One Whole Year as a Mother
I should have started writing this a before the day came but one thing that hasn’t changed about me is that I still wait until last minute to do pretty much everything, especially if it takes emotional effort.
My daughter turned one a few weeks ago.
1 whole year as a human in this world on fire.
1 whole year as a human who sees everything as new and pure.
1 whole year as a human that has a lifetime of excitement ahead of her.
I am now a mother of a 1 year old.
1 whole year of unmatched rawness.
1 whole year of a love that is truly indescribable.
1 whole year of a dream I never knew I wanted.
I never thought I’d be a mother. It wasn’t on my life to do list, It wasn’t something I admired, and to be honest I never really felt drawn to kids. I didn’t dislike them, I just didn’t (and still don’t) have that propensity to children that is assumed most women do. I was convinced that when she came, I would have to fake it. I would be one of those mothers who had to force themselves to love their child, a mother who experienced detachment. I loved my life as it was without a child, why change that? Why pull it up from the roots and and shake it until the excess dirt violently shook away? Why mess up a good thing?
There was also the chance I wouldn’t be able to have a child because of the medicine and radiation that once flooded my 12 year old body as it was battling cancer. That possible reality was never spoken directly to me, but I can still recall the hushed tones and conversations between adult, the doctors laying out all scenarios to my parents. It was a shadow that stuck with me throughout my lifetime.
I sadly watched too many people close to me experience different types of lose. IVF, miscarriages, and other methods to try and bring a baby into their family; that was something I knew in my heart I never wanted to experience, both by grace and intention.
To say the past year has been one of the most intense, extreme emotional whirlwinds that has radiated throughout my whole existence is the downplay of my whole life. I have walked with Soul lessons, surface lessons, love, and a lot of grief while gaining something so massive I can’t put words behind it. But also, bringing a baby into the world is also about loss; you are forced, even voluntarily, to say goodbye to the person you once were.
Years before I became a mother as we sat down one morning drinking coffee waiting for her son to wake up, my best friend told me that having a kid humbles you. I remember taking a sip and expecting something along the lines of ‘it’s really hard’ or ‘it’s not all it’s cracked out to be,’ but they weren’t it at all. At the time, I heard the words, I thought I got the sentiment, but I never quite understood what it meant until my daughter arrived.
I am scratching the surface of motherhood, dipping my toe into the literal baby pool, but I have learned and felt and cried and smiled amongst many other things over the past years.
These are 10 things I’ve learned in one year of motherhood.
Yes, having a kid humbles you.
It tears you down to the rawest version of yourself and then spits you out, spun in scars and gold. You realize that you have no choice but to love this little child unconditionally, and it’s actually not a choice at all because it’s just primal.I’ve never been more grounded yet simoultaneously spun out.
In the thick of very being newly postpartum I had some health things pop up, which is my biggest, most traumatic fear, but when I felt that gut deep fear and anxiousness twinge inside of me, as soon as I held my daughter it went away. Whenever I hold her, whenever I watch her play or experience something new for the first time, it brings me back to center and helps me dig my feet into their place.Grief gets harder.
I lost my soul god 6 months after my daughter was born. I’ll say the thing no mother is supposed to say, my child didn’t teach me unconditional love, my soul dog, Nola did. When she passed quickly and unexpectedly, the grief knocked the life out of me, truly. Mothering does not stop though, mothering does not pause, so being able to move through the grief process becomes even more difficult than it already is. I still have a hard time looking at family pictures without my sweet pup and the fact that my daughters’ first feel a bit tarnished by wishing Nola was there to experience them with us, make me feel like a terrible mother (more on that below). I know the mourning process takes time, but as the size of my heart grew with becoming a mother, so did the size of my grief.I've learned to separate my worth from work and recognize my value as a person. Before her, I was as most tristate area humans are; someone who knew work as the most important part of their life. As someone who has run some iteration of a business for almost a decade, it’s just natural to feel like you’re working all the time. I made the very staunch decision that I wanted to be a working mother, that was never a second thought. As I crept back into the working space, that urge to work non-stop, that comparing myself to what others were doing dissipated, it became less pronounced. I’ve started to be able to really hone in and refine the aspects of ‘work’ that I love because I truly do not have the time or energy for any of the filler stuff in between.
