A Note to the Young Mother I was

Motherhood found me broken, vulnerable, and desperate for love. In a new relationship yet single, I was about to turn 25 when I found out I was pregnant. My head spinning, I was not in a committed relationship and had just recently moved to live on my own. I also could not conceive the idea of not having my baby so I made the decision to keep the pregnancy before I told my boyfriend. Due to this fact, our relationship moved very quickly and we were living together four months later.

The pregnancy was not easy for me. At this point I did not know how disassociated I was from my body and how difficult it was to tolerate any physical sensations. On top of that, the year of 2003 caught us with the Golf War and I feared for the life and the future of my unborn child.

She came right on time, as the doctor had predicted. After the sweat, the screams, the pain, she was placed on my abdomen and I could feel, for the first time, her little body outside of mine. After they cleaned her, I held her in my arms she looked...I couldn't believe it!...like me.

I had been angry at life and I didn't know it until that moment. Holding her in my arms, seeing how perfect she was, I whispered to life "We're even. You gave me a great deal of pain, and now her...we're even."

I felt, from the beginning, that Ericka needed a special kind of mother that I could not be, but I loved her so much, I was determined to try to be her.

This story starts with my now 21 year old telling me she would not want to repeat her childhood. When I asked her what part she did not want to repeat, she said "the controlling part". All I could say was, "I'm sorry."

Inevitably, parents loom in the background of a child's, and an adult's, life as this complex figure of, hopefully, tenderness and dominance.

Who we want to be sometimes is not the person our children perceive, especially if much of our behavior and decision making comes from the unconscious parts of ourselves. My kids know I love them, and I am also unbearable sometimes.

I think about my own mother and about my younger self. There are things children, us and our own, cannot fully understand about their parents until we are old enough and mature enough to see them in all of their complexity and in all of their humanity.

But as mothers, many of us, in looking back, realize our shortcomings, see the effect of our decisions on our children and feel the regret. Sometimes, perhaps too often, we look at their successes and achievements as the measure of our own success as parents.

As I look back, I hold that younger version of my with tenderness and compassion and I promise her that as we have learned through the years, we try to do better. I reassure my kids that I cannot change the past but that I can be available now to hear them, to repair, to build a new relationship with them.

The other day, I went to visit a patient in the women's unit of the hospital, where newborns and mothers are. As I walked through the hallway, I saw a cart with newborn items outside one door, a clear sign that a new baby had arrived. How joyful! For a moment, my eyes rested on the breast pads and other items. My body remembered many of those sensations of a having a body that had just birthed a child into the world. This is when the image of my younger self came to mind. How challenging it was to feel so many new experiences when I barely knew and trusted my body. When I felt so out of control.

But I tried. Every single day I tried. Perhaps this is where the voice in this writing needs to change...

I know you tried. I know you gave your all. I know about the nights you woke up and touched your baby's chest to make sure she was breathing. I know you tried to breastfeed even when it hurt. I know the nights you carried the baby in your arms trying to get her to sleep without waking up anyone else in the house. I know you felt tired, too. I know you wished you styled her hair they way the childcare lady did that made your little one look so cute and I know you felt jealous when you picked her up from daycare and she did not want to come home. I know how scared you were while pregnant, how out of control your body felt. I know how painful it was to bleed and think you had lost her before she was born. I know you looked at the world and wondered about her life and prayed that she would have a good life and be safe.

I am grateful to that younger version of myself who felt scared, unsure, and lost. Thank you for trying so hard, for keeping your eyes on her. That's the one thing both of my children know for sure: that they are loved and that they can count on me.