My mother passed away suddenly in 2013 at the age of 67. Our eldest daughter was two, and our young daughter was a young daughter. Before that, my mother helped me see the girls while I was working. I drove to a house near my parents and worked upstairs in their cozy loft while they read, cuddled and played with my girls. Looking back, it was this beautiful, stolen season. I desperately got the support I needed. The feeling of being part of that village was part of our shared human history, where we were able to walk downstairs and have lunch every day, and have a coffee break with our own beloved mom. It was the motherly experience I wanted.
After my mother passed away, everything was released for a while. I felt very lonely. Motherhood was a vast, dark ocean, and I was clung to the side of a rattling little dinghy.
With the exception of the short stints that work part-time on-site for contract positions, I am always officiating from our home (I still do). Depending on the season of my life, in the early days of being a new mom, I worked 10-40 hours a week, working with daily success and sanity.
The romance of working from home is what you’ll wear lightly when you realize that work and parenting aren’t something that can actually happen at the same time. This realization sinks about 14 minutes after the first day of working from home, trying to care for one or more children.
Feeding and diapers and naps and fighting and I spilled everything everywhere between huuuuunnnngrys and can you fix this? And with scraped elbows, when are you going to do, mom? – The amount of true productivity was felt purely by chance, or the result of desperately trying to put on Scooby Doido episodes at 11am and locked them in their own room.
Many days I said no to do things with my girl because there was a deadline to meet. Or maybe they felt guilty or because they really wanted to be with them, they told them yes. And they worked desperately from sleep until 2am to go to workdays that began at 9am.
I often felt like both a parent and a standard employee. One day, I was. I cried in frustration and asked to be alone. I had fallen asleep at the early morning Zoom meeting and forgot to get a cupcake at school for my kids’ birthday. That’s the reality.
There were some wonderful days too. There was a moment of grace, revelation and transcendental connection. Some moments I loved in another world way, just as my whole body was made of warm light. On other days I felt like I was falling from a plane without a parachute. My kids are the most effective teachers I have ever had in my life. And when I say it’s effective, I mean like a way to give you an amazing butt by doing 100 squats a day. Like most personal growth, it almost all happened in trench.
I’m yelling the truth out loud
I sometimes replied to being a mom at home. I know this is generally frowning. It’s almost always recruited by some versions, but the kids are certainly great. It’s very amazing. The best thing that has happened to me. There is this expectation that we will ease our messy feelings and temper them with drastic declarations that deny things that are bad or that don’t make good sounds.
I don’t think I need to balance my true human experience with unwise stories. So I make the first statement a reality of its own. I sometimes replied to being a mom at home. Sometimes I was swallowed up by the fear of losing my own true nature. My creativity, my writing time, my time to care for my whole life, my hunger for loneliness and silence, my friendship – all wrapped up under this mom’s identity that felt like too big coat draped around me.
There is a robust mindfulness research (I know) that says that our greatest joy is seen in living perfectly for now. And yes, that’s true. This is also real. It was very difficult to have it all together at times.
Yes, there are women who really love full-time motherhood. They make it an art and feel themselves called, energized and energized by this work. They are amazing to see and I respect and salute them. I love watching people live enthusiastically for their purposes.
Me, I often felt like a guy from the 90s commercials wearing a white coat. You know one: I’m not a doctor in real life, but I play on TV.
So, I really felt the role I was obsessed with the storyline. I was so connected to my mom’s character that I was just a mom like inside. On many other days I recited the lines, desperately looking for the direction of the stage, waiting for the benevolent camera director to call. And…it’s rap, people. Today is a good job. Why haven’t you gone home and rested?
One day I felt out of control, hopeless and roughly exhausted. My husband rides his bike uninterrupted, so I watch the mornings that made the mornings furious. He had to do one job for the entire eight hours surrounded by other adults, recognition, annual bonuses, healthcare and more.
Blissful retirees have come to me and have just returned from a probably 10-day Scandinavian River cruise and celebrate with the COO. New baby, toddler with teeth, unwashed hair, clothes that were dry and spitting out, my body hurting, saying, “Enjoy every minute” was washing my hair and wrinkled my clothes. I knew they would work, and I get the amnesia of nostalgia. But part of me was like Geez Lady reading the room.
I don’t know what kind of moms make me except I’m not alone.
I don’t think it’s necessary for me (or moms, women) to consider adoration as these anger, unfulfilled or wasted time. These are neither feelings nor embarrassing I should have. They’re just…
I don’t think it’s necessary for me (or moms, women) to consider adoration as these anger, unfulfilled or wasted time. These are neither feelings nor embarrassing I should have. They’re just… They are as natural and human as my moments of satisfaction and elevation. They have seasons and things to teach. Under this huge umbrella experience called motherhood, they all belong. I know that wrestling with this complicated identity never meant I loved my child that much.
Even today, when I see a new mom in a church or in our neighborhood, I always ask them what they really do. I always say, “raising a child is a beautiful gift and it’s okay to not love every minute.” Sometimes they laugh intentionally and sometimes cry. When we struggle in silence, even when the struggle is the most ordinary, almost universal in the world, we can feel very flawed because we don’t feel the way we think we should be feeling.
I found that saying the real thing loudly can be a soft medicine form.
I found that saying the real thing loudly can be a soft medicine form.
Cross the threshold and become a new form of motherhood
For the first time in 2018, I realized once again that I was facing a day’s outlook for myself. I know there are women who make it longer and celebrate it – but 8 years is still a long time. In an introverted year, it’s like 100. I couldn’t believe that a lot of time had passed. There were second graders and kindergarteners. Retirees cruising the river are definitely the right thing to do about one thing. It all went by as if I had a full glass of water in my hand.
I spent hours alone before I had a child. I really liked it. That open space suddenly shrinks, and it was jarring to occupy and demand a square inch of my body with all the spare minutes and square inches. At that time, it was surprising that the space reappeared almost ten years later. Only now I was a completely different person. The whole world was different so I had to find a way to be silent again.
On the eve of my young daughter Stella’s first day at kindergarten, we snuggled into the darkness before going to bed. (For the sake of the record, pre-bedtime snuggle is probably my favorite ritual.) We talked about her first day in kindergarten and how she felt about it. She was bustling all day and was talking about going to school in the end, so excited and spontaneously jumping up and down. We’ve talked together for the past five and a half years.
I told her I was with her and was very grateful for our time. And I’m happy she’ll go to school.
I told her I was with her and was very grateful for our time. And I’m happy she’ll go to school.
I asked her how she felt. She said, “I feel a neurological quote, mom.” My girl invented the word and described the combination of emotions that comes with stepping on the water, unknown but expected: nervous + excitement.
The next day, when we dropped her off, I saw her bouncy energy suddenly drop as she entered a chaotic classroom. Our girl attended an immersive school, and the teacher spoke to her in Chinese, but of course she still didn’t understand. She didn’t know anyone. Everything was big, new and unfamiliar. She peeled her shell so that she might start crying. Not out of sadness, he doesn’t know what’s going on in hell.
She seemed to have felt it over and over again in my life. My breasts grew with the tide wash of empathy.
I knelt down on those little tables and chairs. “How are you, Kid? What’s going on in your mind now?”
She looked down at the table and stared hard. “I feel a neurological quote and I’m a little shy.” I assured her that this was normal on such a big day. She nodded.
She was so quiet that she was different from her usual overstated self. “Mom?” she said she still looked down and brave herself. “There’s something else. Nervi is shy after being quoted.
yes. All of that.
