(photo courtesy of google)
My friend Sarah and I (so) often talk about missing quiet. About how we probably stay up too late at night because we’re so hungry for the quiet that’s only there, after all the little human noise boxes are sound asleep and the computer and TV are off.
Who am I there? In the quiet moments? I just asked me that this morning because I had a few awake moments in bed before I could hear the bang and crash of fresh morning boys. I don’t know that I’ve lost myself in motherhood, like they say not to do, or if motherhood has stolen me. Or if I am motherhood. And really, is that so bad? Maybe it’s only bad if when given the chance I can’t remember me at all, and even then maybe it’s not my fault. Maybe it’s just because there’s been so little quiet or time to myself and maybe, today, there isn’t much I can do about that. Society is a loud and sometimes angry beast, in 2012. We live this isolated motherhood existence. There is too much to do all the time, on our own, and when I tell moms in person that it’s lonely, for so so many of us, that we’re working so so hard and doing it mostly alone, they nod and nod and sometimes tears well up and I know exactly the kind of exhaustion this isolated feeling puts in them. I mean, it’s rare these days, to live next to other moms and spend a lot of time with them or to know a neighborhood where people are always outside or in each other’s houses, best of friends. There’s this level of protection people seem to hold around themselves that I don’t remember being there when I was a kid. A fear of getting to know people or of really letting them in. Maybe it’s more pronounced where I live, but it’s there, like a tree or a fence. Yeah, it’s a fence. It was there before we typed everything. I can remember. In Miles’ first years, before I was ever on facebook or anything else. The change in what community means had already arrived and it was hard to find other mothers outside of awkward exchanges at ECFE or some other organized thing.
Then came social media, this dichotomy of so good and connected and distant at the same time. And to be honest, I love it while I don’t, you know? I mean, on my birthday I didn’t want anymore facebook messages after the first 50 or so and that’s not to say I don’t appreciate them or I think them totally insincere. It’s just that I wanted faces and voices and maybe even a hug. But my phone pinged with texts and not calls and that’s just the way it is now.
So mothers, many of us turn the lock on the door and sit down to turn on the computer because this is the only place, truly, for many of us to find each other. To find friends that click and hum like we do–people who don’t hold back and so badly want to live next to us and share our every days. Mothers like-minded and not–because community doesn’t have to hold a bunch of clones, you know? It’s best at its most diverse and I don’t care if you mother exactly like I do, I just want to be in person and in acceptance. That’s utopian, I realize, and not, because it can happen. I’ve had it.
Online, it’s like we’re pretending at in-person community like our kids play house. That’s just the reality even though it can bring us very real friendship and I’m so grateful for the ones I’ve found here. It’s just that I still want the hippie commune my soul begs for. It might be unrealistic and idealistic and naive, but I still want it. I want to spend our days with other families and I want to pick up my friend’s baby when she’s crying and I want to make the lunch for everyone while my friend helps my boy in the bathroom. All of that feels like moments of quiet, to my heart. like when I used to work in a restaurant and everything behind the scenes was so chaotic but fluid and I was never alone but I felt peace in the midst of people who became family through all our hours.
The online thing, on the other hand, can be so loud–rapid fire updates as a means to connection–like a passing how are you in the store that isn’t meant–it can feel like that, even if it’s not intended that way. It can also feel like pressure because there are just so many people–it’s impossible, of course, but I wish I could know you all and I can’t so I feel not enough, like grasping to be enough in motherhood all by myself. I find me still wanting that though, in motherhood and here, because the chatter of pings and tweets goes quiet in the great big world of touch and see, out from behind a screen.
That’s who I am. In the rare moments of respite, I know her. I know she wants community. Messy, lively in-your-face community. And it makes me sad that it’s so rare and I’m a dichotomy too because it makes me really grateful that I can come to a blog space with other mothers while it also frustrates me that this is where we have to go, like there’s no other choice. I know that’s not true for everyone, but are you with me? Have you tried and not found your place in real life? With your kids? Does it feel like you’re hidden away, like a secret, like everyone is keeping some sort of secret that you don’t understand–one that keeps them afraid to let you in? It’s probably not you, like you may fear. It’s probably not that there’s something unappealing or wrong with you. It’s probably just the way the decades have turned. You are totally worth knowing and totally worth her time and her time and their time. It’s just that we’re all so distracted and busy and scared and forgetting that deep within, something is begging for the vulnerable, gritty, life-giving letting go of raw and real friendship within motherhood.
