I’m attempting a fundraiser, you guys. PDA resources in the U.S. are frustratingly hard to come by, so I started a fundraiser ahead of Autism Acceptance Month in April. The fundraiser will end a few days into the month, so that the shirts will go out before the end of April. If you know someone who fits the description, you should get them a shirt! Here is the link
But seriously. Mom guilt is relentless. Before becoming a mom myself I had heard of Mom guilt, but just thought of it as something superficial and occasional. I was totally unprepared for the endless onslaught of those feelings from the moment he was born. Literally. Our horrendous and traumatic labor and birth was something I logically knew was not within my control, but for years I struggled with guilt and anger around it, and if I’m being honest, still do. When my son was born in 2017 I took about 6 weeks off of work before going back full time. He was in daycare during the week from that point up until Covid hit, and I quickly realized that I was in a lose-lose situation. I felt like a completely shitty mom for leaving him there so many hours a day while I went to a job I loved. While I was working I felt like a completely shitty employee for being unable to put in the time and energy that I previously had, never working as much as I would have wanted to. Why don’t other moms warn you about this stuff? He was a little over two and half years old when the world shut down in 2020, and signs of his quirkiness and some challenges had started to show themselves in the daycare setting. Yet he was inarguably very bright and excessively verbal, so the possibility of Autism was not yet anywhere on my radar.
I knew I needed a change of career after Covid, as the lifestyle in my industry at the time was not super conducive to being a mother. I also have an autoimmune disease, and literally one week before Covid shut everything down in most parts of the country I had started receiving infusions of a biologic that immensely weakened my immune system. How’s that for timing? Needless to say, traveling around constantly to different customers and accounts was no longer at the top of my to-do list. So when I did start working again I worked part time for awhile as I tried to figure out my next steps. As time went on and my sons challenges slowly started to reveal themselves over the next couple of years it became apparent that returning to work full time was going to be extremely unlikely, between his increasing challenges and what I knew was going to be a wonky school calendar full of random days off. Cue guilt for not being able to contribute to the household financially while feeling like an utter failure at home because I sucked so much as a mom who I was unable to help or get through to my struggling child. It was a frequent screaming in my brain saying “why can’t I help him??”. It’s a completely isolating feeling. If I had known then what I know now, I like to think I may have cut myself some slack and approached things differently. Maybe. Who knows?
Society likes to pretend that women can have it all, but honestly I think that’s kind of bullshit. Most of the time we can be an ever present mother or have a good career, but having both seems like an impossibility to me. This is not a blanket statement – I know plenty of women out there who seem to pull it off without issue and manage to juggle all of the things and rarely appear as though they are sacrificing in either area. I envy those women. Or maybe people think you can’t say this stuff out loud, I don’t know. I also know that my situation is not uncommon among mothers of kids with various challenges or handicaps. When you have a kid who would likely melt down in after school programs or needs full time supervision/care or for various reasons cannot simply be sent off to camps in the summertime, work options are suddenly much more limited.
No kids come with instruction manuals. This shit is hard. Any parent, and especially those of kids with unique needs, who claims not to have felt immense guilt or like a failure at some point is either lying to you or to themselves. No matter where life takes Ninja down the line, I will always wonder if I could have done more to prepare him for life in a world that was not built for him. Having a PDAer feels like an impossible line to tow; relenting on most demands and expectations feels like doing nothing but setting him up for failure out in the real world where that shit does not fly. But attempting any punishment or recourse for ignoring any and all directions or rules is completely ineffective and only damages the relationship. It still feels like a lose-lose.
Does it ever go away? They need to include a chapter about this stuff in What to Expect When You Are Expecting so that people are more prepared. Or was I the only one totally blindsided by the frequency and intensity of The Guilt? I know I’m not alone in this, why don’t people talk about it more? Are men immune to this stuff? Honest question.
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