Same Guilt. Same Impossible Choice.
Why Did She Deserve My Compassion but Not Me?
A few years ago, my son's preschool called.
He was running a high fever. Could I come pick him up?
I was in the middle of a fire.
My team and I were sorting through a critical issue. We had a report due that evening for a management meeting the next morning. I couldn't leave them. Not in that moment.
I remember scrambling. Slipping into the toilet. Texting my helper in a panic, asking her to pick him up, to hold him, to keep him safe until I could get home.
I made it through the day. Report submitted. Meeting sorted.
But when I finally got home that night, my son was already asleep—already attended to—but looking at him so fragile…I just broke down.
"What kind of mother am I?"
"How could I choose work over him?"
"He needed me and I wasn't there."
It was just so horrid!!!
The next morning, my phone buzzed. A message from a friend.
She was on a business trip and her son had come down with a cold. She hadn't seen him for three days. She was writing to me feeling like the worst mother in the world.
And you know what I did?
I immediately messaged her back with such warmth. Such certainty. Such kindness.
"You are such a good mother. You made a tough choice but you had to. You've done what you could. Your son knows he is loved."
I sent that message with my whole heart.
And then I sat with the strangest realisation:
I could not extend to myself even a fraction of the kindness I gave her.
Same situation. Same guilt. Same impossible choice.
But for her—compassion.
For me—harsh judgment.
Does that sound like you???
Learning to speak to myself like a friend hasn't been quick. It's been a practice. A returning. A slow, tender rewiring of the way I speak inside my own head.
But it has changed everything—how I sleep at night, how I forgive myself, how I show up for my son the next day without carrying yesterday's shame into it.
And on Oct 17, I hope to share more with you, and how you can be kinder to yourself….
An afternoon to come home to yourself. To learn to speak to yourself with the same kindness you offer everyone else.
Because the woman who mothers everyone—her team, her family, her friends—deserves to be mothered by herself too.
Hope you see you there!
With gratitude,
Elynn
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