Father's Day

I'm finding Father's Day really hard this year. For the last couple of Father's Days, the kids have just gone off with their Dad for the day and I've managed to avoid thinking about it too much. Obviously, this year that wasn't an option.

I do take responsibility for the kids living across the ocean from their father. Practically speaking there were no other realistic options for me, but it was still my decision to move back to the UK, so I place a high priority on their relationship and bridging that gap. Clearly, this is not going to be an easy day for him either.

This year, the kids made a video to send to their Dad. They've been making videos for school lately, so this was a good way for them to get creative on their own project, but I was brainstorming ideas with them and helping them figure out some technical aspects.

We ran into that typical parent-child collaborative issue where I had these ambitious ideas and they were reluctant to take on that much work and then I felt they weren't putting the effort in... and that led to me completely losing my temper with them yesterday morning. It was a nasty moment in which I realised that I was actually really stressed about this video. Why? Because I was afraid their father would blame me if it wasn't good enough.

It's a depressing truth that a huge proportion of my self-worth is still tied up in what their father thinks of me. The fact that I don't know what their father thinks of me (because we deliberately talk as little as possible) does nothing to alleviate my general paranoia.

While this remains a problem with no obvious solution for me, I shouldn't take it out on the kids, and when my stress was taking all the fun out of their father's day video for them, I was defeating the entire purpose of doing it in the first place. So I sent myself to my room telling them I wasn't allowed out until I had calmed down.

They did get the video done eventually, and while I have no idea what their father thought, they thought it was hysterical and got a real kick out of their own work. So I'm taking that as a success on that level and trying to convince myself that that's the only level I need to worry about.

Other than that, family-oriented holidays always trigger the bereavement feelings. In retrospect, I probably should have planned something for today to take my mind off it. But I didn't, and now I'm in a circular grief/funk cycle, so instead I'll spend the day doing inefficient distraction activities and letting the kids get away with murder. Whatever works!

One of my distraction activities will be writing another blog post. A more proactive one, now that I've articulated my current mood.