(If you have that where you are, do a happy dance of gratitude at least three times a day, okay?)
I say all of this because I love real community and I miss it so much. I wish I could bring it to life somehow and so I’m trying. I’ll keep trying no matter how this spinning world keeps changing because this motherhood gig? This humanity gig? It is all too much for loneliness mixed with status updates–it demands together.
{ 40 comments }
“Have you tried and not found your place in real life?”
OMG YES! It seems like I feel this every single day. I have “tried on” so many different communities, whether IRL or online, and it feels like each time I just don’t fit. Like I can only be this version of me here and that version there. I crave a community where I don’t have to be segmented into different versions of myself, where I don’t feel like there are pieces and parts that are unappealing or wrong. Of course, it would also be nice if this community was conveniently available when I actually had the time for it:).
Jacki recently posted..How Facebook Showed Me Who I Am
see, then it is the spilling of hearts, that bleed just like mine on a computer screen. i don’t get to that place with other moms in the neighborhood. some moms don’t want the soul rubs that i look for in each person i encounter. yet, i can read in your words the yerning of my heart too, for friends that aren’t really friends – they’re family. i do have a few of these friends, but miles divide us. and yes, miles divide all of us between our glowing screens, but i can come to you just how i like it: hair thrown up in a ponytail, sweats on {by 4pm thank you!}, i’m probably eating something with my mouth open – – and i can give out a little piece of the love i feel we need as humans to be giving, and receiving. you are right. this on-line world can be exhausting. and yet, i have love to give, so i will put it out there and hope to keep seeking my core and others. whatever form i find them in. thank you for sharing the struggle. i feel it too.
tara pohlkotte recently posted..Smoky Mountain Air
You just said what I feel about online connection so well. I do love it, so much…even though I miss it happening in real life more often. I’m just so grateful it exists and it IS real, in its own beautiful way. But I still wanna live in a commune and you should probably have the house next door thankyouverymuch. ;)
i agree. let’s talk building plans and matching jumpers soon. in our commune we can both be connected on line, and then disappear into eachothers houses for hours before anyone tells our children where we are….in the meantime, i’ll get working on the doiles to go under our coffee cups. Perhaps the broken heart “bff” theme? we can sell them on etsy. store name: clicky-clack commune
full disclosure: i had to look up how to spell doily as i have no real life experience with one. so, if you are looking for my sewing skills to keep our new business alive, you may want to keep your chickens. we’ll need them :)
see? we could have these random waxing philosophical moments WHILE making doilies or doil-eeze or doily-s. :)
wow, well said! i think this is true in motherhood and outside of it. that yearning for true community, that is. i can’t speak for the “in motherhood” part for myself because i’m not a mama (yet), but i do have friends that are. and i see it. and even though i’m not a mama, i want that community so badly, too. sometimes i think that if i could quit all of the twitter and facebook and all of that and just get my best friends together and we could go make our own little community somewhere, i would. i don’t know if that would work. or if it would solve anything. and maybe i’m just idealistic and naive, like you. but i’m with you! (all the way from wisconsin, through the internets)
shayla recently posted..where have you been?
shayla, SO true. I was thinking as I wrote this that it’s about motherhood and outside of that too. It’s just a human need, I think. And I’m so glad you’re with me all the way through the Internets :)
Yes, there are times when all I can commit to is a Facebook status. But there are other times when I get to have real community with good friends. While I pray for a day when I have more time to have face-to-face community, I cherish the fact that I can have online community so that I’m not totally out of the loop. I can at least keep up with people near and far letting them know I’m thinking of and praying for them. :)
Mindy Bowman recently posted..Lord give me strength!
Heather, I wish I was your neighbor. Your words are like tears (and sometimes giggles) on my heart. I just love the way you write and the words you use and it’s like I feel them all in my very core. Mostly because they are written on my soul too.
