Parenthood isn’t always roses and sun-rays. It isn’t always radiant smiles and laughter. It’s not edited to fit into a model of perfection like the above image. It’s not the Director’s Cut version.
Sometimes it’s diapers that explode and cover you in poop, or hours of sleep lost for nights and months on end listening to your child cry while teeth break through their gums and you feel helpless in relieving their pain. Sometimes it’s forgetting how it feels to be your own person and to experience immense appreciation like you never did before for those rare moments of calm with oneself when they come.
It’s hard. It’s messy. It’s raw. It’s REAL.
It’s a living, breathing, real scene in this movie called life…
A whirlwind of joy, tears, frustration, and what feels like the ultimate sacrifice and most colossal gain at the same time.
It’s the stage on which men and women grow more than they ever could have conceived was possible.
A journey during which unabashed depth and ferocious resilience are discovered.
Our children are the greatest life coaches and spiritual gurus we will ever have.
They are a constant mirror ~ gently, and sometimes forcefully, reminding us of what it is we have yet to learn and ushering us to do the work on ourselves that we might have put off doing before.
Parenting is the equivalent of a full-time job that you never get to clock out from…
And… the paycheck is 100% priceless. It comes in the form of kisses, snuggles, hugs, the experience of true unconditional love, a heart as open as the sky, and an eternal friendship.
I’m learning that the pros far outweigh the cons. With that said, I really do feel that the ‘cons’ and what can be the brutal reality of raising children aren’t openly discussed as much. People often have a pipeline view of what it’s like. I knew it would be hard but really had no idea what I was in for, especially when it comes to single motherhood. No amount of books read, prenatal classes attended, planning and preparation, or conversations with other parents can prepare you. It’s sink or swim – and you don’t truly have the opportunity to dive into the waters of parenthood and test your fins until the baby actually exits the mother’s womb.
Balance is everything. So is timing.
Though truth be told, we aren’t EVER ready for our hearts to break open this much. For our lives to shift in the ways it naturally does when a new being enters the world and challenges everything in our Universe we thought we knew. It just happens.
And then, even though there are rough days and nights that seem endless, you say, “What in the hell was I doing with my life before this? This is so much better than any of that.”
From the moment I found out I was going to be crossing the bridge from maiden to mother when that little stick of plastic had two dark lines on it after I peed, I had immense fear and intermittent hesitancy around all of it. “Are you excited?!” How many HUNDREDS of times do we hear that as parents-to-be? I got so damn sick of that question. I know it’s scary for men too, but for women it’s so much more intense. We feel everything the man feels, PLUS, we are nervous about our body image changing and what nursing will be like, not to mention there are major hormonal shifts that occur from the time she becomes pregnant until she stops breastfeeding.
I was worried about all of the above, as well as a loss of my independence and freedom. It felt like the metaphorically revered cargo van carrying my mountain bike and outdoor gear, travel goals, and hopes and dreams in general had flown off the road and crashed into a pole. ‘This is it’ I thought when I saw the positive test. This is the end of life as I know it.
In a sense, that was true, and in another sense, it was the beginning of a life I couldn’t have even imagined… a life so sweet like nectar that the hummingbirds flock to it like flies at a meat market in India.
Becoming a parent sets forth a new journey of becoming. It means learning a new set of skills and refining who we are as humans. And while we may have to take a hiatus from being overzealous and regularly active in the areas that were staples in our life before, whether it’s biking, climbing, traveling, blogging, etc, all is not lost.
A friend of mine recently asked me, “What would say you has been the biggest highlight and the greatest challenge?” She always asks me the good questions. I’m paraphrasing here, but I essentially replied that the best part for me has been returning to a state of playful joy and invoking my inner child. We can do this as adults through many ways… art, dance, music, blowing bubbles, etc ~ but it’s entirely different and effortless when you get to spend your days with a child who is so pure and hasn’t been marred or conditioned by the world yet. Young children love everything and everyone, AND, they are fully present in the moment. I explained that the challenge lies in constantly looking into a mirror of yourself – all the aspects of your personality that you perhaps knew existed but liked to pretend didn’t, or aspects you may not have been aware of in the slightest, are brought to the surface to be examined and there can be a lot of intense self-scrutiny and even guilt and shame that can accompany this. It’s not something we ask for as parents. It happens organically as a result of seeing a direct reflection of you – your flesh and blood – running around in the world, and you see that that human is watching your every move and absorbing it all like a sponge. Talk about a pressurized feeling.
I also spoke into how people rarely talk about the dark-side of motherhood. How in those first weeks and months when your baby is a newborn and you’re learning how to breastfeed and adjust to wearing the hat of a new mom ~ you exist in an almost constant fight or flight mode, regardless of if you are happily embracing being a mother or not. This is due to our evolutionary and biological, primal instincts whether it be maternal or paternal, though mothers experience it especially intensely, as our babies feels like extensions of our own self. If there is any sense of a threat in the vicinity, even a door opening and slamming – anything that disrupts the ‘bubble’ that we instinctively create around us and our child, we shift internally, and catecholamines (hormones that send signals to our brain that trigger a fight or flee reaction) get released into the bloodstream. Because of this, there is an underlying current of anxiety, almost always. Factor in sleep deprivation and relentless shoulder and neck aches from breastfeeding and you have a recipe for challenge.
Most women won’t let others know the breadth of their struggle, or post pictures of those moments when they are sobbing and mourning the loss of a life… of a version of themselves that they had grown familiar with… we are in such a state of sheer vulnerability in the year following childbirth. The way that we raise children has changed drastically in recent years. It really breeds a sense of deep loneliness and this idea that we are expected and meant to go it alone without support from our communities.
The best antidote for working with the difficulty that arises, in my experience, has to do with a supportive network. Ask if you can come by when the parents tell you they are ready for visitors. Bring a card, bring a homemade casserole that will provide meals for the next 2-3 days, offer to throw a load of laundry in the wash, tell them that they are doing an amazing job and that everything they are feeling is normal, tell the woman she is a radiantly beautiful mother, even if there are tears streaming down her face and she hasn’t showered in a week. It really is these seemingly little things that add up and make a huge difference.