how did this happen?

i've been blown away lately at the number of people who have reached out to me regarding their relationships. i can't figure it out, besides that i am openly talking about my own marriage struggles. i sure don't claim to know everything or to have the answers to why relationships fail. i don't know the answers as to how to save marriages and i sure as hell don't know how each of us got to this crossroad. unfortunately, we are all struggling to figure out what to do and it saddens me that so many of us are dealing with this, but maybe when we find someone going through something similar, we just want to talk about it. what strikes me even more is that all of us have children, the youngest being somewhere between 2 and 3 years old. have we all just focused so much on the children and divvy-ing up the house and baby duties that by the time they are out of diapers and nighttime wakings, we have just lost touch with who we are, beyond moms and dads?

i never understood what really happened with us. i still don't. i'm not sure at this point i care. what can it change anyway for my current (former?) relationship? in the future i'd be happy to figure it out, but right now, i'm kind of in survival mode. right now, i need to work on loving myself better. maybe i should be figuring out why i make bad men choices so that i do better in the future.

yesterday, after all these days of feeling like i was doing so great, i sort of had a very bad day. i felt weak, like i just could not mother any more for the day and that i wanted to disappear under my covers of my bed. i felt like i was failing my kids and myself. i felt like the picture right there of that crazy lady yelling STOP!!! a million questions raced through my mind. how am i going to keep up the mortgage? how am i going to pay my car note? who is going to fix things when they break in this house? if i get this part time job, how am i going to get my son to his special preschool programs when he has to be there at the same time as my hours will be? who is ever going to want to date a mom with four kids, who has been divorced twice? (minor issue for a much later day, i know, but it's there). ON AND ON AND ON.

then my mom called. she asked me what was wrong and i tried to tell her, but i realized i wasn't crying for myself. i realized i was so sad so many wonderful women were also going through this and these are only the ones i know about! there must be more! then i told her my worries. she told me she didn't have a job when she divorced my dad, but she had to do it. it was time. she said there were days that were so hard, she would literally read the Bible every ten minutes because she didn't know what else to do. she said all she could do was love us, to remember we were precious gifts from God (not a burden), that we depended on her and so she had no choice but to keep going, even when she wanted to quit right then and there.

as i lay in bed with covers over my head, wanting to quit, i uncovered my head. i wiped my face, told myself it was time to get up out of bed, stop being so hard on my precious gifts from God, that my anger or situation is not their fault. it was time to put my big girl pants on and do the thing i was born to do. be a mom. be me. do the things that make me happy so that i can stop feeling so sad and so worried. it's hard to be strong all the time. everyone thinks i'm so strong. so balanced. so at peace. so settled. "super mom" they say. that's a lot to live up to! the truth is, i am those things a lot of the time, but a lot of the time i'm restless, i'm worried, i'm afraid and i certainly don't want to have failed my children or myself.

we have choices. we choose to separate ourselves from the person who is hurting us, who is bringing us down. we choose to move forward with a divorce and we choose to live with our decisions. they are not always easy but we have to do it. i will choose to surround myself with people who love me and want to see me succeed, not fail. i woke up this morning and the sun rose to a clear blue sky. i opened the curtains like usual and the sun filled my house. the kids were calm. i thought to myself,i can do this. i can do hard things. i have always been good at figuring things out and being strong. i deserve better and so do my kids.and so i do. all the things i worry about will fall into place and in time will hardly be anything more than a memory. after writing this, i just found thisopen letter to moms who want to quit. it's beautiful and i love it. 

  the thing is that when we get to the point of divorce or separation, it is easy to feel desperate to try and 'fix' the things we feel we can fix in our broken relationship. the desperation is intense. it's easy to not remember the things that led up to this point, all those really uncomfortable, sad moments of being let down, ignored and unwanted. many express that they went to their husbands hoping they would do their part and hear them out, but were pushed away or not taken seriously. if those things hadn't happened, we wouldn't be where we are now. be realistic and know you are not alone. this did not happen suddenly and it took two. my dad says, "I'm not telling you what to do, but it seems like it's time to make a decision and stick to it and move forward." he's tired of seeing me hurt and knowing i've tried and been patient hoping for change. 
when these women have shared with me their stories of marriage trouble and have questions for me once they know i am in a similar situation, i notice how the words seemingly tumble from their mouths and then a definite sense of relief settles on their faces, as though they haven't shared this information yet. i wonder how can they think that i know what i am talking about when they ask me questions about why this happens, when clearly, i am no expert. in my opinion, i am only an expert in picking up the pieces of my own life and making it better. regardless of how separations or divorce 'happens,' one thing i know...this is no ideal situation for anyone, but i think maybe none of us is looking for true answers, but rather support from other women going through it too. 

once a mom only a mom?

