Breaking the Cycle (and Mice)

I’ve been wanting to write about generational trauma on Mommy Say F*ck for a while now, but it’s one of those easier-kept-quiet subjects that tends to make people uncomfortable. It’s also hard to talk about because too many of us aren’t talking about it. So here we go.

Sometimes, when my kids are crying, it’s easy for me to minimize or shame their emotions. Sometimes I want so badly to scream, “Stop crying! It’s not a big deal. What’s the matter with you? Get over it. Toughen up. Knock it off.” The list goes on and on…

Sometimes, if my kids repeatedly make the same mistake or mess up something I’ve deemed “simple,” I want to yell, “Do better. Try harder. Get it together. Learn from your mistakes,” and a dozen other not-so-kind responses.

Explosive reactions, dysregulated emotions, wrongly shaming or guilting, letting go of perfectionism. These are a few of the issues I’m working through as a parent, and ones that I’m discussing regularly with my therapist.

In my experience, these responses are “easy” forms or parenting—the gut reactions that require zero effort, the explosions that come when I let stress, anger, and generational trauma get the best of me. If left unchecked or unquestioned, these responses become second nature.

The phrases I’m inclined to repeat to my children are the same phrases I often heard from my own parents while growing up. This is the cycle of generational trauma. It’s a real bitch, one that requires an immense amount of time, energy, repetition to shift, and one that every parent must consider for themselves if they, too, hope to break the cycle.

Jim’s been out of town a lot lately. He’s taken two trips to New York, one to Atlanta, and he’s about to head out of town again, which means that it’s just me and the boys and whatever help I can call in to reclaim a morsel of my sanity and energy, which turns out to be pretty crucial for the effort it takes to extend empathy instead of insults.

The other day when Jim was out of town, after I finally got both kids to sleep—after Loren refused to play his entire soccer game and then cried the entire way home because, once it was finally over, he wanted to play and couldn’t; after Loren refused to clean up his toys and ran into the kitchen to “sneak” a popsicle, instigating a whole-house chase until I caught the stinker and got it back; after Kai split his lip on the bathroom sink, and Loren refused to brush his teeth, go potty, and put on his pajamas; after I decided both boys were going to bed dirtier than they were clean because I didn’t have the energy to manage a dual bath time; after both boys were hysterically crying for me to pick them up at the same time, and I was cursing Jim for not coming home one night sooner—after all of that, I came downstairs and found Whitman playing with a mouse in the kitchen.

It was dead, thankfully, but he was batting it around and four-legged hopping on it like he’d tasted catnip for the first time.

Of course, I freaked out and reached for my phone. I texted Jim, “A mouse! There’s a f*cking mouse in the house.” But Jim was in a meeting, and he couldn’t talk. I didn’t normally deal with spiders or mice or insects of any kind; that was Jim’s job.

When I looked up from my phone the mouse was gone, and so was Whitman, rounding the corner into the master bedroom. I sprinted after him. He’d darted into the shower, dropped the mouse on the floor, and was pawing it around like a ping pong ball, quite literally having the best time of his life. That’s when I noticed the mouse was bleeding. The shower floor was beginning to look like a crime scene, like an experiment in sponge painting from the 90’s. I hadn’t noticed the blood when I’d come downstairs because we have dark hardwood floors.

There were many f bombs at this point. I’m sure you can imagine.  

I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t touch it. I didn’t even want to look at it, the poor thing. I lunged at Whitman, clapping my hands in his face, hoping to scare him out of the shower.

I grabbed the broom and dustpan and attempted to sweep it up without looking. I walked the mouse out into the side yard where the neighbor’s cat likes to creep, just below the bird feeder.

It was 9:30pm at this point. I was on my third day of solo parenting, I’d kept Kai home from daycare all week because of a crummy cold he couldn’t kick, and I was fighting all of the symptoms too. And there I was, faced with the question of mopping.

Should I mop, knowing the mouse was bleeding and had likely been dragged from the basement, up the stairs, and throughout most of the main floor? Or should I let it go, get over it, and go to bed?

I knew the answer before I finished considering my options. At 9:45pm, after I’d finished sweeping and vacuuming the floors, I began filling a bucket of scalding hot water with dish soap, white vinegar, and Pine Sol. I had to mop. On the bright side, I’d been putting mopping off for at least a month, so this was a good excuse to make it happen.

In our family, we talk about emotions. We sit with them even when they’re difficult and uncomfortable. We normalize big feelings, and we accept them, even if the kids seem to be crying “for no reason.” Of course, there’s always a reason. For a brief moment, the mouse—and everything that came before it—was my reason.

Every generation has a list of things they wish their parents would have done differently. And every generation has an opportunity to try harder and do better, to bring more healing, goodness, and gentleness. I’m clearly not perfect myself, nor do I hope to be. I’m just here to say that it’s so f*cking hard to break the cycle sometimes, and I know—I hope—that I’m not alone in that.

I’m here to say that every time I step away to take a few deep breaths instead of screaming at my children, and every time I bite my tongue instead of placing shame around my kids’ feelings or emotions, and every time I self-regulate in the middle of a shit storm, I am reminded that I can do hard things.

I am reminded that I can show up as a better version of myself for myself, my partner, and my kids. And if, at the end of the day, I can honestly say that I tried, that I did my best, even if it my effort was accompanied by failure, then I am reminded that I’m doing okay.

I can handle the tears, the outbursts, the chaos. F*ck, after all I’ve been through, I can handle the mice.

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