Been in my shit lately. I am almost 1 month post-partum and spent most of that month alone living in a NICU day in and day out from giving birth at 36 weeks. There is just no way to express how physically, mentally, and emotionally drained I have been. Motherhood is truly untethered and dirty work on the inside but so badass, fulfilling, and empowering at the same time. I am finally breathing easy at home and slowly processing everything.
Some things I've realized in no order that makes sense whatsoever:
I am super capable of reading a 600 page book within 10, 15, 20 days. In the NICU and at home the past two years I've gone through insane estrogen drops, my hormones saying fuck you, and having waves of nothingness, emptiness, blah. It has always been easier to just pick up a book and silence the world and my anxiety than scroll or watch a show.
During and after being in the NICU, I have been complimented on my advocation, strength, peace, and calmness in parenting and motherhood which caught me off-guard. This is big, so big to note for anyone that feels weird finally looking in the mirror and realizing that you are a big deal, and that the people in your life think you are a big deal, and that it is ok to be a big deal. We spend so much time questioning ourselves through growth stages in life that it feels huge to be surrounded by people who really say fuck ya to who you are and mean it.
I thought I was a tough woman with no kids, I was tougher with 1 kid, and I am fucking unstoppable with 2 kids.
I empathize with my mom's trauma but the more I mother girls of my own, the more I do not understand my mom's relationship with me. Lots to unpack there.
I still love, love, love dark, bold beer and whiskey.
I am forever the girl who needs to move her body to slow her mind.
I spent years trying to be less intimidating, what.a.fucking.waste. My life recently has required me to be bold and opinionated and strong about decisions. Having talents, thoughts, and being able to represent yourself is never a weakness.
I am who my family depends on, they are not who I can depend on. I recognized this alot when I was creating my family and was still showing up, solving problems, managing it all. At some point in my mid-20s I became in charge of everything and everyone and it never went back. At 35, that sucks for alot of reasons, one being you don't expect or know how to have people genuinely show up in a loving way for you. I think acting like it was normal, ok, or some sort of beautiful self-sacrificial bullshit just made me messy and unable to really let my guard down. Turns out I was so depleted and really broken from it. I am better now thanks to some serious reflection and having enormous support from my partner and best friends.
On that note, feeling like I was never receiving love, it was so beautiful/awkward to freely receive that love from my children when I used to work so hard to be "worthy" of it to the people around me. To realize love is free makes me cry now.
I have people telling me they wish they were a "chill" mom like me. I don't consider myself a relaxed person at all. I don't see it as "calm" but as endurance in any situation, adapting, damning circumstances, asking myself 'is it dangerous or just inconvenient' and caring so much more about a learned experience with freedom and discovery rather than a controlled outcome. So, I guess I am a "chill" mom.
My dad got diagnosed with late dementia, my dogs both passed away traumatically, and I had my NICU stay all in several months time. I know this is a cheesed up quote but seriously, seriously "the grief is huge but so is the love". I've never felt so humbled, so at peace, so full of grief from my life as I do now with everything coming to a head and realizing I am getting older, my life is changing, I am losing so much, I am gaining so much, how can time be so elegant with wounding us, leaving us bleeding in the street as we carry on? I am telling you, I am still in love with life. The grief is enormous, but so is the love and you understand more day by day.
I seriously need a haircut, my hair is touching my butt but I am just a gremlin in the woods with other priorities.
A newborn is a goddamn breeze next to a 16 month old.
I truly am in the two under two world of chaos with two girlies and feel more grounded than ever despite.
Being a mother is physically and psychologically strenuous and challenging. We are "expected to transition with ease—to breeze into a completely new self, a new role, at one of the most perilous and sensitive times in the life course." It is some wild bullshit. Sometimes talking to someone in public is a social win. I have no mercy for anyone that acts like it is normal.
Women go through a shit ton alone no matter how much support you give them. Hug a woman in your life today because they probably fucking deserve it.
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
gummygunk
kianamaiart
