The last month as a mother has emptied me of myself.
It’s been the hardest one I think I have ever had.
I am grasping tight to all that I know,
but feel like I’m losing everything I’m fighting for right through my finger cracks.
My girls’ mental health, and well-being, their safety, too…
It’s made me question all that I think I am.
You fight for them, they turn and fight you.
You hold them up, they demand to be set down.
You try to walk them down a path of goodness and beauty, but, just like when they were toddlers just starting out, they will look you right in the eye with a smirk on their face, and barrel down the most dangerous path.
I feel pretty emptied out right now.
Not at all like myself.
Like nothing I do or say matters to anyone, really;
Just gathering dust on an out-of-reach shelf.
I remember when they used to run to me.
I remember when they were desperate to have me hold their hand, and point to things their sparkly eyes could barely take in.
Now I sit here trying to make sense of what’s left of me, almost like a monochromatic puzzle with only dull brown pieces left.
I’ve separated out all the pieces I used to help make them: All the most colorful ones.
There is no example of how the picture is supposed to look now – What you can make out of the rest.
There’s not enough talk about this part of motherhood;
The part where you look around, removed, almost as if a spirit of yourself, and you wonder if you have done enough, said enough, prayed enough, poured out enough, that they’ll be safe walking forward without you right by them.
I have seen a heaviness circling my kids lately that I cannot lift off by myself. All I can do is give it to God and pray that they will remember.
Remember.
PLEASE remember what I’ve said.
I’ve cried so many tears this week I feel parched.
I’m sure my therapist needs a stiff drink, and let me tell you,
the very last thing a struggling mom needs to hear on the hour it is taking place is that
PICTURE DAY is happening at the school.
My youngest daughter, Paige, is homeschooling this year and we do that through a local private school. We already feel a little odd-man-out, and today would prove to be no exception to that.
I wanted to take her for picture day today, shimmying her in between the other kids.
A picture commemorating what I tried to do.
Once I heard it was today, happening that very hour, I thought I still had some time to make it to the school.
I bustled her into the bathroom to polish her up the way you have to when they’re in the fourth grade:
Maybe some curls and a touch of hair spray.
Try and fail to wash off the sharpie tattoo.
Never a fan of being smoothed,
Paige complained through all of the fixing,
citing that she “feels shellacked” when she’s been hair sprayed.
I got her ready faster than I ever have, and was feeling pretty proud of myself.
Planning to tell them we were running just a little behind, but were still coming, I put a call in to the school.
Only, the receptionist said the photographers had already gone. They had finished up early today.
Once again my efforts were falling flat.
The words “nothing you do matters” and “useless effort” plagued me as they sometimes do.
I hung up the phone with a lump in my throat made from a sense of my own failure, and whispered that I was sorry, but I guess we’d missed our chance today;
But then something happened that I’ll never forget –
Paige saw me there with defeat on my face,
and she took my hand and said,
“I’ve got an idea. Come on.”
Leading me outside without even bothering to slip on shoes, she directed,
“You can just take my school picture this year.
You are so good at it! It’ll be better than getting it done by someone else anyway.”
She guided me to a big rock outside.
She perched on it, and along came one of our cats up onto her lap.
She tossed her off gently, and told her, “Amelie, we’re busy here.”
I took a whole host of pictures after that.
I looked at her there perched on that rock with the sun back-lighting her hair.
I saw in her confidence, trust, and a great Plan B,
and I realized today in homeschool she had just aced a test.
Life these days is not neat and orderly.
There is pain, there is loss, there are tears.
We are often barefoot on the rocks with our sharpie tattoos.
We forget things. We wish for an end to the hard years.
But today my daughter showed me she’s learned to shake things off and re-route, and out of all of the things that I could be teaching this year, or ever,
That is one of the most important things.
Mid-way through the day, after we had come back inside and settled back on the couch, an article came through from my own mom.
She knows what we’ve been going through around here. She’s good at lifting my chin up.
She said she was ‘just passing on’ an article about seasons of “being pruned;”
When the old is cut away to bring about something new.
It talked about how trees look during their pruning, and how it can seem harsh and look terrible,
but how if you are patient, and you look close,
you will soon see why gardeners do what they do.
Without pain, you cannot fully know pleasure.
Without loss, how would you measure gain?
The bare, winter seasons are necessary if we want to watch life explode in the spring.
Dear mother,
your days may feel like an uphill climb, too.
Maybe you’re also feeling defeated or forgotten a lot.
But one day your child will lead you out into the sun
and you’ll see they, too, were grasping,
but it was at all the lessons you taught.
Through the trials, and losses, and tears,
they are watching.
They are learning how to be in this world, too.
You may be feeling cut back, and laid bare.
You see yourself as stripped all the way to the root;
But, a little time,
a little back-light from the sun,
And before you know it,
you’ll also see the beginnings of the fruit.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