Loving bigger happens automatically.
It may be because I feel like my heart physically grew a few sizes, I’m not sure, what I do know though, is that love feels bigger, more in depth for anything in its orbit. The tiniest occurrences can trigger butterflies of a sweet, tender feeling in my chest. From watching the animals outside to seeing her eyes light up as she experiences something exciting, love is more massive. An ocean at times, a mountain, a phenomenon you can’t really explain.There is guilt in everything.
Another thing I didn’t understand until I became a mother is ‘mom shame’ or ‘mom guilt.’ As a human without children, both of these emotions are two of the strongest, most deep rooted ones that take time to unlearn, unwrap, and whatever else you’re supposed to do with them, but once I became a mother, like so many other emotions and feelings, these exploded without explanation. When you I time for myself, when I take time with the child away from someone else, when I say no, when I say yes, not doing enough, doing too much; there’s an underlying guilt that sits in any and every situation in life, even when I try to take it with a grain of salt.Support takes on a whole new meaning.
I would be remiss to mention that we are very, very fortunate to have a massive amount of support within our circle. Both sets of grandparents, aunt and uncles, friends who treat our daughter like she is their own and without that, the extra love and multiple set of hands, life would be very, very different — especially mine as the mother. But there are other sources of support that fall under this umbrella as well. The rituals I have in my life to keep me tethered to myself, the beliefs and core values I’ve built around my existence over the years; these have taken a exemplified version of themselves in order to help keep me the human I am.Prioritizes shifted into a place I didn’t think they would.
Not having time for bullshit was a luxury before, now, it’s a staple. You start to realize what matters on a level of importance, where your energy needs to go and how it needs to get there. You realize mornings of rolling on the floor talking to stuffed animals is more important than watching the like button on your social media go up. You start to realize keeping her busy not only helps her progress in learning new skills, but also tires her out so she’ll sleep at night. You start to realize that you have to set an example, you yourself have to set standards that feel wholesome, well rounded, and above all, ones of a good human. And on the other hand, you start to realize how important it is to take care of you, that having some type of you component of your day actually makes you a better mother, because you’re still a human, full stop. You’re still a person who has wants, needs, aspirations, and all the like.It is the most instinctual thing I have ever done.
Maybe it’s primal, maybe because I’m a woman it’s just baked into my DNA, knowing how to be a mother flows easily, it’s everything else that feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There are times when mothering feels extremely difficult, like every nerve ending is frayed and all the pieces of your hair are being tugged on, but more often, it feels like moving through something I just know how do to. Everything shifts; your freedom, relationships, expectations, desires, needs, input and output, everything, but the love of a mother is in my bones and flows through my veins easily and consistently.I didn’t lose myself, I became a new version of me.
My biggest fear, the biggest reason why I was hesitant to become a mother, was because I didn’t want to lose myself, the person I worked so hard to become. The time right before I had my daughter, I loved the person I was. I was proud of her, I enjoyed being around her, I was happy with her; shifting that felt like it would be a loss.
There are parts of motherhood when you really do lose yourself, your identity shifts into a source rather than a person, but your Soul never leaves.
There are times when motherhood feels overwhelming and overshadows everything you do, everything you are, but everything is ephemeral.
There are times when motherhood feels overwhelming and overshadows everything you do, everything you are, but everything is ephemeral.
There are moments when you feel like you’re drowning in to-do lists, guilt, random liquids, and emotions, but coming up for air is more refreshing than ever.
Motherhood is an honor, a privilege within a lifetime. It is a beautiful, messy, extremely lonely and loving journey. It is a birthright, it is a choice, it is one of my favorite chapters so far — and I have never been more proud of myself for moving through it.
