Please Don’t Tell Me I’m a Good Parent

I’m not a very good parent.

It’s not that I don’t want to be or that I don’t think it’s worth it, or even that I don’t love my kid enough. It’s not that I don’t know how or that it’s something a parenting class could fix. I have the tools. I’m fairly confident I even have the know-how. But mostly, I fall short.

I could say I had no way of knowing back when I decided to have a child, the physical and mental toll that illness would have on my body and mind. But I already had two chronic autoimmun...