This story was originally published on Sept. 13, 2019 in NYT Parenting.

[My son] can provoke me into a state of something similar to road rage. I have felt many times over the years that I was capable of hurting him … [T]he myth of maternal bliss is so sacrosanct that we can’t even admit these feelings to ourselves. — Anne Lamott, “Mother rage: theory and practice,” Salon.com

The rage lives in my hands, rolls down my fingers clenching to fists. I want to hurt someone. I am tears and fury and violence. I want to scream and rip open pillows, toss chairs and punch walls. I want to see my destruction — feathers floating, overturned furniture, ragged holes in drywall.

When I get mad like this around my 3-year-old son, I have to say to myself, like a mantra, “Don’t touch him, don’t touch him, don’t touch him.” Touching him with this rage coursing through me only ends in my shame, and my son’s shock, and what else I do not know; only time will reveal that. I have never hit him, but the line between “hitting” and “not hitting” is porous. In this “not hitting” gray area there are soft arms squeezed too tight, a red superhero cape (Velcro-clasped around his neck) forcefully yanked off, a child picked up and thrown into his crib. For me it is better not to touch at all. Only a few years ago, I remember judging a mother on the bus for smacking her child. Now I have only empathy for her. Mother rage can change you, providing access to parts of yourself you didn’t even know you had.

Mother rage is not “appropriate.” Mothers are supposed to be martyr-like in our patience. We are not supposed to want to hit our kids or to tear out our hair. We hide these urges, because we are afraid to be labeled “bad moms.” We feel the need to qualify our frustration with “I love my child to the moon and back, but….” As if mother rage equals a lack of love. As if rage has never shared a border with love. Fearing judgment, we say nothing. The rage festers and we are left under a pile of loneliness and debilitating shame.

The shame is as bad as the rage and just as damaging. I am afraid of my actions. Of myself. I know — know — in the deepest part of myself that this yelling, this terrifying anger is not O.K. My little boy is unfolding, blossoming more into his glorious self with each passing day. I am afraid I am destroying his bloom with my rage.