"Gently, Mommy."

A lesson for generations.

One of the things I’ve come to know about myself is how hard I can be on myself. About everything — parenting, work, exercise, even leisure activities. For instance, if I have a free hour, I’ll agonize over how to spend it, and if I didn’t best maximize that hour, I’ll then be disappointed, for example, that I “only” read 20 pages in my book when I “could have” finished an entire episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

Under the umbrella of being hard on myself also fall rushing and making and crossing off mental checklists as I move about my day. Often I fall into the realm of exuding some frantic energy even if and when I don’t mean to. Lately I’ve noticed my husband asking me in the mornings if I’m okay. And I am. I’m just thinking about getting the lunches and backpacks packed, putting shoes on, planning my outfit for work, throwing in a load of laundry, etc, etc, etc. With all this on my mind, I have a serious look on my face that makes it appear I’m upset. But I’m just focused. My face is…hard. Hard, hard, hard.

So I was surprised when I found myself a few minutes ahead of my normal schedule the other day trying to get out of the house to run. I wasn’t feeling great, so I downgraded my normal 2.5-3 mile midweek run to a run/walk. I was truly tuning into my body and accommodating it, adjusting my actions to its needs. And that energy continued throughout my morning. I moved in a slower, more calculated way. Noticing my hands, mindfully stepping up my stairs, not racing to the top. As my dad used to tell me, “there’s no rush.” And that morning, there wasn’t.

The energy must have been emanating out of my being because I started to notice a widespread calm around the house too. The baby wasn’t crying. My daughter wasn’t arguing. She even let me brush her hair — and because of that, I took advantage, giving her head a few extra sprays of detangler. As I put the brush to her hair, she whispered to me “Gently, Mommy.” Where I might normally tell her not to be so bossy, I instead listened. She wasn’t being bossy, nor demanding nor critical. She’s only four years old. No, she was offering guidance. The brush went through her hair like a knife through a warm stick of butter. Her hair — a soft, glossy mane. Not that she doesn’t look it everyday, but she looked absolutely beautiful.

Once I released the effort and allowed in ease, the whole trajectory of our collective morning continued as such. After dropping the kids off at school, I found myself at a stoplight listening to the This Is Us rewatch podcast, That Was Us. In many ways, the podcast veers into a parenting podcast because the hosts are recapping a show about generations of a family and all their trials and tribulations as both children and later, as adults and parents in their own right. The show and podcast often get me thinking about my dad because of the Alzheimer’s storyline with Mandy Moore’s character, the father dying young, and because the portrayal of the father in the 1990s looks eerily similar to my own dad — the mustache in particular! I started thinking about how little I knew about my dad as anything other than my dad. It’s something I think about often — how he got sick before I got to know him as an adult and before I could see him through the lens of anything other than a kid. Then I thought about one of the little crumbs of detials my brother dropped not too long ago — who my dad’s favorite self-help author was. And that unlocked a memory of all the self-help books we used to have lying around our house. Both my parents read them — business books, relationship books, parenting books.

And then I started noticing the parallels. I read a ton of self-help books and listen to a ton of self-help podcasts. In so many ways, I am my father. He struggled for many years with depression. Me, with anxiety. But I realize now he was always trying to get better, to be better. And so am I. That growth mindset — in part — comes from him. I think he was the type of person who, like me, was also incredibly hard on himself and could have stood to be more gentle. I started crying in my car thinking of him. It was a moment of understanding. I often feel exactly what I imagine he was feeling when he was in his 30s — trying to provide for his family and “get it right,” both personally and professionally while simultaneously trying have fun and feel joy, ease, and equanimity.

The irony is that even as I slowed all my movements that morning, I somehow wound up being early getting the kids out the door and getting ready for work. I even had bonus time to watch some TV before leaving the house. The rest of the week, I’ve been bringing that same energy, and it’s made my mornings much more enjoyable and my children and myself much more tame.

In the words of my dad, “there’s no rush.”

And in the words of my daughter — his namesake — “gently, Mommy.”

The generations both before and after me are doing their best to invoke the same message to me. And I am finally, finally listening.