Motherhood is HARD!

Motherhood is hard! Whether you have one child or ten, if it's what you always wanted or something you never planned for, if you love children or not so much, if you started young or waited awhile. Motherhood is HARD. So why are mothers born mbarded with sugary sweet platitudes or guilt inspiring judgment when they dare to admit it out loud? If we say we are "tired", as if that weak word could come even remotely close to expressing the utter depth of our exhaustion, we are often told to "cherish every moment", or "you'll miss it someday", or worse, "what did you expect?", and "this is what you said you wanted". And before you tell me this doesn't happen, these are direct quotes of things I have been told when expressing frustration, exhaustion, or discouragement over a particularly difficult moment (day, week, month) of parenting. Anyone who denies the near impossibility of motherhood is either lying, delusional, or clearly not a mother!
With the new mental health awareness campaigns running throughout the western world, how and why are we still dismissing a mother's right to authenticity by admitting that some days, maybe most days, she feels at best like she is barely getting by, and at worst that she is utterly failing.
To be perfectly honest, I am not going to cherish every moment. It is down right absurd to cherish the moments of hysterical tantrums, hitting, kicking, biting, screaming, "I hate you" moments that we all encounter somewhere along the path of parenting. I won't miss those moments. What I will miss are the moments when I could at least be proud of my response to these moments and I was able to reconnect and bond with my child. There are lots of things that coincide with these phases of tantrums and sleepless nights and utter battles that I will indeed miss. But to tell me, either by intention or ignorance, that to admit there are things about motherhood that are less than glamorous or enjoyable, is shameful or ungrateful, is destructive and insensitive. What I do with those feelings of frustration and disappointment is something else entirely, but to be denied the ability to even acknowledge the often uphill battle we wage every single day is to deminish our very existence. We cannot dwell in the negative all the time, but neither can we walk through life in denial. At the risk of being negative, we have become inauthentic. And that is more dangerous by far.

If I call myself a writer...

I have decided that it is time to get back to my writing. I have always felt in my heart that I am a writer, but to say it out loud to others has always terrified me. I think that's because if I call myself a writer, then I will be expected to write. It sounds obvious, but that scares me. I don't have a great track record for following through on things and this part of my identity is so personal and precious to me that I think the one I am most afraid of disappointing is myself. For the last 12+ years I have had the excuse of work, marriage and children to keep me from actively writing, but now it has been so long that I feel I either have to commit to my writing again, or else cease to identify as a writer. It has been a scary enough month as I made the commitment to myself in my heart to claim my identity, but I knew that wasn't enough. I don't know how many of you still follow this blog, after all it's been at least 5 years and only a handful of posts, but here is my public declaration: I am a writer. God has given me a gift with words and I am responsible to use it, and use it for his glory. The few people I have talked to about picking my writing back up have asked what I am writing... well, I am actively writing an anxiety workbook for youth, I am regularly free writing and writing poems, and I have at least 4 works of fiction in various stages in my mind and on paper/hard drive. So basically a lot of everything. If you are still following this blog, I hope to give you you more to read in the weeks and months to come. If I do seem to disappear again feel free to hold me accountable and ask for more.