Tag: mental health

mom

As I laid down and waited for sleep to take me to tomorrow, I heard a child in the parking lot below,

“Hey what does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Hey, hello?! What does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Mom!! what does the car tell you?”

He so deeply wanted his mom to answer the joke. Her silence was an exhaustion he did not understand. The tenor and the pleading sound of the word ‘mom’ made my psychic cackles go up – I felt for her. He had probably been telling this joke all day and jokes like it for days. She hadn’t tuned him out, but just wanted 20 seconds of silence.

The word mom. Mom. Mom.

It’s a monolith precursor of asks and needs and wants – a monolith of demands and expectations that never seem to pause. It’s often a child’s first word and the word that turns every unique individual woman who has a child into a martyr servant-being for at least 18 years. Even if your life’s quest is to be a Mother, the constant, intensity of the chant of needs will become exhausting.

The thing about the word ✨Mother✨ is that it takes away the woman who you were- sometimes even before you had truly become her. As soon as this title is placed upon your shoulders the world believes it has a right to criticize and speak down to you – in addition to the criticism and juvenilizing that happens to women for merely existing – as if you cannot be trusted to care for your child in your best intentioned manner. As if your choices, background, experience, education, or any other aspect should be up for judgment much less condemned by strangers; women who have chosen not to have kids, or men.

As a mother, your mere existence is questioned at every turn. You are criticized within an inch of your life, but honored one day a year with a Hallmark card and a box of chocolates. Oh darling! Being a mom is a Gift!

The word mother is not lifted up as a goddess term in our culture, but weighed down into a diminutive caretaker. Mothers are rarely praised for what they give their children, which is the best years of the first chapter of their life. Often mothers later feel obligated to give years beyond the best of their youth, thieving from the greatest of the wilding and free crone years. Mothers are expected to give everything and yet people say, “Oh but you can do it all … of course you can have a career … of course you can finish school … of course you can have time to write.” And YES that can all happen, but in order for it to be balanced there has to be support and boundaries and not everything will get a mother’s full attention. Mothers can do it all- but that doesn’t mean they can do it all perfectly.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the tears may fall.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the jokes will not be heard.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the world can become too loud.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the wine may flow.

When mothers are exhausted and just done they may need to simply rest, but the world does not embrace their need to take rest.

Next time your the mothers in your life seem to be fading, do not wait for them to ask for help- that is not something we are good at. Next time a mama is fading, step in and offer to drop off dinner, ask when you can pick up a kid for a few hours, ask if they need help grocery shopping so they can spend an hour doing nothing.

Next time you hear a child hollering for a mama’s demand driven attention just let the mama know they will be ok – they don’t have to provide the punchline to every joke. More importantly they should not be the punching bag of society’s criticism.

wily life

I have been in a holding pattern. A bit of the blues have had their grippy way with me and my writing has sunk from the surface. I was doing so very good at writing everyday and getting work transcribed and then I tanked. I never know when it will happen or why and often don’t realize it has happened until I look up and realize a week or three has passed. This time, I caught myself, the weight of a new day holding me in bed – the sadness and anxiety to overcome in simply sitting up. Making deals with myself to get up, go pee, put slippers on, feed the dog, boil the water, portion the coffee grounds … stepping through each step of my morning with the pressure of a drill sergeant. Sometimes I wonder if I am not one but two, simply because there’s part of me that won’t feel capable of moving and another part that is screaming orders and demanding action. I experience both and move forward as one. This is a strange and wiley life. 

Next Chapter

“You will require a new level of integrity within your life, which will transpire into better boundaries and a more stable foundation” – Pivot Year

I’ve always been both an early & late bloomer. I was thrust into being an adult from the age of 8 when my father suddenly died and I felt I had to be responsible for helping keep my mother remain as sober as possible so she would be around for me and my sister. Of course, this wasn’t explicit and it’s hard to explain to those who haven’t experienced it – it’s just a survival instinct that you embody. As the eldest, I just did more and learned to fill in the spaces because one parent vanished and I instinctively knew another parent could as well so I worked to keep things as stable as possible and to be available for my mom. That being said, mom was emotionally absent, for the most part, and we survived by cobbling together cues on how to cook food, manage school, and navigate social interactions. If I ever was overwhelmed or sad my mother would tell me to sleep on it and I’d feel better in the morning – I learned to cope through avoidance and diminishing my feelings. 

We had an aunt who loved us fiercely, but after we moved from Texas to Colorado that lifeline was gone, save letters we would send back & forth. The Colorado move happened when I was 14 and my sister was 11. That’s when we really began being on our own for most intents and purposes. That fall I convinced my mom to let me travel to NYC on my own for a week. Her semi-boyfriend encouraged it, saying, “All flowers bloom in their own time.” I took that to heart and mom seemed glad to let me go. By the time I was 16 I’d begun periodically living on my own and had backpacked solo in Europe, twice. At 19, I had completed just shy of 2 years of college and enlisted in the Navy – letting my mother, who was off bicycling with a boyfriend, know via a phone call. My sister was finishing her junior year and maybe just off at summer camp, best I can recall. 

