Have your kids ever met "scary mommy?"
My kids have--yesterday, in fact.
She doesn't visit too often, but every once in a while she comes by unannounced. She refuses to politely knock at the door, but instead bursts her way in, surprising us all. The kids look at her with expressions that say, "Who are you?" and "What have you done with our real mother?"
But she pays no attention. She presses on with the day--there's work to be done, after all, and work is no laughing matter. Sometimes she makes people cry--the children and often, herself.
But there is a positive side of scary mommy as well, and it is this:
She models the beauty of starting again--of asking for forgiveness, of being vulnerable, of showing that it's okay to make mistakes.
Most of all, scary mommy shows that she's human. And her kids need to see her humanity just as much as they see her courage.
“We should regret our mistakes and learn from them,
but never carry them forward into the future with us.”
~ L.M. Montgomery