Hey you, over there. You with the tired eyes, the breastmilk or formula drying stiff on your shirt, the bag of diapers growing heavy on your shoulder: I see you. I see your toddler screaming in the store as you sweat and scurry, rush to comfort, eyes darting. You’re wondering if we’re annoyed. If we’re judging you. If you give him a candy, will we roll our eyes? (We won’t.) Hey, mom–yes, you. On the plane, standing in the aisle to rock your wailing infant until you absolutely had to sit down, apologizing to every soul you could, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”–I see you too.
I want to hug you. It’s weird, so I don’t, but I want to. I want to ask if I can help, even though I know you’ll say no, because there were so many times I fantasized about someone offering the same to me and when it happened, I politely declined, feeling the burden should be mine alone to bear.
I want to talk to you about how we all understand. We get it. We, mothers, all of us: no matter our background, our circumstances, the number of children we have. We have all known the baby that won’t stop crying, though we’ve tried everything, everything, everything. And we have all sat and wondered, “Who am I now? Do I even exist anymore?”
I won’t lie: there is the rare creature, the one person who will say a terrible thing to you about your mothering, the awful specter of a human being who floats into your personal space and makes you question your parental worthiness on an almost infinite scale. There are those people, I know, and I’m sorry. Don’t pay attention to them. There are more of us that understand. I promise. Just look around.
In the moments you feel most vulnerable, take a moment to breathe and know that you are vulnerable with us too. You are not alone, though the state of motherhood can sometimes feel like the loneliest of places. You are not as isolated as you seem, though occasionally you may wonder if anyone still exists outside the miniature human you have in your arms.
And for the pregnant women–the mothers who are not yet mothers–lest you think you have been excluded, know that we see you too. You are happy, ecstatic, fulfilled. You may also be frightened, anxious, ambvialent. These things are okay. We felt them too, and we still feel them, but not in the anticipatory way that you do. We feel them on a bigger scale now, a roller coaster of boundless love and overwhelming fear. Embrace all the feelings you have: they are yours, and it’s okay to feel them now, and it’s okay to feel them later too.
And in that later time, if your feelings become suffocating, if the scary ones threaten to overtake all the good, if the clouds grow so dark you cannot possibly see the sun, you don’t think it’s even there anymore: there is help for you. There is good help. Ask for it. Don’t be ashamed to speak up, even softly. If you extend a hand, there will be someone to take it.
Everyone says it gets better. They’re lying. It doesn’t get better. It gets different. Sometimes now, I think about Isobel’s infancy, and I yearn mightily for the warm weight of a sleeping child upon my chest, the concept of time cast aside, the hours promising nothing but abject fascination with the sight of a human that did not exist but is here, somehow, and that belongs to me, body and soul. How can that get better? How can that feeling be improved upon? It can’t, I’m sorry. But, later, when your child is a little older, they will come to you and place their small hand in yours, whisper, “I love you,” and rest their head alongside yours. How can that get better? It does not, I’m sorry. And later, your child will sit in the backseat of the car and talk to you incessantly, telling you about the world through their extraordinary eyes, and you will see a small part of yourself, a part you can’t remember, coming back to life. The childlike wonder that you couldn’t access if you tried will come to you, unbidden, and you will smile at your child and they will smile back and you’ll think, oh. Oh. You are my child and you are also this independent person, coming into your own, and one day, you will realize this. And that day will be beautiful and terrible. But not better. Just different.
