It’s time to go back to school which means more headaches for kids and parents. Dealing with headaches is hard. Dealing with migraines as a mom is even harder. You want to be there for your kid and when you’re knocked on your back with a migraine, the guilt nearly eats you alive. How do you bear these two unbearable conditions? Follow our prescription for mommy migraine guilt. It is simple, though likely difficult, and 100% necessary to your family’s happiness.
I. Accept
You will miss things. It’s not your fault.
You will feel like an inadequate hunk of meat. You are not.
You do not have the time/energy/capacity to do all you would like. It’s okay.
Accepting both 1) that you will not live up to your own expectations and 2) that that’s okay is key. WIthout planning this from the beginning, you are setting yourself up for emotional and psychological stress, which may induce more (and more painful) migraines and bring more tension in your family. And if you wanted more stress and tension, you wouldn’t be reading this prescription for mommy migraine guilt. So go ahead and accept it now: you will fail. You are not a failure. Remind yourself of this often.
II. Commit
Parenting school-aged children brings a jungle of commitments. Bake sales and parent organizations and carpools and field trips. You want to say yes. You often, against your better judgment, sign up anyway and inevitably wind up not meeting your own expectations and feel lousy as a result. Or, you’ve learned by now not sign up for the volunteer opportunities, but you still beat yourself up for not being able to do it/be like other moms/live a “normal” life.
The trick to defeating migraine guilt is to reframe commitment. Instead of appointments, commit to quality time and keep track of it with tallies. Maybe the most challenging part of this is it has to be spontaneous. In the car or at dinner or betime, it’s just you and your kid. Don’t worry about what you’re not doing or who you’re not with. Take the interactions one at a time and give yourself a tally for each. Watch those tallies grow. Remember them when you have to say no to an afternoon at the playground.
III. Relax
The impulse to work after you’ve been down a few days is normal. Add on that a heaping dose of mommy migraine guilt and you’ve got a recipe for burnout—or, probably, another terrible migraine.
We’re not telling you to relax to be kind. We’re telling you to relax because it’s an effective strategy. You’ll be more productive, less stressed, more able to give to your family, and better able to sleep.
You can try the usual recommendations: yoga, meditation, massage. But relaxation just means removing tension. You may feel that your shoulders (for example) are tense or tight, but it’s basically any kind of stress you feel. Some people release it through painting, others through music, through reading or cleaning or getting outside (when the sun isn’t too bright). Do what it is that makes you feel a little lighter and brighter.
Repeat
Accepting, committing, and relaxing is your new life mantra and your cure for migraine guilt. These things aren’t too small, and they do count. You give people credit when you know they’re trying. They do the same for you. Think about any time that a friend or relative has been so burdened by their own guilt or pain that you two couldn’t even enjoy your time together. Think about how busy you get running the family that you forget to even enjoy it. Think about how good it feels when you connect with your loved ones. It feels good for them, too.
Don’t say “Well this is what I should be able to do every night.” Or, “Other parents [anything].” You have the painful, debilitating condition, and migraine guilt on top of it. What works for you and your family, what is fun and high quality for you all, is the only metric that counts. You count it as often as possible.
