my sicknesses and limitations was on my life. The guilt was harming me further, keeping me from healing and truly loving myself. And that guilt was keeping me from being able to love and serve others fully, because it kept me so trapped in my own head.

For me, the way out of being a naturally guilty person was acceptance: namely, acceptance of my illnesses and limitations. I worked on treating these as natural things that were a fixed part of me. They just are — they are things that can’t be changed, but they’re also not things to feel guilty about. That would be like being guilty about my height. My illnesses and limits are just as much a part of me. I didn’t choose them, they aren’t my fault, but I can learn to live within them and not feel bad about them.

I still have a natural inclination to guilt, but I have made major strides since childhood. One of the major ways I have learned to healthily channel these feelings and have them not turn to guilt is to learn what my limitations are and to accept that I have them. None of us are superpowered inhumans. Each one of us has needs.

Not filling our own needs out of guilt is not a healthy way to go through life, and it is also not a good example for our children. Now, I’m definitely not saying this so that not meeting our needs becomes one more thing to be guilty about! Because trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve overdone it, trying to be supermom, avoiding my very real sicknesses and limitations, and thrown myself into a flare. Each day is new, a new chance to try again at meeting my needs and accepting my limits and not feeling guilty about them.

I will strive to do the best I can to have a moderate approach: to care for my child to the best of my ability but to also realize an important component of that is caring for myself, and that’s nothing to feel guilty about. Sometimes this means relying on others and asking for more help. Sometimes this means relying on TV or tablet time or playing with Snowy from the bed. Sometimes this means changing plans or using my mobility aids, like my wheelchair, in public, and seeing them as tools, not something to be guilty about.

I hope someday Snowy, too, will learn that her own needs are nothing to feel guilty about. I hope she will learn to love herself and take care of herself well, so she in turn can serve the world and those she cares about, just as I try to do.