flowmom | need to commit to myself

[flowmom]

Thanks for the well wishes everyone . And for the votes of confidence. I'm feeling less teary and raw today, which is a relief.

I had the kids all day, and it was nice to just work around our rhythms rather than H's schedule. I gave the kids the shaving cream (not when H was around), and they had a blast. We also played games and the children played really nicely with a neighbour. I got the apartment tidied up a bit and that felt good too.

I wish I could go on vacation with the kids right now. Or I wish H would go on vacation to give me a mental break .

I think I would like to work on not taking H's facial expressions personally. When he looks wary/haunted and can't make eye contact, I would like to just say to myself "there's a man who is having trouble living with himself" rather than telling myself a story about what that means about me. I'm glad that I can live with myself. I'm not proud of all my behaviours in my M, but I can live with every single thing that I've done, including after the separation.

I'm grateful that DBing has helped me with coparenting. It's provided me with a code of behaviour that is keeping me out of "trouble" with H, and that helps my children and my mental health. I will need to work on boundaries to face the big coparenting challenges (custody/financial negotations) because that will be the point where my priorities as a wife and my priorities as a parent will have to sharply diverge. All the more reason to delay that until I feel really clear.