Parenting a three-year-old is exhausting, frustrating work; doing it alone, I am finding, is a Herculean task.

On Wednesday night, I woke up at 12:30 AM and was unable to get back to sleep. I went upstairs to our kitchen to finish cleaning up the day’s accumulated mess. About 20 minutes later, I heard CR crying and calling for me. Even before I turned on the bedroom light, I could smell what I knew I would find. Poor CR was standing on the carpet, her hair matted with vomit, and the rest of her stomach contents were pooled on the mattress and pillow. “Holy Mother of God,” I thought to myself. “Help!”

Any parent knows about night time sickness: gently rinsing a shivering child off in the shower; bundling her into another bed while you strip the soiled sheets; scraping the mess into the toilet before starting a load of laundry; trying to go back to sleep while praying that the child doesn’t get sick again; repeating the whole process if she does. What made last night different, however, was the sinking feeling that I am blowing it as a parent. CR’s dinner had consisted of Lay’s BBQ potato chips, gummy bears, and a hot dog. As I tried to scrub the fluorescent red-orange stain from the sheets around 1 AM, it felt like a reckoning: “You HAVE to do better! Patrick would have done better!”

The next evening, CR was bouncing on our couch. I was in the living room with her, and she suddenly stopped and came to my side with tears streaming down her face and blood on her thighs! A quick inspection revealed a split perineum, so instead of getting ready for bed, we were on our way to the ER. Fortunately, the injury was not as bad as I had originally feared, CR didn’t need stitches, and we were back home within an hour. In the wee hours of the morning, however, CR was up again, sick to her stomach, though this time I was able to help her get to the bathroom and avoid yet another laundry emergency. The mantra in my head shifted from “You have to do better!” to “You’re doing the best you can!”

This weekend, I finally got months worth of clutter put away, but that was possible only because CR watched HOURS of Disney movies and PBS Kids shows on my iPad. In the months since Patrick death, the only time I seem to have to myself while at home is when my poor kiddo is screen-sedated. “You’re doing the best you can, but you know you can do better.” Today, the iPad is going back to my office, where it belongs. I expect I will face screaming tantrums and stomping rages as CR adjusts to a new routine, but, I finally feel I have the energy to face it, the energy to be a good parent again, where watching a movie is a treat for her and not a crutch for me.

Training for the marathon has helped me regain both physical and emotional energy to be present for CR and at peace with myself. I had been running tethered to my iPhone and the supposedly motivating music it pumped to my ears, but I quickly found that the sound of my feet on the pavement, the wind, bird song, the river along the bike path, and my own thoughts were better motivators for my soul. Yesterday, I finally overcame a huge physical hurdle and completed my first 10K run in years! My mom and grandmother had come to visit and spend time with CR while I got out of the house, and when I returned, all three of them were watching Brave at CR’s insistence. *Sigh.* One step at a time.

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Thank you to everyone, friends and strangers, who have donated to B*CURED, for which I am fundraising to run in the NYC Marathon on November 6! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!