When Relief Gets Snatched Away

I think what made this hurt so much was that I had finally started to believe we were actually moving toward that metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel.

After months of not having much luck finding household support (I should share those stories sometime; they’re pretty wild), we finally decided to make a significant investment in working with a well-regarded agency to help us find someone we could trust.

Someone to be in our home. Someone to help manage the mental load and take some of it on. Someone who could help free up enough mental space for me to focus on my mental health, being a good mom and wife, and growing my coaching practice. Someone who would see the vulnerable, messy, real parts of the life my husband and I are both currently drowning in.

It’s hard for me to admit just how much shame I feel about struggling to maintain my household. Logically, I know there’s no shame in it, but I feel it nevertheless.

It took me a while to be open to allowing that type of support into our home. There was the shame that I was barely getting by, the fear about the financial investment, and the exhaustion of thinking about all the work it would take to onboard someone.

Oh, and my biggest fear, whether someone who could—and would—fill this role actually existed.

I struggle with the fact that I still don’t know how to harness my ADHD, which makes many of these tasks feel insurmountable. In fairness to me, I only started learning about ADHD because I was diagnosed a few years ago in the thick of postpartum with my little one. It literally never occurred to me that I had it, even though I’m a pretty textbook case in many ways, especially on the emotional regulation side. The more I learn about the emotional side of ADHD, the more validated I feel and the more I am starting to understand my feelings and reactions to things. I will lovingly celebrate myself here for showing myself some self-compassion.

I also have to work hard not to compare myself to my mom, who, even though it was hard for her, managed to run our household very smoothly. She took care of three kids mostly herself while my dad was on call and cooked delicious homemade meals almost every night. She loved to garden and cook and was very organized.

Cooking is NOT one of my superpowers. Neither is gardening or organization, for that matter. And that’s okay. We all have our own superpowers. I’m working on honing mine and not beating myself up for what I’m not good at.

It’s a hard bar to reach — one I don’t even try to come close to. Some days I actually believe that. Other days, the shame creeps back in anyway.

A few weeks after we first connected with the agency, just as that little glimmer of hope was starting to fade, we were introduced to a candidate who seemed great.

Yup, if you’re reading between the lines, I will give you the full spoiler: She was indeed too good to be true and did not come as advertised.

We had a great Zoom interview, followed by an in-person interview. We seemed aligned across the board and talked at length about her requirements and ours. We were all on the same page, or so I thought.

I spent hours working on a contract, figuring out payroll, and setting everything up.

She had a short first day that went well. Then she returned for her second day. She even texted us on the way to our house asking if we wanted coffee.

I was starting to let out a huge sigh of relief. Maybe, just maybe, we had actually found help. But help isn’t just one thing. I didn’t need someone to simply clean or cook. I needed someone to take some of the mental load off of me, so I could actually remember how to breathe fully again.

Of course, there was still deep anxiety weighing heavily on me. I had been a ball of anxiety the last few weeks, and I tried to push it aside and attribute it to nerves and the long string of childcare and household help that hadn’t worked out. And of course, perimenopause. I can always blame that.

Sometimes I hate when my intuition is correct.

Sometimes I hate when my anxiety is correct.

On her second day, after chatting with us and confirming her hours and top task priorities, I thought all was well.

I did something I don’t often do and met up with a friend for coffee. We’d been trying to make a coffee date happen for months.

Life felt pretty good. For a few minutes at least.

While I was out, I got a text from her saying she was going outside to get a jacket from her car. Weird text, I thought, and tried not to think too much about it despite some alarm bells going off in my head. Why in the world would she text me to tell me she was grabbing a jacket from her car on a very hot day?

A little later, while my friend went to the restroom, I checked my email—a bad habit I need to break—and saw a message from the agency saying she had called them and they wanted to speak with us. (Hmm, maybe jacket was code word for secretly calling the agency.)

Those alarm bells started blaring at this point.

I texted her to check in and didn’t hear anything.

I texted my husband, who was working from home. He told me her car was no longer at our house.

She had literally just up and left without saying anything to us, including telling us to lock the door behind her. And the fact that she called the agency and told them she wasn’t returning was another gut punch. Couldn’t she have extended us that same courtesy? Or at least locked the darn door.

