Hurtful Words

Tatiana, my eight year old, bounces on the arm of my leather office chair, doing her best to distract me from the writing I need to finish.

“Honey, can you please stop?” I ask her. “You know that makes me dizzy.”

She knows, but she doesn’t want to wait any longer. “Mommy, I’m just sitting here.”

My hands type quickly on the keyboard. “This will only take me five more minutes.”

With four kids and endless revisions of my memoir, Drop Dead Life: A Pregnant Widow’s Heartfelt and Often Comic Journey through Death, Birth, and Rebirth, I feel like I’m always trying to squeeze in five more minutes. No more manis or pedis. No more kickboxing classes. No more sleep.

In the mornings, I pop some Wintergreen Altoids in my mouth and wear my black macaroni-and-cheese-stained pajamas to drop the kids off at school. Sure, I clean up when necessary, but, sadly, there are days when I don’t shower or get dressed until 5 p.m.

I know Tatiana is excited to have our mommy-daughter dinner date alone, so I stare at the computer screen, trying to focus.

Almost done.

Then, my expression changes.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Tatiana says.

“Somebody just wrote a mean comment on my blog.” I let out a deflated sigh. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What did they say?”

“He wrote ‘Interesting story, but terribly written’.”

“But that’s so mean. Why would somebody say that?”

“Come on, honey. Let’s get out of here.” My back makes a popping sound as I stand up to stretch. “We can talk in the car.”

But, in the car, I don’t feel like talking. Instead, I berate myself. Stupid idiot. You can’t write. Why don’t you just give this up?

“Mommy, you know I think you’re the best writer.”

“That’s very sweet to say, Tat, but you are my daughter.”

“But, why are you letting that person get you so upset?”

Normally, my skin is thick when it comes to my writing, but the sleep-deprivation is getting to me, and I think about how insecure I felt as a teenager.

“Tat, do you feel like Mommy and Daddy love and support you in whatever you do?”

“Yeah, with everything.”

“Well, you know I didn’t always feel that way growing up.”

“Mommy, I can name ten things you’re really good at.”

Tatiana and I talk as I drive to the restaurant, and I explain how important it is to hear encouraging words from our parents. She knows a little bit about the strained relationship I have with my father, about how his words weren’t always nice.

“Tatiana, the sad truth is that I can hear one thousand compliments, and if I‘m having a bad day, it’s the negative criticism that keeps replaying in my mind.”

“But you’re good at writing, photography, acting, singing, being the best mommy in the world, and you’re super funny.”

I squeeze the steering wheel and feel tears fill up my eyes.

Often, I hear parents criticize their children and I want to intervene. Do they know that their words will be remembered, consciously or subconsciously, for the rest of their life?

I don’t know if the person who wrote that nasty comment about my writing even read the piece, and it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme. What does matter, though, is how I talk to myself, how I talk to my children, so that we can each feel capable of attaining our dreams.

Tagged as: writing