Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body"...(Elizabeth Stone). You always wonder and certainly idealize, what kind of parent you will be before you have children. In your fantasy, you imagine all of the wonderful moments ahead of you. Thank god for healthy denial, otherwise nobody would ever have children. The truth is, parenthood is hard work! As my babysitter said today in a card to me, "Holy crap, motherhood is hard...thank you for illuminating how rewarding yet challenging motherhood can be." My own mother did not have an easy road to travel as a parent. She had her first baby at 17 years old, practically a baby herself. Living in a small town in middle America in 1960 meant that there was a lot of pressure to marry my dad to make things right. So, right before their senior year in high school, they walked down the isle. Not surprising, six years later after many ups and downs, they decided to divorce. Their union started with a surprise pregnancy and ended with a surprise pregnancy. That's where I come in. They were starting to separate when my mom discovered she was pregnant with me. I guess you could say that I slid in under the wire. I was born two months early and spent the first weeks of my life in an incubator. At 23 years old, there my mom was with two young children, going through a divorce. I would say that she was initiated into motherhood quite suddenly, with lots of family pressures around her as she was still trying to grow up herself. It certainly explains a lot. Many young women are going through that right now. I learned from my mother's journey and decided to have children when I was older. I did not want to struggle as much as she did. I had my first child at 34, so I had the benefit of more security and maturity before I had children. Before I had children, I would silently observe parents and say stupid things to myself like, "I will never let my kids get away with this or that." Yeah well, you can be the best parent in your head until you are actually raising kids. You find yourself doing lots of things you said you never would. I love this quote, "Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories"....(John Wilmot). I have more compassion for the difficult journey my mom had raising kids while she was still growing up, because even with waiting until I was older, I was amazed after my oldest was born, at how absolutely exhausting and overwhelming parenthood could be. Now 15 years later and with three children, I have many amazing moments mixed in with countless moments that push your patience to the absolute breaking point. My favorite moments are watching them grow and learn about themselves. Of course my heart melts when they give me a handmade Mother's Day card, that they are so proud of creating. They have taught me the importance of valuing how incredibly unique each and every one of us are. I've allowed them to be themselves, not some projected image that I want them to be. That's not always easy, but I want them to be themselves, with some much needed guidance along the way. In giving them space to uniquely express who they are, I have learned to value myself as a mother even more. I had to learn to let go of a script I had in my head of what makes a good mother and find my own way. It took practice and patience with myself to go against society, family or friends versions of parenthood. I had to trust my intuition, allow myself to make mistakes and learn from trial and error. I hear women all the time, being so hard on themselves about every perceived error as a parent. If your heart is in the right place, children don't really notice that you may have forgotten to go to the market or made them pancakes for dinner because it was easy. Those things make you human. This Mother's Day, I will be hiking with my kids and will bask in every moment of being with them, even when they fight. I am just so incredibly grateful to have these three beautiful souls on this journey with me and couldn't be prouder to be their mother. Being a mother is the most rewarding and most exhausting lesson I've ever embraced!
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