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  
She never existed before.  
The woman existed, but the mother, never.  
A mother is something absolutely new.  
         ~Rajneesh


looking back to when i became a mother, i was young, but took my new role very seriously. being a mother was amazing and i embraced it with my whole heart. i felt like most of the people i knew thought i would fail at something, whether it was as a mother or that i would not finish college. i knew differently. i knew i would not only finish, but excel, and also keep my feet firmly on the ground, promising myself i would never forget who i was. well, i did finish college with two bachelor's degrees in four years with a high GPA, while raising my first child, being married for part of it, working nearly full time for half of it and still managing to know myself for all of it. i prided myself on making him only the best food; at the time most people chided me for only buying organic produce and hormone-free milk and meat. i made his first birthday cake (an organic carrot cake) from scratch (i even shredded the carrot) and used to put flax seed in his cereal. we would go for night-time walks with flashlights to see what the world looked like at night. yes, i am proud of all that i did for him as a young mother and without too much self-sacrifice. those were some really great years...

so many years have passed since then and so much has changed. becoming a mother once was so life-changing in such a positive way, that in 2006 i welcomed a baby girl into my life and made the most of it. i struggled to feel competent as her mother; she cried a lot and it seemed like i could never quite meet her needs. by the end of summer, i was ready to go back to work and felt terrible about it. shouldn't i have wanted to be with her all the time, regardless of the challenges she and i had together (constant puking and nursing, her seemingly endless need to be entertained or nursed?? :) i tried so hard to meet her needs as an infant and also to meet the needs of my first son as a first grader, that i naturally put myself aside for them. as she got older, it got easier, but i always yearned for something else. within the years that followed, i was faced with some very difficult times. there was a pregnancy that failed and caused me to become extremely ill and created a wide divide between my husband and myself. then two short months that followed, another pregnancy (baby boy in 2008), i became a stay at home mom and shortly after a surprise baby girl in 2010. it all happened sooooo fast that i don't really know if i had time to deal with all of it properly. that time of the failed pregnancy and being so incredibly sick is just a long dark space of time in my memory. after that, i threw myself into my family and tried to get back to being that mom i remembered myself to be, yet i could never really live up to my own expectations.

knowing all i have been through, it is easy for me to recognize how exactly i lost sight of myself and my goals, dreams and simply what was important to me outside of being a wife and mother. what i have a hard time with is accepting that this is just what happens once a woman becomes a mother. maybe it's not after the first child, or maybe not even after the second. every mother i know has a different experience with this; some can relate and some cannot. for those of us that it does happen to, is it really necessary to give ourselves up entirely to this new (or continued) role called motherhood? why did my vision of my role as a mother change so much from one child to the next? i felt such internal pressure to perform perfectly as a mother after having my third child that i quit working to stay home and raise them instead of having them in daycare, yet now here i am, four months into being a working mom once again. so many women i know are having babies lately and nearly every one of them struggles with guilt when it is time for them to go back to work or leave them with a sitter for a night out with their husbands.

becoming a mother certainly is life changing and definitely re-defines us, but does it have to BE the definition of us? aren't we still someone's sister or friend, or someone's partner who we are sharing our life with? what about ourselves? is it really necessary to wonder if it is selfish to want to take care of ourselves or make sure our own needs are met? i personally feel that it is my job to show my children how to take time for themselves, the importance of taking care of themselves and to stay involved with something they love, to have a passion. twelve years ago, our very first pediatrician gently reminded me to find 30 minutes a day for myself and to not feel badly about it, yet i feel like that was the most difficult thing to do and still is on any given day because there is always something that needs to be done in regards to being a mom. being a mother is something i would never change, nor regret no matter how hard it gets or how much i miss knowing myself like i used to.

i remind myself that the life i am living is not something that has to stay the same, that it can bend or change to meet my needs. the life i want starts the moment i decide that i am going to do something differently in order to have the life i so desire. i don't have to settle for what is or who i have become. i can always move forward without forgetting what i have done and appreciating where i am because of the choices i have made. right now, my biggest, most important job is a mother, but that is not all i am. i still yearn for something more and i am seeking to be more present in order to find the clarity i need to define for myself, who i am.