Motherhood is Both/And

Some say that you cannot feel more than one feeling or emotion at once but I disagree. Motherhood has allowed me to experience both/and. Society has successfully sold the idea that mothers cannot have their cake and it eat too, that we cannot feel more than one emotion or feeling at once. We hear the same song on repeat – if a mother complains about her children then she is ungrateful, does not love her children and should have thought twice before becoming a mother. The spectators on the bleachers love to remind mothers that are excited for bedtime that there are women who would do anything to have a child to even put to bed. Spectators also love to add – how dare you have children then find the nerve to complain about them?! Before I became a mother I was a spectator on the bleachers and then I became a mother.

Joy and pain can exist in the same breath. Hope and sadness can exist in the same breath. Motherhood is beautiful and exhausting all at once. I have laughed with my children and cried because of them a few hours later. I love my children fiercely and I miss those days of not having to stress about what’s for dinner. I love being with my children and I love not being with them. I love the ages my babies are now and I already miss them when they are older. Motherhood is mind numbing and the ultimate strength finder. Motherhood is both/and; it is impossible not to – unconditional love and true nostalgia.

On a daily basis, all of my feelings and emotions are complex and not linear; there are always highs and lows. When looking in the mirror most days, I wish I was looking at the body of a woman who had not yet given up her body for another, the body of of a woman without stretch marks, curves, thick thighs, back rolls, big breasts, baby pouch x2, c-section scars x2, or excess layers all over. Those are the days when I have a pang of sadness knowing that woman will never return. The body I have now is the body of a woman who has carried, grown, birthed, and cared for two beautiful healthy children. I miss my body before children and am still getting used to my body after children. I do not love my body now and I love what my body was able to do and still do.

Sometimes I find myself getting lost in the memories of life before children then one of my boys will do something to make me smile and immediately brings me back to my current reality. When I can barely keep my head above water and when I am feeling tapped out, frustrated, overwhelmed, and every other emotion that motherhood is guaranteed to bring, I want to go back. I want to go back to the days before children, the days where I could register for a yoga class in the morning and be sitting on my yoga mat in said class that very afternoon. Longing for the past has been a coping mechanism for me but it has also been a crutch because it is the past and I will never not be a mother. I was reborn after becoming a mother; a woman that came with no prior experience just unconditional love and a willingness to try. I loved my life before children and most days I cannot remember a life before them. It feels like my boys have always been here; shadowing me in the past and bringing me back to the present with them. I love being a mom and there were once days I could not begin to imagine what that would even look like.

Motherhood is too complicated to be either or; it has to be both/and. Mothers are constantly straddling multiple time zones – the present and past, then and now, the present and future. Children do not come with a manual; nothing and no one could ever prepare you for motherhood. Everyone says to cherish every moment because it all goes so fast.

I do not love every moment of motherhood and I know that time is a thief.