Nobody posts the 2am breakdowns or the meals eaten cold standing over the sink. Parenting is sold as the greatest joy of your life, and it is. But it’s also the hardest thing most people will ever survive. These parents skipped the filter and told the truth about what raising kids actually looks like behind closed doors.
1.
My parents didn’t have many hardships growing up, but my Grammy, who passed away a little over a month ago, grew up in a very poor area of Cleveland in the 1940s. They could barely afford to eat, so at Christmas, they never had a Christmas tree.
After Christmas was over and everyone was putting their trees out to be picked up by the garbage truck, my Grammy and her brother and sister would find one of the used ones outside and bring it into their house so they could have a tree for just a few days.
It would be dying, but they would decorate it anyway. It breaks my heart that they didn’t even have the little things that make childhood magical.
2.
My sister and I both had babies the same year. She had her mom, her husband’s mom, a village. I had nobody nearby and a husband who traveled for work every week. I never complained. I just got on with it.
Last Christmas she told the family I “made parenting look easy.” I laughed. Later that night I sat in my car in the driveway for 25 minutes before I could make myself go back inside. Not because I was unhappy. Just because it was the first time I’d been alone all day.