perspective & acceptance
Becoming a mom has given everything I do much more meaning. It’s also made it so that everything I do, I have sort of revelation about the very thing I’m doing.
Everyday I’m growing and learning. Everyday I’m healing. Healing is hard. I never thought that would be part of my experience, or journey. It wasn’t something I thought about. And, I never thought I’d have so much healing to do. I also never knew how much anxiety I would have in becoming a parent. There is a lot. Like a lot, a lot.
Oscar & me, 9 months old, photo by Bettina Bogar
Where were all the blogs or posts about this stuff? Why, as a soon to be mama, do we only look at the magical unicorn and rainbow stuff?! I’ll never stop asking myself this. I wish I had been more prepared for my experience, but how does one see into the future?! Where was the magic 8 ball telling me “your future is gonna be tough AF” and then on top of that, a little fortune cookie that explains what that ‘tough’ is gonna be like.
And- being a working mom, being a solo working mom a great deal of the time, with my husband gone for weeks on end, well - it just adds to the hard part, and the anxiety part.
I’ve always like to master things. The learning portion has always been rewarding, but in being a mom, the learning part isn’t really something that I see as a reward, because as I’m learning, the time passes by too quickly and when I look back at the miles I’ve come from, I’m flooded with guilt at not having been immediately great at all those things that took so long to learn. Things didn’t come together quickly, or easily. And, accepting that this was my experience has been something I’m working on healing from lately. While I’m still healing from our birth, healing from the affects of the first few months, from the changes in our lives; I’m now also healing from a sense of failing as I look at my experience in the beginning.
A client of mine called my experience, in the first few months of having Oscar, the Perfect Storm. That couldn’t have been a better way to put it. When I share an event from our beginning, people have opinions immediately which lead to me then explaining another part, and they always have something to say about that and then another little thing comes out and soon, the story unravels. We are so quick to give advice to each other, but I think one thing I’ve learned is that you kind of need to have the whole picture to give the right advice.
My Perfect Storm. Each little thing added up and added up. I keep reminding myself that because if I don’t, the anxiety takes over leaving me in a puddle of feelings of failure.
At a coffee shop the other morning, while I had some alone time and Oscar was with our nanny, I sat in a busy bustling room. Music in my ears, coffee on my tongue and my mind racing as I multitasked between emailing, writing and other work. Suddenly a friend scooted next to me. We hadn’t seen each other since Oscar was only 3 months old; I was on a walk with him in my wrap, him fast asleep which was a rarity at that time. She asked me about life and about motherhood.
There is a connections between moms. Our experience connects us. It bonds us.
In our short little conversation I was pretty vulnerable in what I shared and I’m not sure why, as I have been trying to pull back from sharing my feelings and my story lately. She took my hand, looked at me and said, “you are a rockstar”.
And, I suddenly felt a rush of something I can’t quite place, but it was something I needed. In that moment, it’s exactly what I needed. As she said it, I felt like for the first time in months I wasn’t invisible. Someone saw me, saw the work I’ve been putting in, the work I’ve been giving in being a mother and a business owner, as a wife, as someone trying to make so many people happy, and she made me feel like I was being recognized, that I was doing better than ok.
Oscar & me, 2 months, photo by Laura rowe