By the way, just yesterday I spilled tears over the feelings that it IS me, so thank you for reminding me that it most likely is not.
christine recently posted..The Tantrum
Me too! Neighbors, yes. And thank YOU. It makes my day so much better to know that my words made you feel less alone, or like it’s just you.
xo
I was playing this morning at the park with the kids when a herd of minivans pulled up and half the community poured out. Within minutes, all I heard was talk of summer anxiety (whatever that is) and diets.
I pulled the wagon home, missing my people and wondering if I already know all the good ones. And feeling terribly lonely, here, in this place, in the town. Not in my whole life, just in my current location.
And then at lunch, I read this. So thanks for making me weep over black bean soup.
Maybe, we need to be serious treasure hunters, seeking the treasure of community, fighting for it. Or something.
Liv recently posted..on walks and bravery
Liv, this is exactly the sort of thing that happens with me. I miss my people too, a lot. They’re all over the place and not here even though there are some here.
I wish I was eating black bean soup with you right now.
xo
YES. I love this, I resonate with every word. Thank-you for saying this Heather.
Jess recently posted..Oh Josie . . . links and work from home
I wish for this, too. The quiet and the community and the ping that means real live hugs coming SOON.
Yes, I wish for this, too. So, so very much. xo
Galit Breen recently posted..A Storm in the Night
Well this seems like the perfect post for me to tell you the whacky idea Kyle and I had while we were visiting our parents this weekend. (Thought of you! But no time to dodge them.)
So Garfield and Lincoln elementary schools are both sitting empty and for sale. How about we buy one, turn it into super fun lofts, with great communal spaces (hello–they have cafeterias and gyms!), a giant communal garden, park, and ice rink outside? Sign me up! After you put it all on a truck and move it to St Paul, that is. But isn’t that a fun idea? Willmar needs a new kind of living space! Neighbors and kids and fun architectural accents.
I feel so lucky to have some very close friends who are also moms. We met through a moms group in town, but these are the women I can bare my soul to when I’m having a bad day or when one of my boys does something I’m proud of.
There is an isolation when you are stuck inside yourself all day. I love to share all that stuff with my husband, but sometimes I forget what I wanted to say by the time he gets home and the kids are in bed. Having twitter and FB and blogs…. those are ways to keep me sane sometimes. And other times I pick up the phone and get together with those wonderful women. Sometimes we all need hugs, or for someone to tell us they know what it’s like and they’ve been there too. Sometimes we leave the kids at home (with babysitters or Dad) and get away for a while.
I am so much more than just a mom, and holding on to those other parts of myself, nurturing them, is something I just can’t give up.
Meagan recently posted..YA is the PG-13 of novels
Hi babe. I want it, too. Of course you know that. Of course.
I want the Utopia. I want to live in a world where it doesn’t seem crazy to move close to a friend just to move close to a friend. To find a job later. To find a way to live and make money later. To know that your priority is to be together and support each other and everything else would just fall into place after. Because it should. Because that’s how miracles work… we kind of have the power to set them in motion…maybe? Some of them?
I want it, too. Community in my blood. So many hands to help and heal. Mine, yours, Kathy’s down the street, Barbara’s on the other side of the fence. Maybe we’d call her Barbie just to mess around. And then we’d laugh. There’d be lots of laughing. And lots of healing. From all that came before, when we fought the good fight every day and sometimes wondered why.
My heart. Your heart. xo
Sarah recently posted..Here with them
Yes.
I have been saying this exact thing to some newer stay at home moms.
Being a mom is lonely. When you worked, even if you weren’t necessarily talking to someone all the time, you were experiencing the exact moment with or near them. Now, we have to make a point to call someone and have something to talk about.
And this poses 2 problems. First of all if you don’t have something to talk about, how to live life with someone while on the phone. And the phone is a huge distraction when you are needed by your kids. Secondly, you need someone who has the same phone philosophy as you.
I do. And that in itself poses some problems. Should I be talking to my sisterfriend or should I be focusing on my kids? And why is she always calling me? Or why am I always calling her?
Can’t I be settled in who I am by myself?
Just being a person makes you question yourself, let alone being a mother.
Living is hard. It’s totally worth it. And the best things in life take work. And life itself? It takes work.
