everything you do has to include you

At face value that's obvious. But how often do you give up yourself in order to meet someone else's needs? How often does some part of you that has needs, feel abandoned and left behind? 

I'm not saying to only ever consider yourself. I am saying that caregivers and parents are often put in positions where they have to tend to someone else's needs before they take care of their own. I am saying that when we grew up being the one who got into a pattern of letting go of (or ignoring) our own needs so that we could keep someone else (usually parents) to be calm or take care of business, we can get used to not tending to ourselves. 

Not tending ourselves is not sustainable. That's where burnout happens. That's where we revert to the behaviors we are most familiar with. That's why, even when we are trying to hard to parent differently than how we were raised, we end up sounding like our parents. We end up yelling or sulking or manipulating just like they did. 

And, if you're like me, it brings up grief and shame when I hear myself say some of the hurtful things they said. It feels like failure to end up behaving as they did even though I had such strong intentions to not repeat those wounds. 

But it's really not about being a "good parent" or a "bad parent," in most cases it's just about whether or not someone had the skills, tools, and good relationship modeling. It's about being able to be whole humans with good awareness and the desire to learn how to be together even when things are difficult.

So when you find yourself sounding like your parents, and the grief and shame rolls in, know that you are likely over capacity and you are overriding your own needs. Compassion for yourself because you're managing a lot is the first step. It's ok if you mess up sometimes. It's part of being human. And your ability to do the relationship repair with your family members is part of creating strong ties. 

Don't leave yourself out. Taking care of you when you find yourself outside of your current capacity is not shameful, it is human. Tending to your relationships through your shifts in capacity is how you BECOME the person who is the parent you want to be. This is not accomplished through managing your behaviors and suppressing what's happening in you.