Maddie, I can’t tell you how touched I was by your comment. Thank you for reading and complimenting! It is difficult to write personal experiences sometimes, but I do it for people exactly like you. I do it because I want to help and inspire and advise and console. As I said in my “Meet the Woods” page, it is amazing to reach out and help someone you may never have met. I’m so glad I’ve helped you!

I plan to send you an email. I do think going into a lot of personal details about my angry mistakes as a parent would be too difficult for me to share publicly. However, it sounds like it would be helpful to you and so I am willing to share privately. Look for an email from me, soon. Thank you again for dropping a note, I hope you stop by to read more again soon!

Melissa

In particular, one thing I want to comment on is the very honest and candid way that you discuss managing your anger as a parent in your most recent post. I don’t know if you’ve received any feedback on this issue from other parents, but I really want to you know how refreshing and relieving it is to read about other mothers’ struggles with anger. Unfortunately, I have always possessed an awful temper myself, but I never really knew how bad it could be until after I had kids. At times, they bring out the absolute worst in me. There have been many moments where I literally felt myself becoming violently angry, having to physically remove myself from the situation in fear that I would do something I would regret. In these moments (or at least afterwards), I always find myself feeling guilty and frightened, wondering what was wrong with me or what I was doing wrong as a parent. I can’t tell you how much it means to read about your experiences and to know that there are others out there who experience similar situations. I encourage you to continue writing candidly about these experiences, because even though I imagine it may feel personally revealing to open up about your emotions in this way, I assure you that it is extraordinarily helpful to other mothers out there (at least to me!).

If it’s not too personal, I’d like to know more about your experiences with anger, how you feel when you’re losing your temper, and how you go about bringing yourself back under control. These are things I really struggle with every day. I constantly feel that I want to improve, for my kids and husband’s sake, and I feel that understanding more about your experiences might help me to move in a positive direction. Feel free to email me and we can talk.

Again, thanks for blogging. You’re doing a great job and I encourage you to keep shedding light on these tough parenting issues. It’s incredibly valuable!