(some feelings change every day. This one doesn’t)
Separation is an emotional roller coaster. Some days we miss them. Other days we feel relief. Some days love is still there. Other days there is anger. Some days we believe in the future. Other days we are afraid of it. Some days we feel certain. And other days we doubt everything.
Sometimes these feelings last for weeks. Other times they change places in the space of an afternoon. But there is one that, at least in my experience so far, has never really gone away. Guilt. Guilt is always there. Quiet on some days. Deafening on others. But always present.
Deep down I know I wasn’t the one who decided to end my relationship. It wasn’t my choice. It wasn’t the path I wanted. And yet I still feel guilty. Because maybe I failed in ways I didn’t see. Because maybe I missed signs I should have noticed. Because maybe there are mistakes, I made that helped build the place where we ended up. And even knowing that a separation is rarely caused by one person alone, guilt always finds a way in.
But the hardest guilt isn’t that. The hardest guilt is about the children. It’s looking at them and thinking, “I’m sorry”. I’m sorry this didn’t turn out the way I imagined. I’m sorry you’re growing up between two homes. I’m sorry you have two routines. Two beds. Two versions of the same childhood. I’m sorry for making you carry backpacks, toys, clothes and emotions back and forth. As if a whole life could fit inside a suitcase.
There are days when I catch myself looking at them and thinking they will never have the memories I had. They will never remember the four of us around the table. Family holidays. Christmases the way I lived them. They won’t even remember a time when both parents lived in the same house. And that hurts. It hurts a lot. Because for my whole life I imagined a different family for my children. Not a better one. Just different. Something closer to the family I grew up in. And sometimes I feel guilty for not being able to give them that.
Then there is the guilt of absence. The guilt of the days they are with their father and I wish they were with me. The moments I miss. The stories I don’t hear. The laughter that happens without me. The goodnight kisses I don’t give. The scraped knees I’m not the one to kiss better. The days that will never come back.
And then, strangely, another kind of guilt appears. The guilt of the days when I’m okay. The days when I can laugh. Rest. Breathe. The days when I can enjoy a few hours without them. As if a mother were supposed to suffer permanently in order to prove her love. As if being okay were a betrayal. As if happiness needed permission.
I also feel guilty when I separate the brothers. When one sleeps at his father’s and the other stays with me. For most of their lives they have shared a home. And now I’m the one watching them take different paths for a few days. Because one of them is still a baby. He has slept with me since he was born. He breastfeeds. He is in that stage where he wants his mum for everything. And if I struggle with the older one being away, imagine how I feel about this.
I know they are okay. I know they adore each other. I know they will be together again very soon. But there is still a part of me that feels it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
And there is another guilt too. Quieter. More hidden. The guilt of not being able to be everything for everyone at the same time. Of not being able to give my oldest exactly the same as I give the youngest. Of not always being available. Always patient. Always present. Always whole. Because the truth is that now there is only one of me. And sometimes I feel like I spend my days chasing an impossible version of myself. The perfect mother. The mother who never fails. The mother who can make up for everything the separation took away. But that mother doesn’t exist. And maybe that is what I am slowly learning.
Maybe guilt is part of the journey because it grows out of love. We only feel guilty about the things that matter deeply to us. But maybe there also comes a moment when we have to say to it, “Enough”. Because my children don’t need a perfect mother. They need a present mother. They need a mother who loves them. They need a mother who keeps showing up every day. Even when she’s tired. Even when she’s sad. Even when she carries guilt that nobody sees.
And maybe one day I’ll truly believe this: guilt may walk beside us, but it doesn’t have to drive us. There is already enough pain in a separation. We don’t need to spend the rest of our lives apologising for surviving it.
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