Magda Pecsenye has been writing on the internet since 2003. She was Ask Moxie from 2005-2015 and won a bunch of best of parenting blogs and best of advice blogs awards. She took a break from blogging to lean in to social media, but now that social media is dying she's back blogging again. In addition to writing this blog, she writes about Good Management Practices and podcasts about the challenges and horrors of being in your 50s with her ex-husband Doug French.
Magda's Community Center #25: It's not easy being mean
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...and I'm back! My friend's mother died. This mother has been mean to my friend, specifically and intentionally, for decades. Since childhood, but the meanness increased over the last ten years to a crushing level of abuse. She was meaner to my friend than to any of her other children. It makes me feel so bad for my friend, even though she's been reconciled to the fact that her mother was never going to stop the abuse and would never have a change of heart. She never had a good, or even decent, mom. And she herself is an amazing mother who lets her kids feel loved and appreciated, supported and accepted. But it really makes me feel so much pity for my friend's mother. She wasted 54 years she could have spent creating a strong, nurturing, connected relationship with a wonderful person. She spent all those years being mean and vindictive, and destroying something that could have given her joy and satisfaction, especially at the end of her life. She set her kids against each other so one of my friend's siblings is vicious and cruel to the rest of the siblings, and they can't even find comfort in each other consistently. What an absolute waste of a life. Even if she'd accomplished something else--and maybe she did and I just don't know what it is--there's nothing that can make up for hurting your children unrelentingly. I know that parenting is difficult and can require more than we have in us sometimes. But there's a reason humans take so long to leave the nest, and then stay in contact with our parents even after we hit adulthood. Parenting is supposed to be a long conversation. Tens of thousands of days to connect and nurture each other. If some of those days aren't as kind as we want to be, those days are flooded out by the vast majority of the days, in which we choose kindness and choose to build a solid, trusting, loving relationship with our kids. The more you do it the easier it gets. And the more you teach your kids to turn to you, the easier it is to trust and be kind to each other. Choose yourself by choosing your kids, no matter how old they are. XO, Magda |
Magda Pecsenye Zarin
Magda Pecsenye has been writing on the internet since 2003. She was Ask Moxie from 2005-2015 and won a bunch of best of parenting blogs and best of advice blogs awards. She took a break from blogging to lean in to social media, but now that social media is dying she's back blogging again. In addition to writing this blog, she writes about Good Management Practices and podcasts about the challenges and horrors of being in your 50s with her ex-husband Doug French.
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