The truth of Motherhood at 5:15 pm

If any of you are stay at home mothers, and have just spent all day long (10 plus hours) alone with your young children, engaging, playing,  soothing, teaching, cleaning and picking up after them and picking them up, I get that you want to scream and I get that you want to cry and I get that you can’t even look at your children right now. I get that you may want to run screaming from the house right now, and I get it if you do. All I can say is: don’t feel bad for having these feelings.  This is an opportunity for deep compassion for yourself.   Everyday you live this reality, is a day you just climbed Everest AGAIN.  This is what being a committed conscious full time Mom is. It’s grueling, thankless work, and it’s full of all the piss and shit in between. I know from my experience RIGHT NOW that it’s difficult to make any coherent communication and that I just feel stripped, shattered and raw.

Yet the paradox of this journey of motherhood is that it’s also amazing, and every day there are moments of pure joy unlike any I’ve ever experienced and unlike anything I will ever experience again. It’s a total mind fuck, because I’m living my dream raising a beautiful healthy family, but I’ve never felt so completely used up and trapped like a caged wild animal at the end of the day.

And all day long, I see how my children teach me.  Teach me about myself- about what really pushes my buttons.  (Constant high pitched screeching does it to me.  Oh, and biting, just to name a couple)  Teach me where my limits are. (How many times do I have to say something before I start shouting it?) Teach me how I behave when my limits are reached and when my limits are passed. (My heart races, growing anxiety and panic- the tip of the iceberg)  Teach me about my own unique coping mechanisms, (rocking in fetal position, screaming in pillows and good ol’ sugar and caffeine, just to name a few) Teach me about the spectrum of human emotion.  Teach me how to eat my words.  I watch myself and I’m at times horrified and at other times awed at the range of feelings I get to experience in a day.

All I have to say to those of you who are not with children is : be absolutely SURE in the depths of your depths, without a shadow of a doubt that you want children, and if you want to give it a whirl to experience a fraction of the reality,  please become a full time live in nanny.  DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN BECAUSE YOUR MOTHER WANTS GRANDCHILDREN-she can adopt!  DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DOING- go get a good therapist. And if you decide that this experience is not for you, but you still want to experience having children in your life, go give your girlfriend or sister or cousin a break, who probably hasn’t yet had a shower, who may very well need to sit on the toilet because she’s been holding it for far too long, but mostly, because, if you can’t hang out with this woman who you used to be able to have a conversation with, you may as well get to know her children who are adorable versions of her and get a little shot of kid wisdom while you’re at it.

Compound this raw human reality I just described with the very real possibility that Mom isn’t getting more than two hours of sleep at a time and you can understand why those Mom’s at the supermarket with her screaming baby can’t muster the energy to pick up her baby and why she has that desperate crazed rabid look in her eyes.  These are a whole nuther couple of topics…

And honey, if you’ve got some stupid ass ‘Leave it to Beaver’ idea that you gotta have a hot meal ready for your man by 6 o’clock, while you try to do dishes with a baby that won’t let you put him down without screaming bloody murder, then I ask you this: How many children do you have? and include him in the count. Remember, he gets to shower and he gets to leave and go work with people who can cooperate and communicate and who don’t throw food at him and play with their poo in front of him.

I’m hoping for your sakes, he’s rushing home and cooking you dinner while he gazes lovingly at you and tells you you are simply AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL.

Because you are.