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I was nodding and crying while I read this.
See, I have some people here but I left some equally good people behind a few years ago when we moved here and my heart still misses them a lot. And I still don’t feel like I fully fit in here and that’s harder some days than others.
So yes, I go to my computer many times to connect with the ones I know are only a tweet, email or comment away. That longing to be part of something and others that you are like never goes away.
Elaine recently posted..Abundance
There’s a reason so many of us flock to each other online. It’s because we are starving for connection. And when we find it, we devour it like it might be our last meal.
The Mommy Psychologist recently posted..Guess Who Is Sleeping Alone Again Tonight?
This is so beautifully written, it’s true and real and it brought tears to my eyes. This is exactly how I feel so many days. I DO feel like it is me, it must be me, I’m doing something wrong to not have any real-life parent friends (that live in my area).
And since my daughter is a busy toddler, I have less and less time to connect online. The loneliness really gets to me. Thank you for making me feel like I’m not alone in this…
Cathy recently posted..air
It’s as if you hijacked my brain and wrote everything I have been thinking, feeling for the last 5.5 years since I first became a mom. Tears well up in my eyes not only because you speak from my heart but because so much of what you said is what I push down inside of me every day. Just to get through the day to give another day a chance that maybe I will find my place.
All of this, exactly this. I sometimes don’t remember what it was like to have that kind of connection in the same zip code (hell the same area code would be nice). That’s why I both love and hate the Internet–because I have these people out there that get it, and I love them, and it makes me jealous for what I could have.
Holli recently posted..Taking flight
and sometimes I hate the Internet because I’m so frustrated that I can’t just PULL YOU THROUGH THE SCREEN.
XOXO
Thought-provoking. It sounds so wonderful–that communal IRL support for while you’re in the thick of it.
Now that my kids are a little older I crave the solitude of getting work done.
Ann recently posted..TAKE HOME FOLDER TAKE-DOWN
What is this “getting work done” thing you speak of? heh.
Yes, this feeling is definitely probably more intense in these early years. And more intense in some cities and towns and such. Like this one where we live…
It makes me miss you even more! and also, I have not forgotten to email you. IN FACT, I shall do that RIGHT NOW.
This is exactly why we decided – okay, who am I kidding, it was ME that pushed the decision – to move back to a small, sleepy town near where both my husband and I went to high school. It’s a lovely community, but it wouldn’t have been our first or third or even tenth choice if not for the pull of family and friends. But yeah. I was lonely, and tired of the superficial conversations, and not even really having the will or energy to turn those relationships into something deeper.
Here, we have my brother and sister-in-law and their three kids, and some of my oldest friends and a handful of new friends who fit just right. We spend our days carting one anothers’ babies around and bathing each others’ kids and doing the dishes at each others’ houses. Our kids go to school with a pack of cousins and kids they know so well they might as well be cousins.
It’s awesome. But I also know it’s special and unusual to have the people I know, love and connect with best all in the same town at the same time with kids around the same ages. I lucked out. But I also made sacrifices to come back here and make this happen. I just knew, deep down that it would be worth it to me. Because yeah – I remember the other.
Meagan @ The Happiest Mom recently posted..Mother’s Hierarchy of Needs
Oh yes this. me. exactly. tears. xo
tracy@sellabitmum recently posted..Better Than A Beaver Story
heather, you nailed it, this ache and longing. i’m trying too, but i’m also exhausted from trying. community is one thing a single person just can’t want or will into existence. it requires a mutuality that no amount of playdates or parties or effort seem able to conjure up.
i’m trying to be modestly hopeful–not so much that i set myself up for more disappointment but enough to stay out of the dark. perhaps something beautiful grows yet. xo
I was just talking about how I live in a real neighborhood. The kids run back and forth between yards and every now and then you figure out who has them. “What are you doing for dinner?” often becomes an invite for pizza and “I’m making burgers” is often answered by I have salad and watermelon.” I keep an extra booster seat at the house where we usually end up eating. On more than one occasion, I’ve walked out of the house, my friend has taken one look at me and said, “Do you need to run? Go. I’ve got your kids.” When her kids were littler, I was on her circuit of places to go/people to see to get through the day. She has her own coffee mug at my house. We have coffee hour and cocktail hour. I get her kids of the bus if she’s running late. My family is great too when we are together, and I have other friends that we just take care of what needs to get taken care of, but it is so nice to have it right outside my door. . . And yes, I am incredibly grateful for this neighborhood, this community.
