The Week I Couldn’t Even Look at My Daughter

And what my hardest week of parenting taught me about shame.

This is not a story about being strong. It’s a story about surviving when it wasn’t pretty.

I’m going to use this post as a sort of therapy.

I don’t have all the answers or even any. But I write this in the hopes that even one person might read it and feel understood. Less alone. Because sometimes in our darkest moments, that’s all we need, to feel seen.

I’ve lived through numerous post-surgical hospitalizations with my daughter. Some were shorter. Some were manageable. And one was traumatic beyond anything I had language for: coding alarms, life support, repeat surgeries, days without holding her, weeks of weaning the strongest medications available. She was two years old.

People sometimes ask me, “How did you do it?”

I always want to say, “I don’t know. The same way we all get through anything.” One foot in front of the other.

But if I’m honest?

It wasn’t heroic.

There was a week… maybe longer (I think I’ve honestly blocked a lot of that experience), when she was sedated and paralyzed.

And this is the part that’s hardest to admit:

I couldn’t bear to touch her.

I asked my husband to kiss her. My sister to rub her hair. My parents to lean in close and talk to her.

I was so afraid of losing her. And I was afraid that being close would somehow make it worse. I carried so much guilt. I couldn’t look at her without my chest tightening and my brain spiraling into what if this is the last time.

So I stepped back.

Not because I didn’t love her.

But because my nervous system couldn’t hold both love and terror at the same time.

And then the day she was extubated, she immediately jumped into my arms. No hesitation. Like she never missed a beat.

This was two years ago. I still wonder what her brain did during those days she was sedated. I still wonder what she remembers.

But I know this: she knew me.

And that moment undid so much of the shame I had been quietly carrying.

Here’s what I’m learning, slowly:

Survival isn’t always pretty.

Sometimes it looks like holding your child down for treatments.
Sometimes it looks like learning medical language you never wanted to know.
Sometimes it looks like stepping out of the room because you can’t breathe.
Sometimes it looks like asking someone else to be strong for a minute.
Sometimes it looks like holding your child for hours, simply because you finally can.

You are not a superhero when you walk through hard things.

You are a human.

And being human means you will freeze sometimes.
You will shut down sometimes.
You will not show up the way you imagined you would.

And you are still a good mom.

Whatever you’re facing today… Whatever habits you’re trying to start or stop, whatever weight feels like it’s just too much to carry, whatever season feels scary, you are still a good mom.

If you’ve walked through something hard and it didn’t look the way you thought it would, you’re not alone.

And sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let it not be pretty and love your child anyway.

PS. I talk about this experience and other challenges of being a medical mom on this episode of The Get Mom Ready podcast. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or on GetMomReady.com.