Momming is Hard: Encouragement for the Mom Struggling with Mental Illness

Momming is hard. Depression and anxiety make it even harder. I often believe I’m not good enough, that God should never have made me a mom. In the darkness of suicidal depression, it seemed they’d be better off without me.

Momming is Hard

Momming… you know, like adulting, but with more responsibility, higher stakes, and less opportunity to whine about having to do it… is hard.

Being given responsibility for a young human is a blessing and task like none other, and that’s just the beginning of providing for, protecting, and guiding that life to adulthood.

Before I became a mom, I had no idea how difficult I was to raise. And I still have a way to go in this raising thing. My oldest will be old enough to learn to drive by the end of the year. My youngest, my only girl, is eight. Where does that attitude come from?!? And my other son, stuck in the middle.

I always wanted to be a mom. And now I really, really hope my kids have kids someday. Otherwise, they’ll never understand! They’ll always misjudge my parenting, as I did my mom’s. All those things that I angrily saw as too strict make so much more sense as I try to raise my kids into adults I’ll respect. Unselfish, kind, responsible adults who understand the inherent worth of every person, and embrace their own.

I want them to understand the heart behind my rules in a way I couldn’t understand my mom’s until I had to make rules for my children.

But it wasn’t just my mom’s rules I struggled to understand; it was also her brokenness, her retreats into herself and her room, the cruel things she would sometimes say, her fear, her hatred of her life and desire to end it, her cutting.