On Motherhood and the Mourning of Self

"Don't forget about the grief in transitions. Even when those transitions are objectively good, we're always leaving something behind. Be careful that you don't confuse your grief as an indicator that the transition is wrong."

Vienna Pharaon

*I wrote this blog piece in September 2020 on a now extinct previous blog. I’m moving it here, along with a few other blog posts you’ll see in the next little while.

This week [in September 2020] Rachel Cargle posed this question on her Instagram page:

“Question for mothers. Did any of you grieve the shift from existing in the world as your own woman and moving into your role as a mother?”

This topic is so big. At present, there are more than 7500 responses to her question. A literal outpouring of women who needed and still need space to grieve the person they were before becoming a mother. I wasn’t able to articulate exactly how I felt about this question in the confinement of a comment or even an Instagram post of my own, so here are my thoughts in a longer form.

When I became a mother, I certainly grieved the way my life used to be. It was (and sometimes is) a grieving of freedom, of independence, of simplicity. It was also a preparatory grieving for the heartbreak I invite in my life by allowing such a big piece of my heart to walk around outside my body and outside my control. From the point that a child enters your life, your life is no longer your own. And that’s both beautiful and scary. After that, how do you feel like yourself? How do you nurture your own growth and passions at the same time that you nurture your little ones?

I have felt plenty of shame in admitting that I have grieved my old life. I’ve written and deleted this post several times. The shame whispers in my ear “Didn’t you choose this life? Isn’t it a divine role to be a mother? Shouldn’t your children be your fulfillment, your joy? If you say you miss the freedom, self-expression and self-actualization you had before children, does that make you selfish? You will miss these limited-freedom days in a few years when your kids are grown and you have time for yourself again. It’s somehow tarnishing these precious early years to grieve what was before.”

But you know what? That’s a load of bull.

I can hold both feelings. I can hold grief and joy and gratitude together. Grief is different from regret. My heart can melt when my son leans his head on my shoulder while we watch Mickey Mouse, and when I sit next to him on the playground and we share a bag of marshmallows and pretzels I can feel like everything is exactly right in the world. My heart feels like it’s full of sunlight in those moments. I can also stare across a sticky kitchen table as he smears peanut butter on his cheeks and hands and feel a pang as I remember the freedom I used to have and the dreams that used to define me. I mourn that woman I imagined I would be when I was a teenager- the one with the very prestigious job, probably changing the world, definitely on her way to a Nobel Peace Prize. Now, of course there are women who mother and who successfully navigate successful and prestigious careers- but those dreams just didn’t fit me anymore. Just like I grieved outgrowing my favorite dress in my new postpartum body, I can grieve old dreams that don’t fit who I am anymore. And just as there is a process to find a new dress that makes me feel as confident and unique as the old one, there is a process to find a new me that feels confident and unique. Who am I now? What’s important to me now? How do I balance this new identity with who I was and who I want to be?

Before I had a baby, it was like I was on a waterslide- I was being carried on a fun yet predictable and well-worn path to where I thought I was supposed to go. My baby was born and I splashed into the water, only to surface and see an endless lake. What direction do I go now? Where’s the ladder out of here? There are no grades in motherhood, no progress reports or quarterly evaluations. No raises or promotions or convenient major planning flowcharts. I’d like to get back on that waterslide thankyouverymuch. That was simple. This is not.

At the same time, I can imagine being old and gray in my quaint old rocking chair cherishing these years when me and my kids and my husband were all figuring it out together. These days when my babies needed me so much before they blazed their own trails. Like a day-lily, whose petals bloom and dazzle for only a few days before they shrivel away, these days are beautiful and sad, precious and fleeting.

I am still pretty new at this mom thing. And I reckon I’m still pretty young and naïve. But I have come to believe that the mother heart carries all these emotions all the time. A mother heart grows (at least) three sizes the day her child comes to her in order to fit all the joy, pain, grief, regret, pride, exhaustion, tenderness, compassion, anger, and BIGNESS. I think it’s no shame to sometimes long to retreat from that bigness- to return to the simplicity of when my heart was just my own.

But the years start coming and they don’t stop coming, and I try to stuff my pockets full of memories, some of them slipping out on the trail behind me like so many fruit snack wrappers. For the most part, I keep my eyes on where I am, and where I’m preparing to go. I try my hardest to soak in every bit of happiness and gratitude that comes in the day-to-day with young kids. I'm making time and space to figure out this new me and her new dreams. But on a long trail, who doesn’t look backward sometimes to see how far they’ve come? Who doesn’t see a rocky climb ahead and long for the mild, even trail they have just left behind? Still we carry on, and we reach both vistas and valleys on an ever-changing trail. There is room for all the feelings- for both the shadowy forests and the sunny, open meadows. There is room to feel.