Madness on Mother's Day

I hear a baby screaming in my ear when there is silence. Covered in blood, piss and shit for three weeks, the nights that felt doable are getting longer and harder.

I have a three and a half year old who I’ve come close to losing my shit on more times than I’d like to admit over these past two weeks. This transition hasn’t been easy for her. At all. And she’s not letting it be easy on us. Loving her so intensely while asserting firm, line in the sand boundaries...has had me in tears, locked in my bathroom just so I don’t give in, or totally lose my shit.

I’ve got a 13 year old whose dealing with the above and below primarily using the phrases, “mom stop!” if I even allude to a conversation with her, or the infamous and annoying AF “whhhhyyy” when I say we’re doing something or ask her for help. 🙄 <- eye roll emoji sums up this chapter of her and I.

My fifteen year old is healing from something that was so severe, I don’t think I even understand how lucky he is to be upright and alive today. That experience still hasn’t been filtered and I’m constantly teetering the fence of insane love for him drenched in a worry I work diligently to shift to a vision of wholeness, about how his heart is beating in there.

My relationship: well let’s just say, in so many ways psychologically speaking, it was easier to parent as a single parent than with someone else. The struggle has been real as we juggle all of these worlds, alongside a house, two cats, a dog, work and dreams.

My body is still healing from giving birth.

My business and I feel like we slammed hard on the brakes and now I’m dealing with the whiplash. Because mothering is my most important role, I’ve put business on the back burner but with a lot of eyes waiting on me to show up which feels exciting, but also like pressure.

Honestly, I’m triggered by Mother’s Day. I’m triggered by all the times my older children’s father didn’t see them but then decided to see them on Mother’s Day. I’m triggered by all the years it was weird, not knowing how to be with my own mother on Mother’s Day. I’m sure there’s more. So triggered in fact (and mind you, I’m postpartum) that today I wanted to get in my car and leave them all. I mean, I had a plan and it felt like reprieve but it was saturated in spite, and resentment, and some idea that “I just can’t” and that no one can see the part of me that really, just can’t.

But then I do, and I show myself time and time again that I can because this is being a mom. And this is what moms do.

In three years, I’ll wish I had all this back. The 15 year old freshmen who’s just now, stepping comfortably into his own skin (and heart). The 13 year old who skirts by on arrogant teenager slang but still leaves me love notes. The three year old whose so much like me, it’s uncanny, and the time to treat her exactly as I’d wanted and needed to have been treated through all of my paradigms of confusion in this world. And a newborn who’s healthy enough to cry six times a night and the milk to provide for him.

It’s hard, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted. I reminded myself of that as I imagined myself spitefully freeing myself of all of these perceived “trappings” today by driving off, music loud, breathing without anyone else’s breath to consider...

I’m trapped by what I asked for and for this, I am grateful even when I’m too exhausted to think of what I’m grateful for.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms...and especially those of us who feel like we’re in the trenches and wondering when we’ll be able to bring us and our whole brood, up to flat land without being shot at. It’s hard. I’m with you. We’re blessed to be a blessing. And so, we stay. Even when it’s particularly hard to call mothering “happy.”

If happy doesn’t quite fit, let’s call it what it is: Blessed Mother’s Day.