This is so beautifully said, and so true. We don’t have community gatherings anymore, and as a mom especially, it is so easy to feel isolated and completely alone. I watched a Ted Talk on this subject by Alain de Botton – check it out, you might find it as interesting as I did.
Heather-
you said it so well.
“when I tell moms in person that it’s lonely, for so so many of us, that we’re working so so hard and doing it mostly alone, they nod and nod and sometimes tears well up and I know exactly the kind of exhaustion this isolated feeling puts in them.”
“I want to spend our days with other families and I want to pick up my friend’s baby when she’s crying and I want to make the lunch for everyone while my friend helps my boy in the bathroom. All of that feels like moments of quiet, to my heart.”
I want to live next to my best friends and have our kids grow up together. I want to be able to casually hang out and not have it be a big deal because i have to pack it all up for all 5 of us to enjoy it. You are so good at expressing what it is like to be a mom. it is so hard to be enough. I don’t want to disappoint them even if it is the right thing to do. I used to be able to say, its ok, they are young enough, they won’t remember this one time that I couldn’t… no longer. they are old enough. They remember everything. They follow me around from the moment i arrive until they go to bed. I have to figure out how to spend more time with them and actually be there with them and not doing everything else at the same time. Life is too hard. I am with you, I want to be able to share it more, messes and all. I want to feel safe enough to do that and know that I can.
Thanks- I am going to keep shooting for this. I am trying and will continue. I know I am not the only one who feels this way. you do too.
-Wendy
I guess people are meant to live in small, close-knit communities with lots of family near by and it works out really well, as long as you live your life the way everyone expects. When it doesn’t it can be as lonely as living in a big, faceless city.
Raising children away from your own family setting comes with freedom which comes with responsibility. You’re on 24/7 “watch your back” mode because you know nobody else will do it for you. While I’ve several mutual benefit acquaintances in town, and I could leave my kid with them at a moments notice if necessary, I could never confide in them or expect any emotional support and acceptance. In my experiences such attempts invariably sour and now you have an enemy who knows all kinds of stuff about you. Great huh?
So really, thank God for the Internet.
“…the only place, truly, for many of us to find each other.” So true.
And sometimes the only place to find ourselves too.
I rejoice in each of the others I’ve found here, most of whom have now become my real-life friends. Just last week our whole family went to visit on of my blog-friends-become-real-friends at her home in New York. I looked on with astonishment and joy as our children laughed together and played together while we made lunch together in her kitchen.
I agree that interacting online sometimes feeling shallow and empty and lonely.
We need humanity and community. To the depths of our souls.
Our church and our extended family fill that void for me.
I just logged on to send the links to “my five favorite blogs” to the women in my book group. Love you!
charrette recently posted..One Red Thread and Several Red Seas
I honestly thought I was the only one who felt this way. So glad to see that I am not alone on this! Our neighborhood has many kids, but I don’t know any of them. On our walks, I wave & say hi to neighbors if they are outside & some don’t even respond!! I could never imagine ignoring someone like that! I have met some moms through a group I started in my area but wish our friendships were even stronger. I am pretty new to blogging & twitter & sometimes I feel as reserved as I do IRL. Although, I have found this community to be the most welcoming, caring & sincere, it is still hard to put yourself out there. I definitely feel “hidden away” at times but I will keep working through it! Thank you for sharing this post!
