When you’ve been through things like abuse, things like happiness and safety and peace don’t come easy at first. It takes work and patients and understanding. After I separated from my daughter’s father, her and I moved across states and moved in with my dad. I was grateful we had a place like that to go, and it became home for the next 5 and a half years. Then I bought a house with my sister and brother-in-law. It was the perfect set-up. They lived in the main part of the house and my daughter and I took the basement apartment. It already had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. It was honestly the perfect size for just the two of us.

Life felt better and simpler at first. But as a little time went on and things got worse with my daughters dad, it all felt bad again. I was irritable all the time, I was easily triggered and I was stressed all the time. And I was still depressed. While I was struggling, my daughter was also struggling. She was about 6-7 years old and feisty. Some of it was just normal child behavior, always pushing back to see how far I’d let her go. She was still learning her limits. But some of it had to do with what was going on in our lives. She hardly ever saw her dad. She would ask where he was or why she couldn’t see him and when she would be able to see him. They would talk on the phone sometimes but he was never consistent. As a little kid, that’s so hard because she didn’t understand what’s really going on and she just missed her dad. For her it felt like I was just keeping her from him because I was mad at him.

Some days she would fight back at me so hard that I would completely lose my shit. I was already so stressed and anxious and angry and regularly felt like I was going to explode from all the feelings inside me. And because of all that, I had almost zero patience for my kid. Everything with her felt like a struggle. Eating, cleaning up, brushing teeth, getting ready for bed. It felt like she pushed back on anything she could. There were nights that we would end up yelling at each other so loudly and her slamming her bedroom door, that my sister would hear from upstairs. My sister would come down and ask if everything was okay, if there was anything she could do. Sometimes she would go to my daughter and just be there for her, talk to her, help her with whatever it was I needed my daughter to do. She gave us both a break from each other and it truly helped so much. I’m not proud of those moments, that was unfortunately just my reality at the time. I would always feel like shit after. I never meant to act that way with her, I just couldn’t keep it all together.

Eventually things got better. It took a lot of work and therapy for both of us (mostly me). My therapist even suggested I get on anti-depressants. I learned to control myself better and I started apologizing to her when I was having a bad moment or a bad day and make sure she knew it wasn’t her fault. And because I would apologize when I was wrong, eventually she started apologizing to me too when she was wrong. We began respecting each other more. Now I’m not saying everything is now perfect and rainbows and sunshine all the time. She’s still a kid and kids give their parents a hard time, it’s the way of life. They push your buttons and push boundaries and see what kind of things they can get away with. It was a little hard again when I started dating my boyfriend and then he moved it. It was all such a huge change for her, an adjustment for all of us. It was just me and her for years and now I bring someone new into out space, our life. There was definite push back. But she’s 11 now and our relationship is so much better.

My boyfriend and I were just talking about this topic the other day. I was telling him how she seems so much happier just in general these days. She’s smiling and laughing more often and her and I argue a little less; (we are in our pre-teen era and let me tell you, it is not for the weak). But overall things are better. She’s adjusted and I can tell likes having him around – even if she won’t admit it. She leans on him a lot now. She’ll tell him about her day or ask him for help with homework. She has even gotten to the point once or twice where if I told her no to something she will go inside and ask him. It’s actually kind of cute. I know part of it is she’s growing older and slowly maturing and getting a little wiser. But I also think part of it is having him around, having more stability and more support. And me being so much happier with myself and my life. Don’t get me wrong, we still have our moments. Girls are rough, let me tell you. But overall we are in a much better place and I’m just so grateful.