I think we need to start normalizing the hard shit.
The messy, uncomfortable, deeply human moments that don’t fit neatly into the version of ourselves we’re trying so hard to become.
The moments when Spirit is showing us exactly what needs to change, and instead of feeling enlightened by it, we feel exhausted. The moments when the work isn’t beautiful or graceful. It’s loud. It’s messy. It’s happening in a Whole Foods parking lot with tears streaming down your face and three kids strapped into the car.
Today, my lesson came through a motherhood meltdown and a much-needed hug from a woman named Nicole.
And honestly, I think it’s a lesson worth sharing.
The stories we carry
My day started with a massive overreaction to my daughter sneaking more bread and finishing off a tub of cream cheese I had just bought the day before.
On the surface, it was about bread and cream cheese.
But when I slowed down enough to sit with what had actually happened, I could see that it was about so much more.
I could see a long lineage of scarcity around food. I could see the food culture I am trying to create within my own household, where food is nourishment, where food is medicine, where the choices we make matter.
And I could see how much work I still have to do around my own relationship with food.
There is a thread of control running through these moments. A fear that if I don’t control what my children eat, if I don’t make the right choices for them, if I don’t prepare the right foods and teach them the right habits, they will get sick someday. That they will end up like my mom. That they will end up like me.
And underneath that fear is grief. It’s love. It’s the desperate desire to protect the people I love most from pain I know all too well.
But it’s also a story.
A story I keep telling myself. A story that, in certain moments, feels so real that I forget it is only one way of interpreting the world.
This is where the shaman in me starts paying attention.
Because the stories we carry don’t just live in our minds. They move through our bodies, shape our reactions, influence our choices, and show up in the most ordinary moments of our everyday lives.
Sometimes they show up over a tub of cream cheese.
Sometimes they show up in the way we try to control our children because we are terrified of what might happen if we don’t.
Sometimes they show up as anger when, underneath it all, there is fear asking to be seen.
The truth is, I have no control over how everything will turn out.
I can make intentional choices. I can nourish my family. I can offer my children knowledge, healthy habits, and the tools to care for themselves.
But I cannot guarantee an outcome.
I cannot control every variable, prevent every hardship, or protect the people I love from every kind of suffering.
Life is still a mystery.
And perhaps part of my work is learning how to live inside that mystery without trying to grip so tightly to the illusion that I can control it.
When the wheels come off
So naturally, after an already difficult morning, I decided it was a great idea to take all three kids grocery shopping.
Because apparently, I had not yet received enough opportunities for personal growth that day.
One thing led to another.
First, we needed the race car shopping cart. You know the one. The giant cart that barely fits down the aisle and inevitably runs into someone or something along the way.
Then came the two boys attempting to jump in and out of the seats, climb around the cart, and generally turn a quick grocery run into an obstacle course.
My nervous system was already running on empty, and the overstimulation was building.
I asked them several times to please calm down and listen to me.
And then my middle son had a full meltdown when I finally told him he could no longer ride in the cart.
At that point, I had a decision to make.
Stay and somehow muster my way through the shit show? Or recognize that I had royally miscalculated my capacity that morning and get the hell out of there?
Instead of meeting myself with that understanding, I turned on myself.
You did this to yourself.
You’re a bad mom.
Everyone is judging you.
You should be able to handle this.
The mental grocery list of everything I had been keeping score of in the back of my mind came rushing forward.
All the ways I felt I was falling short. All the things I thought I should be doing differently. All the expectations I was trying to meet while simultaneously holding together the needs of three little humans and my own increasingly overwhelmed nervous system.
And then I reached my limit.
I gathered my kids, abandoned the grocery cart, and walked out of the store trying desperately to hold back my tears and rage.
My son was screaming. My youngest was strapped to my hip. My oldest was walking calmly several steps behind me.
It was one of those moments when you feel like everyone can see you unraveling, and all you want to do is disappear.
I got everyone into the car and called my husband, hoping he could help me de-escalate.
And there I was, sitting in a Whole Foods parking lot with tears pouring down my face, feeling like I had completely lost it.
And then something happened that I will remember long after I forget what was on my grocery list.
A woman named Nicole
Another mother had seen me struggling.
She walked over, handed me some tissues, and asked if I was okay.
Then she said something along the lines of:
You’re a good mom. You’re just having a hard moment.
And that was it.
That was the moment something in me softened.
Not because the morning had suddenly become easier. Not because my children had stopped having big feelings or because I had figured out how to be a better mother in the span of five minutes.
But because another woman had witnessed me in the middle of it all and offered me compassion instead of judgment.
She didn’t need to know my story. She didn’t need to understand why I was crying or what had led to that moment.
She simply saw another human being having a hard time and chose to meet her with kindness.
I needed that reminder more than I realized.
Because somewhere along the way, I have been holding myself to this impossible standard that says I can either be a good mother or a mother who struggles.
