Kids and Conflict

Yesterday I was sitting with a friend and we were talking about time and I decided to share my blog about time with him. My daughter looked over our shoulder and asked what we were looking at and my natural reflex was to hide the screen and tell her nothing.

My kids are unaware that I am blogging and I must admit the thought of them reading my blogs scares me. This admission makes me feel a bit like a fraud.  Recently I have been voicing my belief that it is important for carers to own their feelings. I know in the past I hid mine away from the rest of the world. This left me feeling isolated and misunderstood.  Now, even though I don't speak that much about it, I have at least found a method of expression through my writing and yet when it comes to the crunch I still can't allow my children in to my head or let them see my thoughts on the screen.

When I sat down to write my first blog for this site I was paralysed with fear. For year's I remained silent about Ronnie's illness. Never acknowledging the emotions it provoked within me the thought of exposing them in a public arena was....overwhelming. I debated for hours over the wisdom of what I was about to do. I held a belief that admitting to anything other than happiness and satisfaction was like airing my dirty laundry in public. I wrote version after version of sugar coated descriptions of our life while ignoring themes of fear, frustration and anxiety.

The thought that others would really know what was going on inside terrified me.  And then I stopped and I questioned my behaviour. I read the forums and saw people like me, venting and owning their emotions and it gave me the strength and the courage to accept that maybe I too was entitled to my feelings.  For years I ignored the fact that Ronnie's illness has been affecting me as well as him and the kids. So now I'm writing and I'm wondering if my hiding my feelings will create a learned behaviour in them.

We all learn by example but what kind of an example am I setting? Its all so confusing. I want my children to have a childhood. I don't want to infect them with my fear but I also want them to feel the freedom of expression I've been hiding from. To tell them would be to scare them- to hide is to deny....