Showing up

My 11 year old daughter had an emotional breakdown last night.

She was overtired from a 3-day school trip, overwhelmed by the tasks of packing for spring break, and just generally over-everything about everything that could possibly come up.

I can't quite put a name to what she, and all of us, experienced. It wasn't a panic attack, or an anxiety attack, but it was a solid 45-minutes of heaving, shallow breathing, loud sobbing, an inability to regulate her body or her emotions, and a stubborn resistance to trying to do anything to calm herself.

I'd had a pretty crazy day (week) myself, and by the time this all devolved at 9:30pm, I recognized that I didn't have enough in my own cup to help her refill hers. So I asked my husband if he would go into her room to help soothe her instead.

He's normally the rational half of our parenting equation. I'm the emotional half. But as I sat in my own bed, across the hall from her room, listening to him calmly talk to her, encouraging her to try deep breathing alongside him him, offering her patience and support, my own tension started to diminish. Maybe he'd been paying more attention to all the strategies I'd been practicing than I thought. Maybe the work I've been doing on myself hasn't just been benefiting me. Maybe I don't have to feel like I'm carrying all this alone.

After about 30 minutes of trying to help her move through her big waves of feelings, she started to wail for me. Just me. Not daddy, who was right there with her. Me.

I felt a twinge of guilt, that here he was, doing his absolute best, and she only wanted me. But he stayed composed and open. I, on the other hand, stayed in bed and literally bit my tongue, forcing myself not to rush in there, coming to both of their rescues. My husband needed to know he could do this. My daughter needed to know he could, too. Being honest, so did I.

He stayed with her for another 15 minutes, but the wailing continued. He finally said something like, “ok kiddo, go see mommy.” She tentatively walked across the hall, climbed in bed with me, and it was my turn to offer her solace.

Because I'd had that break a little earlier in the episode—because my husband took over the emotional responsibilities for a while—I was able to regain the strength and stability I needed in order to help my daughter.

As she laid there, still sobbing into my shoulder, I tried to get her to do a breath meditation with me. But she kept on heaving, saying that when she focused on her breath, it only made it harder to breathe. So I talked to her about using different anchors in meditation, and switched to narrating a body scan for her instead. Once we finished the slow progression from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she asked me if I could do a visualization for her. In soft, gentle, rhythmic tones, trying my best to impersonate my favorite meditation teachers from my favorite meditation app, I took my daughter to a calm, wide open beach, where she felt the sand tickling her feet, the tide lapping her ankles, the sun and the breeze warming and cooling her skin. We talked through all 5 senses on that beach, and by the time we got to imagining her laying down in the sand, she had fallen asleep next to me.

Despite everything that ensued before the quiet set in, I will call that a pretty good night.

—

The point of me posting about all this isn't to pay myself on the back, although I do want to acknowledge how far I've come in being able to handle these kinds of moments.

Rather, I wanted to share this story because it's proof that self-work and self-care aren’t selfish.

If I hadn't been digging deep on my own needs and emotions for the past 2+ years...if I hadn't been practicing meditation myself... if I hadn't been able to recognize that I wasn't in an emotional state to help her at the beginning...if I hadn't shown myself compassion for that...and if I hadn't trusted my husband enough to ask for what I needed from him…

…I wouldn't have been able to help my daughter.

The support we provide to ourselves is the first step in supporting each other.

Invest in your own well-being. Do it for yourself, do it for your community, do it out loud, do it with compassion, do it without guilt, do it with an open heart and an open mind.

It’s fucking amazing how much more capacity you have to show up for others when you’re finally able to show up for yourself first.