That I can either love my children deeply or desperately need a little space from them.
That I can be committed to healing and still not lose my temper.
That I can do all this inner work and somehow transcend the very human experience of being overwhelmed.
But two things can coexist.
You can be a good mom and still have a shitty moment.
You can love your children with every fiber of your being and still need a break from them.
You can be grateful for your life and still find parts of it incredibly hard.
You can be doing the work, showing up, trying again and again, and still have days when you fall apart.
It isn’t black and white.
It isn’t always balanced.
And healing doesn’t mean we stop having hard moments. Maybe it means we begin to recognize them differently. Maybe we learn to meet ourselves with a little more honesty, a little less shame, and a willingness to repair when we’ve caused hurt.
Maybe we stop treating every difficult moment as evidence that we are failing.
Maybe we start seeing them as invitations to understand ourselves more deeply.
The work of breaking a pattern
I don’t want to use my own healing journey as another measuring stick to beat myself with.
I don’t want motherhood to become a place where every reaction is another reason to criticize myself. I don’t want my desire to nourish and protect my children to become a source of fear and control that keeps us all from experiencing the freedom, joy, and trust I am trying so hard to cultivate.
I want to understand the stories I inherited without unconsciously handing every single one of them down.
I want to teach my children that food can nourish us without teaching them that food is something to fear.
I want to make thoughtful choices without believing that every choice carries the weight of their entire future.
I want to protect them without confusing protection with control.
And I want to remember that they are their own little people, with their own relationships to develop, their own lessons to learn, and their own paths to walk.
This doesn’t mean abandoning the values I hold around food, health, or how I want to raise my family. It means learning how to hold those values without allowing fear to run the show.
That is the work.
Not perfection. Not getting it right every time.
But noticing the pattern. Tracking the thread back to where it began. Recognizing when an old story is speaking through me and choosing, when I can, to respond differently.
And when I can’t?
To repair. To breathe. To begin again.
There is so much tenderness required in this kind of work. So much willingness to look at the parts of ourselves we wish weren’t there.
But I am learning that compassion doesn’t mean avoiding accountability. It means creating enough safety within ourselves to actually face what needs to change.
Shame tells us to hide.
Compassion gives us room to grow.
We need more Nicoles in the world
I keep thinking about Nicole and how little she probably realized her kindness would mean to me.
She didn’t fix my morning. She didn’t solve my relationship with food or heal the patterns I am still working through. She didn’t make the responsibilities of motherhood disappear.
But she interrupted the shame spiral.
She reminded me that I was not alone in that moment.
And I wonder how often we have the opportunity to do that for someone else.
How often we pass another mother in a grocery store, a woman sitting alone in her car, a stranger having a difficult day, and we look away because we don’t know what to say or we assume it’s none of our business.
I’m not suggesting we need to rescue one another. Sometimes people need space, and kindness can look like respecting that.
But what if we became a little more willing to offer a simple question?
Are you okay?
Do you need anything?
Would a hug help?
Or even just a gentle acknowledgment that says, I see you. You don’t have to pretend you’re fine right now.
There is SO much happening in this world. So much uncertainty, grief, pressure, and pain that we carry quietly while continuing to move through our everyday lives.
I think we could all use more moments of genuine human connection.
More compassion.
More opportunities to be witnessed without being judged.
More reminders that we don’t have to earn kindness by having everything together.
And I think that compassion needs to extend inward, too.
Because how often do we offer strangers more grace than we offer ourselves?
How often do we speak to ourselves in ways we would never dream of speaking to another mother sitting in that parking lot?
How often do we make one hard moment mean something about our entire identity?
Today, I needed another woman to remind me of what I couldn’t quite remember on my own.
So maybe this is a reminder for you, too.
Look at yourself in the mirror.
Let your shoulders drop.
Take a breath.
Tell yourself that you’re doing a good job. That you’re trying. That you are allowed to be a work in progress.
Tell yourself that one hard moment does not define you.
You can take responsibility for the ways you want to grow without turning against yourself in the process.
You can love yourself while still working on yourself.
You can be both the woman who is healing and the woman who still has healing to do.
And maybe, just maybe, that is what this whole journey is asking of us.
Not to become people who never struggle, but to become people who know how to meet struggle with more love.
Nicole, this one is for you.
Thank you for crossing my path today. Thank you for seeing me in the middle of the mess and offering the steady presence I so desperately needed.
You reminded me that sometimes the smallest act of kindness can reach a place in someone that nothing else can.
And to the woman reading this who is sitting in her own version of a Whole Foods parking lot today:
I see you, too.
You are allowed to have a hard moment.
You are allowed to be human.
You are still worthy of love, especially on the days when you struggle to give that love to yourself.
Let’s normalize the hard shit.
Let’s stop pretending we have it all together.
And let’s be a little more like Nicole.
In Peace, Love and Service,
Rebecca