While I launched myself into the world as early as I could, I never took the time to look within or rather to claim what was within and follow my heart – there was no time for introspection in our home and I kept chasing my tail for decades. Even though my mom was emotionally vacant and I knew from a place in my gut that she’d never know how to support me emotionally, I so badly wanted to be seen by her. In the end, I waffled and wobbled through life until I found myself sitting, still unmoored at 50, unwrapping what I get to be in this next chapter, who I am now, and all that I’ve been. My longest role has been caregiver – first to my sister & my own mother. Later, as mother to my daughter. 

The role of mother – perhaps the most important yet least valued in our culture and I don’t mean that in some trad wife way, but that mothers are not honored for their sacrifice and diligence. It’s an expectation that the mother will simply Be There for their child and I made the expectation my identity. I did not demand that her father step up because it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t, until it was too late and I found myself resenting him for not being more engaged in her life. He had her half the time, but never actively engaged in ensuring all the details of life were covered. More precisely, I got there first. I took action- I wanted to be fully present for her while giving the best I could of life experiences. He was an available dad and, in truth, that’s solid.

When we were still married, he once told me, “If you want someone who is ambitious, we should just get a divorce now.” I replied that I’d be happy if he’d just finish projects around the house. But with thirteen years of reflection, he was correct. If I am to have a partner, I need one with ambition. That being said, my ambition was funneled into my daughter, which brings me to where I sit, 17 years later, wondering What Next?

There is no book on how to be a “Good Mother” and every single experience is different. We can only do what we feel is best, and no matter what our choices, our children will likely seek therapy. I watch my own daughter move through the world and I witness the success of my efforts. I feel validated for the sacrifices I made, the lack of career tributes are fully accepted when I watch the tribute that my daughter has become for the world, because let us not pretend she won’t be a tribute. All of her joys, successes, hardships, dreams, goals, and her soul itself will be chewed on by the world. It has already begun – that is what each of us is in truth- a tribute to the world we are part of in all ways. And the world, for me, has been focused on her for the last 17 years, but it is now time to begin a return to me.  

My focus, for the first time in my life, can be completely about the second half of my life and how I will begin to fall in love with life once more – not that my life hasn’t been good – but it’s been a buffet of taking care of others who I perceived as needing me and in that being “needed,” I failed to allow myself to be the main course. I am so excited to no longer be an option within my own life, but to be the Main Course in my decisions. 

To Be

If you are unable to sit in the stability of simpleness – a simple life – there will be no satisfaction in more. If you are not grounded in your core, more will never be enough, different will never satisfy, because your nervous system has not learned to be still. Once simply being is a place that doesn’t make you anxious, you will be able to step into new levels of growth because you will see there is not starting over or failure, but simply rebirth and completion. Simple does not mean less, but rather simple means To Be.

getting by on less

A week or so ago, I knocked a stack of glass votive candle holders out of a cabinet. They shattered with epic velocity and shards of glass were everywhere. While vacuuming up the mess, my vaccum got jammed. I didn’t have time to mess with unjamming and managed to sweep up what remained of the glass. It was a situation passably managed & I left the vacuum staged near my kitchen- like a low-priority patient in an understaffed ER- to be dealt with in order of urgency.

Today, I finally had enough bandwidth to look at the wounded warrior of domestic convenience and, wouldn’t you know, it took ten minutes to get the vacuum working order. I just had to pull off the long hose and fish out the mangled mess of glass wrapped with dog fur. With a few jabs and shakes, I fixed my vacuum! It worked again – I double tested it by sucking a whole new batch of dog fur. Pleased with myself, I was.

But with that fixed, now the a/c in my truck is more balmy than cold. I’ve been dreading this moment, but getting by and by with an occasional coolant charge that isn’t hard to perform. Now, however, it’s more mechanical, becoming another thing I’ll need to handle.

The only thing I’m certain of, as I age, is that there will always be something to keep up or repair or retire & replace.

Anyone who ever tells me “everything is great” is fully suspect. I once had a friend who answered, “How’s life?” with, “Oh my life is great, for a kid in Haiti, so I can’t complain.” What he was saying is it’s all perspective and you can be “blessed,” have all the general necessities covered and even some luxuries, if you’re lucky, but the reality is life, & everything in it, is in a stage of decay. Nothing will ever remain perfect.

I try to listen for those perfect moments and find them outside of all the Life Things that will inevitably break down and fuck up and cause us angst, but some days it’s harder than others. Some days boundaries are crossed or you just can’t seem to get traction in life and on those days that things aren’t great and there’s no reason to say “everything is fine.” Some days everything is shit and that’s just the angle you gotta build from- those are the days your attitude will make or break you. On those days, it doesn’t mean you don’t show up, but also don’t be shy to say, “Fuck it. This is all I got.” Here I am, fighting the good fight- sometimes with a drier tank.