Raising Teens While Coming Undone

You want a spiritual challenge?

Try parenting emotionally unstable, prefrontal-cortex-deficient teenagers… while you yourself are unraveling into a hormonal abyss of perimenopause, career fatigue, and existential dread.

It’s not just the kids slamming doors around here - sometimes it’s me, retreating to the bathroom for a primal scream and five stolen minutes of Candy Crush. I am, at any given moment, both the elder and the child. Raising them while re-parenting myself. Teaching boundaries I only just started enforcing. Trying to model emotional regulation when mine is held together with caffeine, therapy, and pure audacity.

Motherhood is a mirror (and sometimes I don’t like what I see.)

Here’s the thing no one tells you:

• Your kids don’t just reflect your love - they reflect your triggers.

• Your insecurities.

• Your unhealed wounds.

• They say something snarky and suddenly you’re back at 14, feeling dismissed.

• They withdraw emotionally and your abandonment issues sprint out of retirement.

Some days, I’m proud of how I respond.

Other days, I’m just proud I didn’t throw a chancla.

It’s a brutal kind of self-awareness. The kind that doesn’t come from meditation apps or Pinterest quotes, but from sobbing in your car after a passive-aggressive text from your ex. And yet…

Even in the mess, there’s magic.

• There’s the moment your kid opens up unprompted.

• The way they instinctively hug you when you actually need it.

• The sound of them laughing in the other room, still kids, even as they grow away from you.

There’s something radical about showing up for them, and for yourself, even on the days when your nervous system is fried and your love language is “please everyone just shut up.”

The truth is, they’re watching. Not just how we treat them, but how we treat ourselves. So I try to show them a woman who is honest about being tired. Who apologizes when she’s wrong. Who cries a little, swears a lot, and keeps coming back. Not because she’s perfect, but because she'll chose them, again and again and again.

The real Circle of Life isn’t lions on a rock with Elton John playing in the background. It’s a relentless cycle of laundry, eye rolling, hormonal warfare, and the occasional urge to fake your own death for five minutes of peace. It’s the realization that you’ve spent your youth trying to escape your parents, and your midlife desperately trying not to become them. Spoiler: it’s too late.

It’s dishes, deodorant reminders, mood swings, forgiveness, and coffee. It’s learning to mother while also learning to let go. It's watching your kids grow into themselves while you rediscover parts of you that got buried under responsibility and guilt.

It’s wild.

It’s sacred.

It’s profane.

It’s the circle of life.

Only now, it comes with more swearing, deeper healing, and the occasional group text apology.

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