I always wanted to be a mother. I'd dreamed about it from my earliest years. At 30 years old, my dream came true. It was simultaneously everything I'd hoped for and nothing like I'd imagined. The very thing I'd wanted and dreamed of my entire life was slowly killing me. Amidst the highs and joys that came with the sacred responsibility of raising precious human beings, I was losing my own soul. Postpartum depression, anxiety, and OCD partnered up with anger, rage, sleep deprivation, perfectionism, binary thinking, and religious trauma to suck the very life out of me until I no longer wanted to exist.
To be clear, I loved my children with every fiber of my soul. They have brought me joy the likes of which nothing else ever has. I simply had no idea how unprepared I was, how cruel the world was to mothers, and how impossible it would be to raise them the way I knew I wanted to.
The following words were written by an author from Womb Circle. I wept when I read them. My children are grown now, but these words took me right back to when they were little. They resonated with me in a way that made me feel connected to every other mother in the world who struggles. If you relate to these words, please know that you are seen. You're allowed to love your children AND hate the day-to-day drudge. You can feel grateful and blessed and angry and numb and joyful and disappointed... simultaneously. Truly, I see you.
Some Thoughts on Mother's Day
IG: @womb_circle
We used to take for granted
that Mother's Day was a
nice day to celebrate our
moms.
But now everyone says now
it is a hard day for many, if
not most.
Motherhood broke me.
Can I love my children
more than anything I've
ever loved and be so deeply
burdened by my role in
their lives?
I honestly don't know.
I feel so lost in it, all the
sandwich making and
carpool driving.
I don't know how to stop
the maddening mundanity
of tending to the people I
care about most while it
drains the life blood from
my body.
We say this day is hard but
we rarely are able to
articulate why.
Why is it so painful to be a
mother? Why is it so hard
exactly?
I used to fantasize about
ending my life when my
kids and I were younger.
I didn't want to die so
much as I wanted to
disappear, to cease to exist,
to just be nothing.
I could never bring myself
to make a plan, because
while I thought about
disappearing, all I could see
was the pain in their eyes as
I vanished.
My love for them was
like a cage.
I brought them here not
knowing how lonely it
would be, how unprepared
I really was.
I never wanted to hurt them
the way I had been hurt.
And yet here I was doing it and
I had no power to stop it.
It's a grotesque kind of
torture to do this to women,
to ask this of them, to
demand this of them, to
brainwash them, to give
them no other choice.
To wound them so wholly,
that they see no other way.
To bind them to these
precious humans forever
and then walk away.
To force women - by
various means but mostly
shame and mind control -
To bring these lives into the
world and then send them
home alone to hold babies
who scream at 3:00am,
while we stare at the
shadows on the ceiling
silently swallowing the
sounds of our own screams.
I have watched women
writhe and flop and squirm
under the pressure of
modern motherhood,
NEVER able to catch a
breath.
Starving, suffocating,
choking, wasting away.
Watching women I love
suffer this way and knowing
that I myself am drowning
is, again, a most vicious
kind of torture.
I have no words to describe
the helplessness I feel as we
watch each other sink
beneath the waves,
sputtering, desperately
grasping for something to
hold on to.
There is nothing.
Our society has no earthly
idea what it actually takes to
carry, birth, and raise
human beings.
We have forgotten, and
women and children are
picking up the tab in
suffering.
I am beginning to remember
what it means to truly
mother.
I am attempting to make up
for lost time, to mother the
fractured parts of myself
that were malnourished and
neglected and forgotten.
I am attempting to be there
for my friends and family in
ways I wish someone could
have shown up for me.
I am attempting to love and
tend to my children in the
way I know they need...
I am cracking open my
heart, my body, my mind
for it day after day, because
I hear the cries and want so
much to answer the call.
But this is the very thing
that has caused all this
suffering in the first place,
asking women to hold it all
together, for everyone, all
the time...
They keep asking women to
mother themselves,
mother their children,
mother their friends,
mother the other mothers,
mother the whole fucking
planet...
All while they light it on fire.
My kids brought me a
plethora of handmade cards
and flowers and paintings
this morning with such
heart rending earnestness
in their faces.
Is this enough, mama?
They feel the burden too.
It should never have been
their job to be enough for
me, to have to prove they
are enough for my love with
pancake breakfasts and
coupon books and foot
rubs.
How dare we ask this of them?
It doesn't matter how many
nice things they say to me
today, I can never give them
what they deserve.
The world is too broken for that.
So here's a big FUCK YOU
to patriarchy today.
Don't you even think about
showing up at my door with
your goddamned two dollar
candy bar saying how
grateful you are for the
work mothers do.
Fuck you.
I wish I could think of a
more hopeful way to end this...
All I know is that
tomorrow I am going to
wake up and do it all over
again, I am going to make
my kids breakfast and drive
them to school and try to
eke out some time for my
work between laundry and
dishes and picking up toys...
I'm probably going to order
some food I can't afford
because I just can't bring
myself to plan a meal and
cook and dish it up and
listen to everyone's
opinions about what I
made and stand at the sink
alone for another night
with my jaw clenched and
tears streaming down my
face.
I'm going to spend the
whole day wishing I was
alone in a clean, quiet house
sleeping and reading and
remembering that all I want
is to smell their hair and touch
their cheeks and listen to
them laugh.
Then, I'm going to tuck
them in and scratch their
backs and tell them stories
and sing them songs.
And I'm going to do it
again the next day.
And I'm going to keep
wishing and hoping and
working for a world where
mothers don't have to do
this anymore. Not like this.
Not like this.
This is why the abortion
issue is so infuriating.
We don't actually give a shit
about women and children.
It's all just control and
politics on the backs of the
most vulnerable.
I would prefer a world
where abortion is freely
accessible and generally not
necessary.
I would prefer a
world where women are
respected, honored, and so
well sourced that babies are
brought into the world
consciously, and villages of
beloved friends and family
raise children together.
We do not trust women.
We do not trust people who
give birth.
We don't care about the
people who give life with
their blood, sweat, and tears.
We don't care about
parents.
We don't care about babies
and children and the planet
that sustains our lives.
We do not understand and
we do not care about what
is actually required to be
well human beings.
We just don't. We would
prefer to stay in our
ideologies and comfort
zones and just keep our
heads down to really
make the changes necessary
to have a life affirming society.
Those who do care are
often the most
marginalized and oppressed
and systematically kept out
of the places decisions are
being made.
And none of us can do it
alone.
You are not made to do all
of this alone. If you feel
like it's too much, it's
because it is.
Care givers have been asked
to do more than what is
humanly possible.
We are pedestalized as being
super human, all while
being treated as subhuman.
You don't deserve it.
And neither do your children.
I am so sorry.
Happy Mother's Day.
@womb_circle