A US woman has written a heartbreaking open letter after she was mum-shamed by a couple while dining with her four children at a restaurant.
On her blog, Andrea Remke addressed the judgemental woman and her husband, who spent the entirety of the meal loudly criticising and scoffing at her and her children.
“I could feel your eyes on the back of my head all night,” Andrea writes. “I know you and your husband were staring at my kids and me from the moment we were seated next to you at dinner tonight. I’ve been getting stares a lot lately. I’m getting used to the stares, the comments and the judging.
“I get glares with, ‘How are they so close in age?’ at least a couple times a week. I am asked, ‘Isn’t anyone else joining you?’ quite a bit these days, too.
“I know your husband was probably annoyed when my 5-year-old bumped him as she tried to get out of the booth to go to the restroom. I was just happy she had to go before the meal arrived. I’m sure you probably judged how I let them play iPads at the table and how they were probably too loud and started bickering about who got to have the turtle stickers instead of the pirate ones that the waitress brought over.
“But I heard you when we were getting up to leave, as I was standing within a foot of your face. You muttered to your husband and nodded disapprovingly at me and said, ‘And she has FOUR kids, FOUR!’ Your husband was real subtle, when he craned his neck to turn around to stare at us, too. I felt so hurt as I watched both of you, stone faced and expression-less, glaring at my kids walk past you.
“Yes, you surely noticed that I had no wedding ring on. I know. So from your point of view, you only saw what looked like an unmarried, impatient woman with four loud, ill-behaved kids.”
What the woman didn’t realise, however, was that just weeks earlier, Andrea had lost her husband to cancer.
“If you would have used your nosy energy instead to look deeper at me rather than judge me, you’d have seen I am a woman literally hanging on by a thread every day that I wake up.
“You might understand why I took my kids for a mini vacation to Florida this week, in order to get away from the countless memories and reminders at home of their daddy, who died last month.
“I’m just trying not to break down looking at that guy across the room helping cut up his kid’s meal. I’m trying to hide my grief beneath the bags under my eyes due to not sleeping for a solid month — I don’t want people to see the redness under my sunglasses from the crying that came after I saw that man playing football with his son on the beach earlier.
“You didn’t know that just days ago, I reluctantly took off my beautiful diamond engagement ring he gave me 16 years ago and that beautiful wedding band he inscribed with ‘Home to You’ and I locked them away in a safe so I wouldn’t tear up anymore looking at my left hand.
“I don’t have the slightest idea how to do the widow thing, the single mother thing yet, ok. I don’t know how much to talk about him or if I should cry in front of my kids or not.”
Andrea finished her emotional post with one last heartbreaking apology.
“So cut me some slack, lady. Cut my kids some slack, too. It’s not their fault their daddy got dealt a shitty hand and he can’t be here to help me. I’m sorry if you witnessed them at their worst behaviour. I’m sorry if I did some crappy mothering in front of you tonight. I’m sorry if I looked like a bra-less sea creature that crawled out of the Sarasota Bay. But what I’m most sorry about now is not telling you all this to your face.”
Image credit: Andrea Remke.
