let go, the good mother

Looking back at the beginning I see this person that I’m not. She’s familiar and still has many of the same parts, like tense shoulders and a sleep-deprived furrowed brow. She is meeting the demands of life as a new mother with a fierce determination and resistance all at once. She is almost always the martyr, trying to win The Hardest Award, a competition created in her own mind, mostly played against her husband. He doesn’t know they’re playing, so he’s always losing, which is her point, I suppose.

Make up the rules and then keep them between yourself and your ruminating mind.

I still do these things, sometimes. I get tired and stressed and fall back into the easiest way, which is the hardest way. Like playing a bass drum in a sound-proof room, alone, expecting the world to sit up and pay attention to the way its too loud for your ears and your nerves.

But no one could hear it at all, so what a waste of time I spent, beating that drum.

I could tell you all the ways I fought for control, but this would be way too long if I did that. From scheduling and reading all the books and way beyond, I was a fighter. If I could just keep going, keep cleaning and straightening and de-germing and living green and buying organic and documenting their every move and and and….

These (and many more) were the ways I tried to keep fear at bay. The fears born of my mind and heart, in me, so I could fight them…could fight myself, I guess.

This is maybe common with first-time mothers, as much as it’s common for many (most likely healthier) women to have a baby and then face the shock that they have no idea what they’re doing with more of a grain of salt. I had friends like this, that came into motherhood around the same time I did. They would just shrug and laugh at themselves, roll their eyes and throw their hands in the air. I don’t know how to get her to sleep?! they’d say, like, OH WELL….

and I was astounded at this. Well….try harder! something in me would say. A baby shouldn’t be up in your bed with you until 11pm! That’s insane! It made me feel as out of control as I was to witness someone else letting things go. I prefer control. I thought part of being a good mother was being in control. Conquer a baby’s sleep issues and you can surely solve every other problem that will ever arise, right?! RIGHT?!!

I was a perfectionist-control-freak-people-pleasing-martyr underneath what may have appeared to those that don’t know me well as confidence and mothering well. I even threw great birthday parties and I scrapbooked! I went through all the motions like an actress taking her cues from Pinterest.

Did you ever notice that when people talk about being a “good mother” they don’t talk about things that really matter? I mean, in the bigger picture of life? They talk about perfect meals and a clean house and scrapbooking and playing toys on the floor with the kids whenever they demand it. They say “I didn’t even read any of the parenting books” and “I let them eat pop tarts for breakfast! No “Mother Of The Year Award” coming my way this year!”

And yet this isn’t another post about what really makes a good mother like hugs and “I love yous” and being there to listen when you’re needed. (Did you remember to feed them today? Well, then you’re a “good mother”.) Those are good things but it doesn’t make sense to list them either. After all, there are mothers who don’t get to find a way to feed their babies for days at a time and they’re still good mothers. So yes, it must be our love that gives us our goodness,

but I’ve finally realized that this entire Good Mother discussion, within myself and with other mothers online and off is better left unspoken/un-thought of…

I am always all kinds of things at once and always waffling and hovering and in flux and in-between.

Today I am calmer, more at ease, for reasons I don’t even understand and maybe never will. Yesterday I was completely out of sorts and could hardly follow through with a damn thing and now today I’m accomplishing more. I was on edge and ornery and scared. Today I’m not. It was just a hard day all around. Today has less in it. I so often feel thrown around by circumstances within family life, because I am. I can either accept that or have a hard time accepting that and most of the time that’s what defines the way I behave.

I have chosen to let the days of “failure” and bad moods and exhaustion simply pass…because they do. I say to me, “You will not always feel this way.” I do not let yesterday’s kind of day define me.

A day or a mood or a total screwing up cannot define a person. Especially not as good or as bad.

I hated yesterday. I wanted yesterday to be done and over long before it could be and still the hours dragged on. Everyone was out of sorts and the to-do list threatened to sit on me until I could not breathe. We made it to bedtime and that’s all I wanted. So I took it, when it came. I climbed under the covers and read things and went to sleep.

White flag raised. I’m still me and they, my one of a kind little creatures, are still mine and we are here and that is good.

Today is possibly brighter and better because of letting go.

In the earliest days, I would have been beating myself up, to a pulp, making it worse. I would have woken up hungover and pissed off. I would have done it all over again, resisting the plain hard truth that this is so hard. Sometimes, it’s harder than other times and I could not, did not, accept that truth. NO. If only I can get my act together, if only I can make myself make a great meal, if only I can calm down, it will be under control and good and fine and I will be their good mother who is swooping in to fix this day because that’s my job and I need to enjoy it or there’s something terribly wrong with me! 

glug glug.

Maybe it’s sobriety, I don’t know. Maybe I’ve miraculously learned (from really wise fellow surrenderers) to stand here in this home as the mother in whatever shape I’m in, whatever is happening around me in that day, and maybe I’m just right there being me and that’s okay. Maybe my kids are learning more about humanity and the mine field of real life by seeing me IN it, not running from it or trying to make it just so.

Surrender is a beautiful thing.

Sometimes I just sit with my kids, or get in bed with them at the end of the day or when we’re driving I just say it: This has been a hard day and I don’t even like it and I know you don’t either. I think we’re tired. I’m so glad to be doing life with you. Let’s help each other. I’m sorry for being so crabby. 

As Listen To Your Mother quickly approaches, I’ve gotten to listen to these stories, in person, through voices of many mothers, all unique and totally inspiring and real. These are stories of motherhood from women that have a depth of love for their children that astounds me. They are wise, insightful and emotional people. They have struggled and overcome and struggled and not overcome. Their definition of “good mother” would vary from person to person and that has confirmed this idea in me–that I am not a Good Mother or a Bad Mother and neither are you. Each of these stories, it is an unfolding of truths and bearing witness reminds me that this is what we’re doing:

We are living stories. Our children are living stories.

I am Heather, a person who is a living a motherhood story as a part of my stories. My children are Miles, Asher and Elsie Jane and they are living, each of them, so many many stories. They have sons and a daughter stories. Every one of our stories has all the parts, the hills and valleys, the drama, the mistakes and the triumphs. There are good things that happen and bad things that happen and then we grow a lot and we know more because of all of it. We’re here in our stories together. Just think of that. We get to live stories with these people that we brought here. Just think of that…

You are not a good mother. You are not a bad mother. You are a person with a mothering story with all of its unavoidable parts. 

What if that old joke “No Mother of the Year award for me!” stopped leaving your lips and what if every time you heard it from someone else you smiled to yourself while thinking, If there’s a “Mother-Story of the Year” award, I could totally win that….

We do give ourselves plenty of story fodder and so do our kids. Every one of us wins.