“Do all moms hate themselves a little bit?” she asks me.

I am bowled over. I am humbled by her ability to articulate this. I am hating myself even more, suddenly, for hating myself a little bit.

I don’t know what to do but stumble forward.

“I don’t think all moms hate themselves,” I say. I hesitate. We keep our eyes on the figure skaters, watch as their blades slice the ice, jab it, core it with grace. I try to choose my own words with grace, but my heart is raw, and we both know it. “I think…what can happen…to some moms…is that they lose things they love along the way. I love you and your sister more than anything in the entire world. But sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten what I love, what makes me happy outside of you and your sister.”

“What do you think would make you happy?” she asks.

“That’s the question I ask myself every day. You both make me happy, so happy. But sometimes…I feel like…other than my life as a mom…that I’m failing. At my life. I could really use approval right now — not from you guys — not your job. But approval from others.”

“You’re not failing,” she says. “And you’re pretty. You’re the prettiest almost-40-year-old that I know.”

“Do you meet a lot of almost-40-year-olds?”

She shrugs as if to say, “Enough of them to know.”

She’s heard me argue with my mother. A stupid incident involving my cat and my dogs and my mother’s finger getting caught in a door. All I can hear is my mother’s disapproval: how I am living, with needy animals in an admittedly small house. The animals are, besides my girls, all I have right now that reflects who I am. But it’s exhausting, I get that. And I said quite angrily that I was sorry my life sucked so hard, and that my mom was forced to deal with it, and Firstborn heard it. It was a real disagreement she overheard, the kind that daughters and mothers have had and will have for ages.

Her eyes fill with tears then and she curls into a ball. “Talk to me,” I say. “Don’t hold it in. Yell at me if you want. I’m sorry my mom and I argued. Say something.”

“I don’t want to have disagreements with you like you had with your mom tonight.”

I hug her. “I know. But it’s the real thing. I love my mom like crazy and she loves me and still: disagreements will happen. You’ll yell at me, and I’ll yell at you, and it’s all just real. It’s as real as it gets. The love stays intact. I promise you that’s never going anywhere. That is one thing I really know for sure. I just really need help right now. I really, really need people who are on my side, who aren’t judging.”

“I’m not judging,” she says. And I don’t want her to take care of me.

“You don’t have to look after me, okay?” I tell her. “I know you want to, because you have a real big compassionate heart. But your job is to let me take care of you, not the other way around, okay? I’ve got you. And I just have to figure out how to find what makes me happy again, outside of being a mom. I’ve really lost my way. I don’t think it’s the same for every mom. I don’t know.”

She considers this. She repeats herself: “What would make you happy again?”

That million dollar question. “I ask myself that every single day. I love that you asked that. You’re a really wise kid. Look—just know—I’m trying so hard to find the answer. Do you think that I hate myself, a little bit?”

She says, “You said a bad word…about your life.”

It’s true. I had said my life “sucks.” Coming back from a trip and into one’s own morass of difficulties and as-yet insurmountable problems is never pleasant, and I am feeling low and ashamed. 

“Ah,” I say. “I did say that. I’m sorry. But I feel like I need something, and I am not sure what.”

She nods. “I understand.”

I think she does.

Do I hate myself a little bit? Tonight I do. I can’t shake the rawness, the constant sense—erroneous or not—of being left flayed open for inspection. I don’t want her to absorb from this that motherhood equates to a necessary hating of oneself—even a little bit.

Tonight, I don’t have the answers. Not even one. Tonight, I feel like anything but a role model.