That flash of anger when the mess hits, the shutdown after another argument, the guilt that follows—it’s not weakness. It’s your story surfacing. The hardest part of parenting has less to do with your child’s behavior and more to do with your wounds. When you begin to understand what’s really happening underneath those moments, something changes. You stop holding your breath and feeling hijacked by every meltdown. You start to breathe—to respond instead of react, to handle hard moments without collapsing inside. That’s what steadiness feels like: not perfection or pretending but peace in real time.