Woman's Post About Her Kids Sends Powerful Message About Parenting Mistakes

It's a tough lesson we all have to learn at some point while growing up: Parents are not actually perfect people. Turns out, they're just regular people, who, like all people, make mistakes.

Recently, Jennifer Campbell, a mother of three children and creator of the blog Mama Lion Strong, drove this point home by sharing some of her biggest parenting mistakes in a Facebook post.

The post blew up, with over 10,ooo shares and comments from fellow mothers on how grateful they are for an honest post about motherhood that makes them feel less "imperfect" and alone.

Jennifer told the story of what happened when she lost track of her 2-year-old son who was playing in the backyard while she was breastfeeding. A woman returned Jennifer's son, having found him in the road, and yelled at her for neglecting him.

Jennifer wrote,

By then she had glanced down and noticed my nursing baby on one side, and me fumbling with a leaky breast and a nursing bra on the other side. Perhaps she could even see the deep, dark bags under my eyes. All at once I was horrified and ashamed but praying that this woman would take pity on me. I thought, please let her see that I am already failing at life. I don't need her to tell me. She regained her composure but instead of showing me compassion, chose to continue lecturing me. 'He was on the road,' she hissed. 'Cars come flying over that hill and they wouldn't even have seen him! You are LUCKY I came along when I did.'

Jennifer went on to recount several more stories where she felt like a bad parent to her children. She wrote about a time her son fell and split his head, about losing her son in a busy city and about finding her youngest in the kitchen with a butcher knife.

She wrote,

And next month it will be something else. And next year something else.

Basically, as Jennifer summed up, "accidents happen." Parents make mistakes. It doesn't make them the worst parents of the year, it just makes them human.

In conclusion, Jennifer urged people to show compassion toward the parents of Chase Martens, a 2-year-old Canadian boy who was found dead  after wandering away from his home.

Jennifer concluded,

Be kind, gentle, and compassionate in your thoughts and conversations about this. We are all just perfectly imperfect humans, trying our best out here.

I definitely recommend reading the full post on Jennifer's Facebook for all the parents out there -- but also for all the kids. Cut your parents some slack, y'all. They are trying.

Citations: Moms Are Grateful for This Woman's List of Parenting Fails on Facebook (Cosmopolitan), Chase Martens Found Dead, RCMP Says (Huffington Post)