Wow, Heather. Not sure how I missed this but I loved it. So, profound and it rang true with me. It’s like this huge hunger for community, for real support in the real world. Where I live, people are so busy that I think they don’t connect much (especially mothers) because of a veil of fear that seems to exist that they will somehow be judged for being human and not perfect at this really hard job of parenting. As a single mother now, I completely yearn for it sometimes, especially when I was a stay at honme Mom where there were so few of us and we felt different, set apart, sometimes judged. Since I’ve returned to work, I’m just so busy trying to juggle it all, that some days I draw my first real breath when I go online late at night and my children are finally asleep and this is my time with people who often nurture me with their encouragement. I have some very close friends, who when we get together with our children, do fill those gaps, but not in the way that they should be filled, daily, the nuturing of mother souls, supporting, loving through the struggles and just simply being a phone call away when you feel as if though you’re failing at this, badly. I am so grateful to you and others, whose writing imparts that connection, however virtually and whose transparency speaks the truth of this messy, crazy, wonderful world of being a parent. For that, I thank you. It’s been my saving grace these past sometimes, lonely, isolated four years. : )
My mid 40’s self craves and needs social interaction in person. I miss the good ole’ days of picking up the phone and talking to friends. Oh, how lucky I was to have been part of the world that sat around and talked, shared, and looked into each others eyes. I miss those days.
E. recently posted..a kitchen helper #2
I am often up until 2-3:00 in the morning trying to get that quietness and time for myself. Sometimes I get housework done, most often I am right here on the computer doing one thing or another that I just CAN’T during the day because of my 13-month-old. I kind of have that community you want on my block, but it’s only halfway to what you described as utopia. If we see each other outside we chat, but we are usually also trying to get something else done– gardening, a house project, something, so I think people don’t dive right in and spill their guts or really hang out together spontaneously because we don’t want to impose. I get that. Weeding can be “quiet time”. Too often I feel like when I am even with my good friends, I somehow have to keep them entertained, and that is exhausting and on some level just leaves me anxious. Same goes for inviting someone over spontaneously for coffee or some such thing– my house is usually an absolute pit with two small kids and my own weariness, and from my upbringing, letting anyone see that makes me feel terrible, anxious, and stressed out. So we plan set events for getting together, which I clean for ahead of time (and which also stresses me out, there’s just no winning) , but rarely just “hang out”. It all makes it seem like, either way, I just can’t relax and enjoy, and becomes a sort of hassle to have real friends.
Which leaves the phone and the internet. My line of thinking is usually, “Why should I call when absolutely nothing worth a phone call is going on?” Makes for awkward silence. Yet they aren’t exactly living next door, so those chance encounters for chit-chat or soul bearing are almost non-existent. So I leave a blurb online for someone while my baby is napping so she can read it at her convenience when her baby is napping (no loud ringing interruptions!), but is that even really a conversation? I have found out tons of thing about my friends online that I never would have found out in person, which I think is pretty cool, but in the end it almost seems more like character development than getting to know someone better if you rarely see each other, or especially if you have never even met in person. Kind of like meeting the great green-headed Wizard of Oz but never seeing the man behind the curtain. And you know? Before social media, I used to have friends who actually remembered my birthday. Now, without their Facebook secretary telling them whose birthday is today off their Friends list, no one remembers anymore. I don’t put up personal information like my birth date on Facebook for safety reasons, and the payoff has been being forgotten. So while I can see how 1500 “Happy birthday” blurbs can seem insincere, I have actually cried my past two birthdays because I didn’t get a single one, much less a phone call or a card from someone other than my immediate family.
And when I have a really bad day or week with the baby like this past one (I actually bust out crying and swore at her more than once– not proud of that), the last thing I usually want to do is *write* about it and advertise it to the world. This is the longest thing I have written in a LONG time– I admire/resent those who can so effortlessly, because I find the process absolutely draining. There is a house on my block here in Northfield that just went up for sale– please just move into it so we can have the face-to-face community we both need so much, our kids can play together every day, and we can be family to each other instead of just different twigs on the same family tree. Take care.
I just finished writing a short Just Write about being suspicious of my kids’ silence, but then read this and thought, yes, I do stay up late often just to GET some silence!
Had the same feeling about Facebook and birthdays. I don’t even put my birthday on Facebook. I don’t want 200 “Happy birthday!” posts from people who would never, ever call, I guess.
I joined a mommy message board before my first son was born years ago and still keep up with it, I don’t need that internet connection as badly anymore, but I do need it.
Thanks heather for sharing with us. I like the way you speak from your inner core, it actually made me cry. Sometimes I feel like it is me who is doing something wrong not to have any real-life parent friends close by. You just enlightened me.
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