The Gift of Resentment

What if it’s pointing out ways that our needs are unmet, our boundaries are violated, our emotions are suppressed, and our values are ignored? What if it’s a helpful signal rather than a shameful weakness?

After weeks of passive-aggressive glares and sighs, I finally began to see my resentment as such and decided to speak it out instead of swallowing it down. During our weekly family meeting, I brought up how I felt.

“I’m not happy being responsible for all the cooking. It’s exhausting and I don’t enjoy it. But we still need to eat, so what are some ideas you have for how to solve this problem?”

We threw out different ideas. We could get more frozen foods for lunch and sandwich fixings that they could prepare themselves. Jason, my partner, offered to order takeout every once in a while to give me a break. NoNo and KK offered to cook dinner once a week. 

We talked through what that would look like and came up with a plan: they would choose a recipe early on in the week, read through it to make sure they understood the directions, give me a shopping list, and cook dinner on Thursday nights. 

It sounded good… in theory. The only problem was that they didn’t know how to cook. They needed a lot of training and instruction—training and instruction that I now had to give them.

The solution was turning out to be more work than the problem! What would’ve taken me half an hour to cook on my own now took double the time as I had to explain how to wash and chop the broccoli, how to tilt the lid away from you, how to not burn the house down. But I was determined to see this through. It was several more months of passive-aggressive glares and sighs before I was finally able to demote myself to sous-chef.

And then, not long ago, seemingly miraculously, the boys were able to prepare a dinner of ramen with Vietnamese beef balls, leafy greens, and poached eggs, all on their own. Just last week, they were able to pull off another success of honey garlic pork chops, steamed rice, and roasted veggies. Tonight, they will be making chicken curry over rice (which NoNo hates so he will be making himself a sandwich with those conveniently stocked sandwich fixings).

We would have never gotten to this point had I not paid attention to my resentment and listened to what it was trying to teach me. NoNo and KK would never had gained confidence and skills in the kitchen had I just sucked it up and continued cooking all the meals. And I guess NoNo and KK deserve a little credit for actually doing the work.

Peaceful parenting is NOT about catering to our child’s every whim and need at our own expense. It encourages us to see ourselves as dance partners WITH our children rather than suffering saints FOR our children or task masters OVER them. There’s a give-and-take, a coming together and a moving apart, a yielding to and a standing firm. We work together for equity and find ways to honor each person because ALL of us are valuable and important.

Including me.