Now, Im surrounded with logistical questions like what does childcare look like?
What hours of the day, between caregiving and tiredness, can I write?
Will I be willing to homeschool my children?
Reality can have a deflating effect on a dream.
Here, I am defininggriefas the form love takes when someone you love leaves or dies.
Grief is wanting for something that was, or never was.
While it is seen as normal to ask yourself Who am I?
in adolescence, mothers often feel less prepared for the identity shifts that come along with motherhood.
Yes, we know it is hard, but we cannot know how being unmoored will feel.
Its a strange experience, to grieve when you get something you deeply wanted, like a child.
But what Ive learned is with every acquisition comes some kind of loss.
What I hear in this request is, Can you help me stop the pain?
felt more like confrontations with self and reckonings with loss.
Loss looked like: When my hair started falling out at 4 months postpartum.
How different sex would feel when estrogen dropped and prolactin rose.
There is honor in this privilege, and there is yearning in it.
Both are equally important.
The yearning that comes with grief often runs deep.
To be her mother, I have to be in contact with how I wish I was mothered.
I must adjust my definition of a life well-livedone that sometimes may be more meaningful than fulfilling.
I thought, how courageous and how cowardly.
Being in this duality can send us into a world of self-judgment and self-doubt.
So many parents are left constantly internally questioning themselves, asking, Am I normal?
Who can I tell this to?
Who wont judge me if I say this aloud on the swings at the playground?
New motherhood often feels like a rollercoaster at Disney world, Woohoo!
I got this to Oh no, what is happening!?
in a split second.
As humans, we crave knowing; our brain seeks certainty and predictability to confirm safety.
Yet, with new life comes a lot of unknowns.
A friend once called the early months post-birth as the dark days, and I felt so seen.
Almost like she gave me permission to feel into the darkness.
Take an inventory of what and who you have had to give up:
Consider the identities you hold.
Consider what parts of yourself you miss the most?
How did she move?
What did she look like?
Where did she go?
How did she spend her time?
Remind her you see her.
And then notice what happens when you do.
Beautiful, hard, tiring, questioning, exciting, dull, and more.
All of this is fair in love.
Sometimes Ill have a half day to myself and then Ill return home and notice that it wasnt enough.
Sometimes when we feel grief, its because weve given up more than we need to.
Are you deferring so much to your little one, at the expense of having a self?
Resentment is an indicator that youve gone past your limitare you paying attention to your limits?
Which aspects of what you lost in motherhood might you want to re-integrate?
New things are not supposed to be easy.
In fact, with each baby Ive birthed, Ive become a new woman.
We must struggle (not to be confused withsuffer) in any worthwhile process of becoming.
Give yourself permission to feel it all:
Be bored.
Repressing the feelings leads to physical ailments, relational disconnects, and resentment.
Be the mother that takes the risk and chooses truth over comfort on the playground.
What throw in of person do you want them to say you are?
Our children do what they witness, not what we tell them.
What are your dreams for yourself?
Can you tell your little one about them, along with your dreams for him/her?
Both/and, both/and, over and over again.
There are aspects of this life I am in love with.
And there are absolutely 10 other lives I could have lived.
Normalize the grief that comes from picking one path, normalizing being 80% in on something.
