A childhood book laid the ground work for the massive weight of guilt about taking even a moment off from childcare.

#14 Taking a day off from childcare without worrying constantly or feeling guilty.

https://healingfromcomplextraumaandptsd.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/25-obvious-non-obvious-self-care-issues-complex-trauma-survivors-struggle-with-lilly-hope-lucario/

Judy wrote her perspective https://theprojectbyjudy.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/self-care-14-of-25/

She pointed out that bad things did happen while she was a way.  People that said they would care for her fur babies didn’t follow through.  This my experience with leaving our children in someone else’s care.  Our children stressed out and bad things did happen so the guilt compounded exponentially.  Even with my constant vigilance bad things still happened.  They also happened when I was there.

Some of my worse experiences as a child occurred while my parents were away.  My own experience with babysitters were horrendous.  My husband and I stopped dating for seven years because we couldn’t find a babysitter we trusted.  I felt such a heavy burden any time I left the kids.  DH won a dream vacation to Rome, Italy.  We had a wonderful week and paid dearly with many trips to the school for behavior problems and other issues.  We hired an adult to stay with the kids.  They still haven’t confessed to all the screwed up things that happened that week.  I constantly worry for a reason.  I felt an even heavier burden as I learned more about how I functioned in counseling.  The guilt and worry nearly crushed me.  Humbling to realize in many ways I was the worst thing to happen to my children in their childhood.  I can’t fix it.  I can’t make up for it.  This is when I pray and ask for Christ to fix things.  He is good at fixing people mistakes.  I work hard to be the kind of person my children want their children to be around.

This one may never be corrected for me.  I guess part of the burden of guilt was I knew I was messed up as a teenager.  At the time, I swore I would never have children.  A series of events I felt Heavenly Father asked me to trust that I could be a good mother to my children.  I’m still struggling with things I know I messed up.  Then I pray again.  This will not easily be resolved for me.  I think this one will also fall under the category of forgiving myself.