I think what hurts so much is that relief had been dangled in front of me. I got a tiny glimpse of what it might feel like to have help, and then it was snatched away almost as soon as I could see it.

It also stings that someone I had spent so much time with over the previous few days—someone I had worked hard to make as comfortable as possible, someone I had spoken with about the importance of transparency and communication—just walked out of my house without a word.

This happened earlier last week, when I was already feeling pretty lousy, and I’ll admit, it knocked the wind out of me.

It wasn’t only about her leaving, though that stung because of the trust I had opened myself up to place in her. It was the time and energy I had invested. The hope I had allowed myself to start to feel.

We were already overwhelmed, depleted, and struggling to manage everything with very limited energy and bandwidth. This experience took a substantial toll on the little capacity we had left.

So, I let myself have a good cry, binge some Netflix, ruminate, let my mind go wild with irrational life choices, and then be calmed down by a good therapy session (and several chapters of a racy werewolf romantasy).

During my therapy session, I realized just how often, especially lately, I invalidate my own feelings.

It’s quite ironic, actually, because I spend so much time validating my clients’ feelings.

I tell them their feelings make sense.

I tell them there’s no shame in needing help.

I tell them it’s okay not to be okay.

The thing is, I truly mean it when I say it to them.

And yet, when it comes to my own feelings, I neglect to extend myself that same love and understanding.

Their feelings are valid, yet mine are not.

I’ve noticed this pattern in myself before, but this experience brought it sharply to the forefront. It served as a huge reminder of an area where I still have so much room to grow.

I need to practice my own self-compassion as much as I share compassion with others.

I never, ever, ever, ever - repeat “ever” times a trillion - want my daughters to invalidate their own emotions. With my babies in mind, I’m even more motivated to deepen my own self-compassion practice.

Because maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to build an airtight case for why I’m allowed to be hurt.

Maybe my feelings don’t need an entire legal briefing before they’re allowed to count.

Maybe they simply count because I feel them. My feelings are also valid. Big or small.

I don’t have any real words of wisdom yet. If you have any for me, I am ALL ears.

I’m still very much in the thick of my emotions, but I know that once I sit with them and process them, I will eventually come out the other side.

I suppose one thing that came from this situation is that I finally released some of the pent-up emotions I had been carrying around.

No, I’m not trying to put a silver lining on this. This situation sucks. There’s no other way to describe it.

But I had been holding so much in, and I think this final straw allowed the tears to fall and some release to finally happen.

I have also learned more than I ever wanted to know about payroll, contracts, and California labor law, which will hopefully make onboarding our actual unicorn that much easier. (Though honestly, I still find CA tax and labor laws very confusing!)

I’ve learned some very valuable lessons, and I will do things very differently next time.

This was one of the exact situations we had hoped to avoid by working with an agency. Intellectually, of course, I know they could not have predicted this outcome. Emotionally, I still feel disappointed that one of the situations we made a significant investment to prevent happened anyway.

Part of me feels that something could have been done differently, even though I have no clue what that something could have been.

I know blaming them may not be entirely warranted, but I also can’t help how I feel right now.

And, if I’ve learned anything from this, I’m not going to push those feelings down or talk myself out of them. I’m going to allow myself to feel them while continuing to move forward. (I will, however, force myself to be polite while I work through these angry feelings.)

I keep coming back to how much of this—the searching, the interviewing, the contract, the payroll—I was the one driving.

My husband was there, but I was the one carrying most of it.

And then, when it fell apart, I somehow ended up carrying even more than before.

Setbacks, anxiety, and frustration are hard parts of life. They still suck, though. Both/And.

I keep getting up anyway.

Slowly. Painfully. Imperfectly.

But forward.

For You, and for Another Mama

If you’ve ever felt relief get dangled in front of you and then snatched away — if you know what it’s like to justify your own hurt like you’re building a legal case for it — I hope you find some comfort in this.

And if there’s someone else in your life who could use that same comfort right now, send this to her.

Related Reading

• Someone Else Made It Look Easy — on invisible labor and the mental load nobody sees until it’s gone

• Resources to Support Moms (and Dads)

A Gentle Resource

If this stirred something up for you, the shame, the exhaustion, the wondering if your feelings need a defense attorney, you’re not alone. I made my guided journal and Truth Cards for exactly this: a place to let your feelings just be. You can find them in the Your Non-Linear Journey Shop.