The existentialism of motherhood

Emotional warfare and the greatest love I've ever known.

Having a toddler means enduring emotional terrorism on a regular basis. Between being told “no” 748 times before 8am and the meltdowns for not being able to lick public fencing, its what I imagine negotiating with a extremely stubborn and uneducated world leader must be like.

Demanding, ruthless, extraordinarily manipulating are some of the words and phrases that come to my mind when I think of this little toddler holding the reigns.

The other day when I was solo-parenting while my husband was away, I told my daughter she had to wait to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse until our agreed upon time of 6pm, well, the agreed upon time in my head. After she berated me with the same whiney phrase for a bajillion time, she said flipped the script, telling me “I’m leavin”, puppy blankie in hand and waddled out of the kitchen towards the door.

“Oh yeah, where you going?” I asked combatively, as if I was fighting with an ex who said they were leaving me, the attitude of defense instinctually crept into my tone.

It didn’t hit me until hours later when I was melting into the couch after an hour long bedtime routine of snuggles and books and ne-na-na-ing and holding her little body close to mine before she finally went to sleep, how hilarious the situation was.

I was fighting with my almost 2 year old.
She threatened to leave.
I challenged her threat.
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was on within the hour.
She had won.

I think I’ve reached the stage of motherhood where my life, my morals, my own behaviors have to be shaken up and modified.

How am I supposed to teach patience when I am still working on it myself?

How am I supposed to bite my tongue when I’m screamed at for not doing something fast enough?

How am I supposed to parent an irrational, non-sensical little human?

I’m not quite sure, but I do know that I’m just out here doing it.

I’m pretty sure there are more books and blogs and opinions and guides than there are women in this world on “How to be a parent,” each one of them doling out the potential to fuck up your flow and make you feel like you’re not doing a good enough job. Each one of those ‘resources’ staunch in their opinions and facts, claims and credibility.

The thing about me that hasn’t changed since motherhood is that I still don’t like to research. I still don’t enjoy making a plan. I still don’t really let other peoples’ input and unsolicited advice tamper with my own instinct. There are like 3 people I will ask for when it comes to advice and none of them have a PhD in parenting.

Ask any mother and they will tell you that mothering is the hardest job in the world; then they will will most likely back peddle and say something like “but it’s the most rewarding” or “but I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

The truth, at least mine, is that I think we are trained to say things like that. I think our own opinions and feelings and concerns and grief of becoming mothers have been so beat down and silenced, that we feel the need to say something along those lines because if we don’t, we’ll sound like a monster, we’ll sound unhappy, we’ll sound like we made a mistake.

Yes, when she grabs my face unsolicited and says “I love you, mama.” Yes, when she sits by herself and flips through the pages of her many books, intently looking at each picture. Yes, when she asks to cuddle. Yes, when I start to see her own personality come out of her, it is all so rewarding.

But is it the most rewarding? I’m not quite sure yet.

I have felt similar moments of reward with my dogs, with my career, with my friends and family, and yet I have a deep fear inside of me that typing the sentence above makes me feel ungrateful or unhappy. But alas, as always, two things can be true at once. Two sentiments can live within the same heart.

‘Motherhood is messy’ is as played out as the notion that a woman needs to become a mother in order to contribute to society, but when I try and think about a one-liner to describe the experience, that’s the one that comes first, that’s the all encompassing term that hits the nail on the head and in the heart.

The first thing I do when I wake up is look at her monitor and intently stare at her little body curled up with her puppy blankie and 14 other stuffed animals that surround her. I relish in my morning routine, the 90 minutes of uninterrupted peace where I can sit and write and have the only ‘me’ time of the day, but I also look forward to the moment I head into her room and see her massive head of hair rise from the pile and that little buck-toothed smile creeps onto her cherub face when she sees me; mama.

Two years later, there are many times when she calls me by that name, that I still can’t believe how much she loves me, how much she needs me, how much she wants to be around me. It is the most beautiful, co-dependent, truth I have ever felt. Seeing the aspects of you and your partner come out through this tiny human feels unreal, unethical, like the cut and paste coding shouldn’t be allowed. The facial expressions, the tiny quirks, the little nuances and characteristics; they’re all so surreal and a bit selfishly satisfying.

Motherhood rubs you raw. It forces you to pull patience out of corners of your existence that you didn’t know were there. It puts you into situations where everything you knew to be true, will be tested. It numbs you out and turns the volume all the way up, sometimes simultaneously. There are days that it makes you question your sanity and others, you can cry at the drop of a dime because you are so content and happy with your life.

I fear I am going to do something to mess her up at least 4 times a day. I fear that her first memory of me is going to be one where I’m at my worst. I fear that I am not good enough; and when I do a quick Google search on the internet, I am not alone in these concerns.

There are times I have to remind myself that all of this is happening to her, too. The not knowing how to cope with an emotion, the frustration, the learning how to be patient and grateful; she’s experiencing it for the first time whereas I am the adult. I am the one who has been through these complicated feelings before, so maybe I should know better, but as I have said before, being a parent sometimes, most of the time, co-exists with being a flawed human.

Motherhood is hard.
Motherhood is beautiful.
Motherhood is rewarding and grating on your soul.
Being a mother is complicated.
Being a mother rearranges your DNA.
Being a mother is a commitment.
Being a mother does not mean your life is over.

Tasks become a little harder, getting out of the house becomes the equivalent of preparing for the next coming of Christ, but it all passes.

Every tantrum, every doubt, every moment of hardness and the ones that feel fleeting, they eventually slip away and when that happens, you look back and think about how there will be future moments when you wish you were a little more present, when you wish your patience was a little more stretched.

Motherhood, by far, is the accomplishment I am most proud of in this lifetime. For a long time I chased a title; business owner, writer, ‘cool girl’, creative director. Titles were so important to me for my own validity and egotistical boost, but the present moment, the only one I really care about claiming, the one that makes me the most content and feel like I finally rooted into the ground I stand on, is mother.

The title of mother, is one I didn’t know if I would ever take, one I never knew how special it would feel to be able to embrace. One that makes me feel like if I never took another title for my whole life, it would be okay, because in truth, the title of mother is now a part of my identity until the day I die. It doesn’t change on my LinkedIn profile as if I got a new job, I can’t get fired or demoted; the title of mother is embedded into my existence as soon as that tiny little morsel of life came out of me.

Yesterday I watched from the couch as she made her Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck figurines have a dance party in their Lego house. As she crouched down into the perfect squat, pantless and rag-a-muffin like, I watched her little arms flail around and listened to her little voice narrate the scene with non-sensisicle sentences, only understanding the words “dancing” and the phrase “so much fun.” My throat caught, my eyes swelled with tears, and an immense sense of sweetness filled my whole body from head to toe.

Maybe that’s the most rewarding part, watching them become these tiny little independent, little creative and extraordinary humans. Maybe those moments are the ones that remind me, as a mother, how surface level life would feel without her.

I do not believe that life puts you in random situations or that the universe gives you something you will not eventually grow from. I think something is out there pulling the strings and making amends in order to honor and expand your existence as a human.

I know whoever is pulling those strings made me a mother, because I needed my daughter in my life to show me what immense, selfless, and ruthless love could feel like. To teach me lessons and show me that I am capable of a capacity of doing and being more than I ever thought possible.

Being a mother has stripped me down of my pride, ego, and identity.
Being a mother has made me a better human.
Being a mother is the greatest honor I have ever been appointed to at this point in my life.
Being a mother is a blessing.
And I love being a mother.