I had no sense that the dark side of life was about to be revealed to me after having kids.

My starring role as the angelic, devoted mother was juxtaposed with moments where I completely broke character and found myself being the evil, yelling monster mama.

Before having kids, I'd only glimpsed my rage. Like the time when I hit my cat out of frustration that I couldn’t keep him off the counters. I had no sense of the magnitude of eruptions that were coming. I never dreamed that volcano-like, red-hot rage would be directed AT my precious babies.

I’d envisioned myself leaping over a tall building if need be for my kids. In many ways, that came to pass.

I slaved over organic, homemade bread recipes made with such wholesome ingredients that they often resembled bricks.

When my son woke up for the umpteenth time, I dragged myself out of bed, determined to meet his every need.

My son had serious colic, the start of his life-long issues with dairy products. So, I breastfed him for 19 months. I carefully read labels and completely changed my eating habits so that I consumed no dairy whatsoever, as even the slightest amount of casein in something I ate set him off.

I tried soooooo hard to be the perfect mom.

When I heard I was pregnant, I quit my well-paid, secure government job to devote 100% of my time to being a great mom. My devotion saw me becoming a parenting educator to fill the local need that no one was filling in hopes of getting the answers I needed. I voraciously read parenting books and started to travel for classes with Dr. Gordon Neufeld, best-selling author of Hold On to Our Kids and one of THE world’s foremost developmental psychologists, to learn how to be the parent I’d vowed to be at their birth. I was determined to stop the dysfunction that had caused me so much pain when I was growing up.

How horrifying that even after being accepted as a mentee of Dr. Neufeld into what became his renowned Neufeld Institute, I was still raging at my kids. The dark underside of my life seemed to be slowly but surely gaining traction. It was like a river eroding the banks of our family’s happiness. I'd been raised with parents who both sometimes exploded at me. It was so demoralizing to see that the apple didn't fall far from the tree despite me dedicating my life to showing up better as a parent.

My rages likely happened less than 1% of the time. But our sense of safety as a family was damaged as a result. I didn’t trust myself. I felt out of control; I never knew when my kids would get blasted. Years later, I started to understand how afraid my husband was when he'd hear how angry I got at his precious kiddos.

My rage dramatically eroded all the great attachment work I was so carefully doing. It was a horrible, vicious circle, as the more our attachment was damaged, the less my kids listened. Also, the more times I blew up, the more I didn't trust myself or even want to be alive.

I felt like a Monster Mama.

I judged myself harshly and felt I didn't deserve to parent. Yet what was the alternative? Suicide was alluring, yet I was hit with knowing what a horrible legacy that would be for my kids. I was shocked to suddenly understand why some moms do things like drive into a lake with their kids with the plan to die and take their kids with them.

I see now how my husband's fear contributed to him having moments where he turned into a monster husband. His rage, which was always directed at me, not the children, was fueled by his fears of what I might do to his kids. It was a vicious circle, as his rages contributed to my sense of hopelessness and being a failure and increased the chances of me raging again at the kids. Mercifully, I got the support and tools I needed to tame my monster mama. I took the kids to an emergency shelter to find protection from my husband's monster side. I'm working on Strong Enough to Stay: Work it out or Leave Happy, which outlines that journey, so I'll share more there.

The gifts of my rage

I offer my personal story to you to inspire you to see that you, too, can deal with your monster urges and get to a great place. I learned to work with my anger and to respect it for the gifts it was offering. One of the biggest messages my rage had for me was that NO parent should be trying to raise children all on their own. I started to respect my real need for support, for safe spaces where I could share just how hard things were, to find people to help with little things that made such a difference, like picking up a child occasionally, taking them on a playdate or giving me a sympathetic smile when I felt like I was screwing up yet again.

I minded the gifts of my anger so successfully that at one point, one of my then-teenagers commented that I never got angry. While their father and I's spectacular final break up a few years later dispelled this myth, without taming my inner monster mama, I never would have found the way through to hearing that from my child. The gifts of my anger, and all the pain of how I was failing included me finally taking my own personal development as a leader seriously. I am so grateful for learning what I did so that I now can enjoy two children who are doing well, who want to spend time with me, and who get that I did the best I could, even while recounting memories to me of times when I fell so, so short of what they wanted and needed.

What is your anger, your irritation, your frustration, your RAGE if you feel that, trying to tell you? 

For most of us, the track to getting to a much better place is to have much more support along our journey than we start out with. In my twenty-five years of personally and professionally working with this issue,

To be the best parent possible, most parents need 3 things:

1. tips and tools,
2. peer support so you know you aren't alone and
3. coaching help to keep you focused and point out what we can’t see.

The problem with quick tips versus foundational changes

We became a nonprofit cooperative because it's the best model to provide all three. It allows us to provide the wrap-around support that most parents need to rock their parenting. The easy money in this stressed-out world is providing the tips and tools, as information products are easy to sell; just write compelling bullet points, and parents will snap them up. However when those same parents are still struggling months later, so often they feel worse about themselves and think that it's something wrong with them. The game changer is when you have the support over time from peers and a coach who is tracking your progress and helping you to see the small tweaks you could make, or give you the encouragement that you are on the right path. That's what gets you to thrive as a family instead of yet another parent doing your best in this stressed-out world.

Here's some comments from some of the moms who we’ve worked with:

"Thank you for helping me transform from Monster Mom to the Mom I always dreamed I could be.  ~ Beth Ann, USA

“I am a much calmer mum. It’s now rare that I lose my temper and yell at my kids.” ~ Rebecca, Australia

"The tools I now use regularly help me to be a much calmer mother.  I am not perfect but I am much improved.  I know now that I am not a monster.  I am simply a mom who needed help." ~ Karen S

If you'd like to take a walk on the bright, supported, and stable side of parenting, I'd recommend starting with a free Parent Support Session with one of our GPS-certified coaches. They've all been there, too, and would be honored to meet with you to explore what could help you and your family make the changes you want to make. It’s NOT your fault that you are losing it with your kids. You just need some better tools AND some support to follow through. We were never meant to parent alone.