“You know everyone thinks you’re a terrible mother, right?”

When someone uttered these words to me this week, I laughed. I laughed. And that, my friends, is progress. Do you know how many tears I’ve cried? How much sleep I’ve lost? How much therapy I’ve invested in? How much inner work I’ve done to laugh in the face of those words? There was a joking tone to the question, but those words have bite.

This is the fear that has driven the past eleven years of my life. It started the day I found out I was pregnant with our first, which was, unfortunately, the morning after our first anniversary dinner that had involved a bottle of wine. Already a screw-up on day 1. Terrible mother.

Then the lowlight reel from there, which could easily be expanded to fill up an entire anthology…

The unmedicated first birth I planned for turned into a cesarean-section. (So did my second.) You’re a terrible mother. Times 2.

The first time we went out for dinner as a family of three, I was social media shamed by someone I’d never met for nursing my (unusually) content baby while drinking a glass of wine. An actual friend saw the post (with a photo of me snapped from the next table), sent a screenshot, and asked “is this you?” Everyone knows I’m a terrible mother.

My 3-month-old got kicked out of a daycare for being too needy. At 6-months, his new nanny broke up with our family on a Sunday afternoon via text for the same reason. I must be a terrible mother if he’s this much harder than other babies.

I feel asleep at a stoplight driving home from work one afternoon when I was newly pregnant with our second son. When I went to my next OB appointment, I told my doctor the story and asked if it would be better to get in a car accident or drink coffee early in pregnancy. I drank a coffee every day after that and felt horrible about it, but I survived pregnancy with a full-time job and a toddler at home. You’re a terrible mother. Coffee is more important to you than your unborn child.

When I was 7-months pregnant with our second son, I fell down the stairs. (I broke my kneecap during that fall trying to protect my belly — which was only diagnosed years later, when I broke it a second time — because, like I was, the doctors were worried about the baby.) What kind of terrible mother is reckless enough to put her baby at risk.

When our second son was born, our first son had a very difficult time adjusting. After consulting with his doctor, he was diagnosed with sensory processing order and started occupational and feeding therapy. We quickly learned that we hadn’t understood so many things that were challenging for him. You must be a terrible mother if you don’t know what your child needs.

Our son had a tongue-tie, and we had to have it clipped to help him nurse. His cry broke my heart that day. You’re a terrible mother to not protect him from this.

My son was permanently removed from swimming lessons at a local rec center when he was 5-years-old because other parents complained that he was distracting their children when he would constantly dunk his head under water. He later explained to me that the smell of chlorine made him feel sick and he couldn’t smell it when he was under water. Terrible mothers don’t protect their children from a cruel world.

One son struggled with aggression problems in Pre-K. We started Karate in the hopes that it would help with self-discipline, impulse control, and managing aggression. His school teacher kindly asked if we could discontinue karate lessons when his punches and kicks gained power and increased in frequency. Terrible mothers create aggressive children.

We spent two entire years of school with our son in meltdown from the moment he woke up in the morning until the time we deposited him in a heap inside his elementary school doors (generally after having driven him to school and having carried him inside without shoes or a coat) because he would physically fight us to avoid going. The meltdowns would begin again after school before we even left school grounds, with him crying that he didn’t want to go to school the next day, and they would often continue through bedtime. When we requested a meeting with the school to ask for their help creating a support plan, the school psychologist said “This sounds like a home problem to me.” We were denied any school assistance. You’re a terrible mother if your child is struggling so much.

The second of those years, our son was diagnosed with Autism. When we went back to the school to share the medical diagnosis and explain that the complaints we had been receiving from the school about communication challenges with teachers and peers and behavioral concerns on the playground and in the lunchroom were likely linked, they claimed he had no academic impact and refused an IEP. We left that school in the middle of the pandemic, knowing he would not receive the support he needed there, and put the responsibility on our child to navigate the massive logistical and social pressures of a new environment in the hopes for a better outcome for him (and us, to be frank). You’re a terrible mother for making him carry this burden that he shouldn’t have to carry.

One of our children absolutely detests being too warm. He hates coats and refuses to wear pants. We live in Colorado. He doesn’t care. After years of trying to reason with him on this topic, we don’t either. He wears shorts and sweatshirts in the dead of winter. It works for him, and that works for us. You’re a terrible mother if you can’t make him experience the world the way others experience the world.

We have a child with raging ADHD and raging allergies. One time, in a mad rush to get out the door to summer school (if you don’t have a raging ADHD child, you’re not picturing the correct level of madness) in the middle of an allergy-induced sneezing attack, I ripped open a new bottle of allergy medicine and gave him and his brother a dose on the way to the car. Turns out it was generic Benadryl instead of generic Zyrtec, which we only found out after the youngest morphed into Cocaine Bear in his classroom and got booted from Kindergarten summer school. When I squealed into the parking lot to retrieve him (“before security arrived” based on the Principal’s threat), his brother was sleeping off the accidental drugging in the nurse’s office. Mother of the year, indeed. You’re a terrible mother for making a stupid mistake when you were desperately trying to meet everyone’s needs on a tight timeline.

On top of all these incriminating stories, I raise my voice, swear, drink, yell, and cry sometimes. I say the wrong thing…so often. I am not remotely the mom I thought I would be. I am not remotely as good at this as I thought I would be. I’m not a fun mom. I’m not a does-it-all mom. I’m a terribly imperfect mom.

If I was in some sort of time warp, pre-kids me watching current me mother my kids, pre-kids me would have totally agreed — you’re a terrible mother.

And here’s why current me mother can laugh. Because I LOVE these children. THESE children, who are also nothing like I expected them to be. These children, who are not much like me. These children, who are bold, unique, willful, and made for this moment. These children, who are changing every second, while I’m also changing every second. These children, who have so much to teach me and this rigid-ass world.

This mother has learned to be a warrior for these children, my children, even when I am being judged harshly and especially when they are . This mother has learned that my job is shaping how my children experience this world, not changing how this world experiences my children. This mother is teaching my children to trust what they know to be true in their bodies, hearts, and minds, even if that looks strange to me or you. I’ll sleep just fine if you think I’m terrible, as long as my kids fall asleep knowing they are loved, seen, valued, and held by their terribly imperfect mother exactly as they are.