I deeply regret the mom I was during my divorce. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to my daughters.

The author said it was difficult to be the mom she wanted to be while navigating her divorce. Courtesy of Amber Campbell. I studied child development partly to give my future children what I didn't have growing up. Then my marriage imploded, and the stress of a high-conflict divorce made me unrecognizable. My daughters are grown now, and I'm trying to be the mom they deserve. As my daughters and I canvassed the neighborhood trick-or-treating, my 8-year-old dressed as a devil and her 5-year-old sister as a superhero, my frustration was growing . My youngest was refusing to say "thank you" as neighbors dropped handfuls of candy into her bucket, and I felt embarrassed. "Say 'thank you,' or Halloween is cancelled," I told her. She stared at me stubbornly while her sister's face dropped, and I instantly realized my mistake. I was engaging in a power struggle with a kindergartner — exactly the opposite of what I learned in college, where I took multiple early childhood education classes. I worked my way through school as a nanny and preschool teacher, aiming to counteract my own tumultuous childhood by learning age-appropriate positive parenting skills to help me give my future children the childhood they deserved. In reality, life took unexpected turns, and I didn't always handle them well. Today, looking back, I deeply regret the mother I temporarily became during my stressful divorce . My divorce changed me After just five years, my marriage imploded, and custody became a question, not a given. I spent the next several years terrified that I would lose my children, making me anxious, depressed, and dysregulated. I never expected to be a perfect parent , but after working hard to give my daughters a better childhood than mine, I felt like a failure. The author said she worked hard to give her children a better childhood than she had. Courtesy of Amber Campbell. At the time, I was physically present but mentally calculating bills, rehearsing court testimony, or wondering how I would pay next month's rent. Even when we were at the playground or curled up reading books together, part of me was usually somewhere else. I was terrified I yelled too much during these years, too. Once, while on a rare-for-us vacation, I let my frustration get the best of me and snapped at one of my daughters when she was just being silly. I feel like the stress I was holding on to ruined our vacation when my kids were 8 and 10. Sure, we still shared many happy memories over the years — sledding in the winter, and enjoying picnic dinners by the lake on long summer days. But certain images from those years still sting, and I know things would have been different had I not been stuck in survival mode. For years, I cringed in shame, remembering the night I fell asleep before exchanging the tooth under my oldest daughter's pillow with a note from the Tooth Fairy . Or the time I ranted about something so insignificant I don't even remember it now, and she said quietly, "Mom, you don't have to get so mad." As I lay in bed that night, I couldn't sleep as her words ran through my mind on a loop. I knew what good parenting looked like. I just couldn't always access that version of myself. My girls deserved a mom who wasn't constantly afraid, and I deserved a life that didn't require me to be. I am choosing to live differently now I will always regret how much of my fear and stress they absorbed during those years. But I also remind myself that it's never too late to be the mom I always dreamed of — calm, present, supportive, and someone whose emotions my daughters don't feel responsible for. I still grieve the life we could've had even as I've watched them grow into smart, capable, and kind young women who I couldn't be more proud of. I can't change who I was then, but I can choose who I am now. I constantly look for ways to make it up to them, knowing that every visit, phone call, and conversation is another opportunity to show up differently than I once did. Like when my oldest daughter called recently and I told her I wasn't busy even though I only had five minutes before I needed to rinse the color out of my hair. She immediately launched into a long, heartfelt story that I wasn't about to interrupt, even as my timer started going off. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. Do you have a parenting regret? Email Jennifer Beck Goldblatt at jgoldblatt@insider.com to share your experience with Business Insider. Read the original article on Business Insider