what did I miss …

Having adult daughters brings the gift of 20-20 vision through hindsight when considering happenings of the past. As adults both my daughters battle anxiety. Depression and panic attacks are also in the mix.

Did this suddenly appear because of the stresses of adulting?

Of course not, and the questions that I now dwell on are: How did I miss the signs? Would things be different now if I’d recognised their anxiety and taken steps to support them more effectively?

Clearly early identification is always a good thing but I try hard not to live with guilt crippling my ability to be and do better today. “What if” never helped anybody …

I missed the signs. In retrospect they were there: in Erin’s fear of loud noises and Chaeli’s crying breakdowns where she couldn’t speak. Just to mention a couple of examples. I missed them.

Do I feel twinges of guilt that I should have paid greater attention? I do. I also know that the era in which I was raised was very much the “man up” attitude to any situation; “grin and bear it”, “get over it”, “crying doesn’t help”. Things I heard as a child that often had bearing on my own attitude to my children “falling apart”. Mental health was rarely mentioned in the 90s and certainly didn’t factor into serious consideration for raising children. Tough love was the popular way to go.

Things are very different in the 2020’s. As they should be.

And yet I feel I also need to cut myself some slack. My parenting was against a very different social tapestry when things were done differently. There was a stigma attached to being in ‘therapy’ and admitting to struggling emotionally and/or mentally was seen as being weak. I now believe that therapists are essential health care providers. Nobody thinks it weird to go to the dentist when your teeth need attention. Just saying …

I believe it’s also important to focus on the things I did right as a parent. Sometimes we need to accept that parenting is an ever-evolving process: we’re growing all the time, as are our children.

Being guilt-ridden about important things missed and not done in past years serves nobody. It makes more sense for me to live in the present and aspire to do better, be better – as a parent and a grandparent. Today.

And that should be enough …