The Unspoken Toll of Motherhood

Somehow, no matter how much it is, it fits inside me without shattering me

Hi!

First, let's go ahead and acknowledge that July happened. It was a mess, and it's over now, but it did happen and we can't just ignore it. So, farewell 👋 to the craziest month in a long time (and that's truly saying something). Now, out of nowhere, it's August, and I'm just at the edge of my seat with how things will go.

There's a lot of ruckus around here. There are some writing competitions I'm involved in, and I took a job doing some distinctly un-writerly stuff (training teachers on how to use a particular math program in their classrooms - which I'm really excited and terribly anxious about). There's babysitting stuff, toddler-growing-up stuff (we are firmly planted in the "Hitting and throwing" phase, which is just wonderful), and big-kid-activity stuff. Work commitments and parenting preoccupations and self-care (what's that?) swirling around.

And somehow, no matter how much it is, it fits inside me without shattering me. I don't ever have to worry that any of these things won't get done because, somehow, they always do. For one of the above-mentioned contests, I'm writing a piece about the work of motherhood. I wrote an essay, and it's good. Really good, my friends tell me. But I can tell in my heart it's not enough. It's not raw enough, not vulnerable enough - it speaks to mothers like me, but not loudly enough. It presses on some of our shared experience, but it doesn't capture the feeling I have right now in the pit of my stomach, a day before I'm supposed to be showing up at work for the first time, when the person I hired to take care of my kids has turned into a ghost.

How to convey through my words the thing I seldom even allow into my thoughts? How, when I'm gone, I am checking in on my children to make sure they're okay. How being the default caregiver places limits on me that my partner will never experience. How the fact that it's easier in many ways to just stay home doesn't account for how much happier I am when I can spend some time - any time - on something that belongs to me and me alone. And how to convey all that in a form and structure that is worthy of a solid cash prize?

Time will tell if I've got it in me.

For now, I'm back to work.

I'll see you next time,

P.S. The blog this week was really cute. It's a poem I wrote when I was pregnant with my son about the orchestral marvel of feeling a human growing and moving inside my belly. Read it. It'll make you smile.

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