"For a long time, I'd been living that sentence. Even there, amid the music and magic, my brain replayed its familiar loop: You could have done more. Planned better. Been better. I had done everything to make this trip perfect: the color-coordinated outfits, the matching Mickey ears, the surprise treats, the sparkly magic I wanted my girls to remember. But as fireworks lit up the castle, all I could see were the cracks."
"If a stranger had seen me earlier that day, they would have thought we were a picture-perfect family: two happy children, a smiling mom, laughter caught in a hundred photos. But what I saw were invisible failures: the husband who stayed home so we could enjoy the trip, the work deadlines I'd missed, the credit card balance quietly growing, the school days my girls were skipping, the millions of things I could have done differently ... better."
A mother at Disneyland is overwhelmed when a line from Encanto—"I will never be good enough"—triggers a deep, chest-aching cry amid smiling families. She experiences a mirror of long-held beliefs, replaying a familiar loop of self-blame: You could have done more, planned better, been better. She had created a carefully curated, magical day with coordinated outfits, matching Mickey ears, and surprise treats, yet she only noticed the cracks. Outward appearances suggested a picture-perfect family, but inwardly she cataloged invisible failures—missed deadlines, growing debt, skipped school days—and habitually converted success into shortcomings.
Read at Tiny Buddha
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]