a heavy heart
My yearly solo city trip has started this morning and I’m sitting in the train, reading up on blogs.
The first blog I clicked in the discovery is for the girl who needed a hug today. It’s the words that my head was trying to form but couldn’t (yet). I love when this happens. When an internet stranger somehow writes how something current in my life seems to feel.
There have been more heavy hearts lately. This morning was the most recent one. We dropped D off at vacation daycare (she goes there every Thursday). In the beginning we had to leave her there with tears in her eyes. Nowadays she handles it a lot better (which is a gigantic relief). But there’s always at least one kid crying that they do not want to be there.
Today also, but even more heartbreaking than normal. One of the bigger girls had to say goodbye to her dad and didn’t want him to leave. It started with clinging and teary eyes and when he left to full on screaming and throwing herself on the floor. She was so upset she even (accidentally) pushed one of the caretakers on the floor. All the other kids were very quiet and were looking at it happening in front of them with big eyes. I could see the tension in all of their faces.
When these things happen, I can feel my chest getting heavy. I want to comfort my kid and all the other kids. I just want to give the girl a hug. She looked like she needed it. Maybe more from one of her parents, but I hope you get what I mean ; )
For me this is always a moment where my heart feels heavy. My head needs time to sort of process this. I’m not a parent that can let this go the second I step out of the daycare. Even when it’s not my own kid. It comes with me for several hours, until I had time to ‘shake it off’ with other things to distract me.
All these little moments in the day that give us a heavy heart pile up. Sometimes there’s more days with heavy hearts, sometimes less. I guess being a parent also gives you more heavy hearts? And maybe even more the older they get.
But after all these years I still haven’t figured out how to properly deal with them. How to unload that heavy heart. How does someone do that? How can you ‘be with the feeling’ as they say? How can you give that hug to yourself?