The Stacked Deck of Motherhood

I have long believed that the whole game of pregnancy, childbirth and parenting holds at least one bad card for all women. For some, getting pregnant is the hard part. Other women have traumatic childbirth experiences that require years of recovery. And there are those for who pregnancy is a breeze, birth is nothing complicated, but parenting doesn’t come so easily. I have yet to meet even one woman who hasn’t struggled somewhere along the way.

When you struggle in the early stages—with getting pregnant, with staying pregnant, with a difficult pregnancy or a difficult childbirth or with breastfeeding or a difficult newborn—it’s hard not to see it as a sign of something. That you shouldn’t be a mom. That you’re a bad mom. That motherhood doesn’t come easy to you.

I’ve held my fair share of bad cards.

I have two kids, but have been pregnant four times. My first was at 19 and ended with an abortion. Even as an ardent pro-choice woman, that decision still colored me, felt like a failing.  I had thought of abortion as something fine for other people, but not something for me. Until I was there.

It wasn’t until many years later, when I wanted to be pregnant, that I realized how much meaning I had assigned my earlier experience. All of a sudden, it was a punishment well-deserved (so I harshly thought to myself) that I didn’t get pregnant the moment the intention popped into my head. In retrospect, it didn’t take long. But for those few months of “trying” (a euphemism if ever there was one), I was worried. Worried that I missed my chance, that I wouldn’t get a second one.

When my second conception ended in a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, that feeling deepened. I was being punished. I wasn’t meant to be a mother. There was something wrong with my body. That experience, complete with the loss of a third of my body’s blood, surgery and a complicated healing process, left me scarred. The scar on my body was deep and made it look like I’ve had a c-section.

The internal scars were more painful, and that awful feeling was deepened by the mystery about when or whether I would ever get pregnant again. The months between my second and third conceptions were sad. It was hard to be around anyone that reminded me of pregnancy or babies or moms.

The third time around, I was much luckier.

That pregnancy brought me my daughter. While pregnancy was fraught with things that felt worth complaining about at the time, it turned out that all of it was a “normal” part of the process. A happy pregnancy in retrospect, even if it felt awkward to live through.

My labor, though, wasn’t normal. It was a 4-day prodromal affair, a possibility I’d hardly paid attention to in my childbirth class. Kind of like the possibility of the ectopic pregnancy before it.

Again, I saw myself as someone who drew hard cards.

Motherhood had a way of easing me out of the feeling that I was being followed by a dark cloud, even as it had plenty of storms of its own.

But I finally felt lucky. I’d made it to motherhood. From early days, my daughter was easy—smart, beautiful, healthy, happier than I could even understand, a pure blessing. Being a mom was hard, but she was easy. Luck of the draw.

Then we gambled again. My second full-term pregnancy wasn’t nearly as cute as the first one. All those “normal” symptoms were even less fun that time around. But I made it through and wound up with a second birth that made me feel strong and capable and blessed. Another lucky card.

And then came nursing. With my second baby, I got mastitis five times before I gave up nursing. I also suffered some pretty terrible postpartum depression and anxiety. Quitting breastfeeding to return to the antidepressants I needed was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

When I was agonizing over the choice to stop nursing, I felt so judged. I’d nursed my first baby a few months beyond the one-year ideal. And I made it to nine months the second time around—farther than a lot of women can manage. I should have been happy, but it wasn’t my timetable. I was failing in my own mind, and again, my body was failing me. Failing to be able to do this womanly thing it was meant to do. I wasn’t strong enough to give my second child what I gave my first.

With all of that weighing down, I sent an email to our local parenting list-serv about my struggle to stop nursing. I live in a crunchy, hippy kind of town, where midwives and La Leche League rule the roost. I thought I would be attacked from all sides and encouraged to nurse through anything, no matter the cost to me. I secretly wanted to be told to keep nursing, so my contrarian self could somehow feel vindicated in quitting.

Instead, I got nothing but support. Dozens of emails encouraged me to do what was best for me, congratulated me for what I’d already done, sympathized with my struggle with mastitis, empathized with the guilt and the feelings of failure. Not one person told me to keep nursing through the pain—both physical and emotional. Not one woman said the slightest thing to make me feel bad about my body or what it was capable of doing. Not one.

I can’t explain how meaningful their camaraderie was to me.

Those early years of failed pregnancy, pregnancy and mothering of infants felt so fragile. I was so quick to think: Is there something wrong with me as a woman that I can’t do this pregnancy thing easily? Does the fact that I can’t keep nursing mean that I am less of a woman? Some kind of weaker mother?

Looking back now, I think: Those were my cards. That was the hand I was dealt.

Everyone holds different cards and no one has a perfect hand. Just because we can’t see that someone else has struggled—with fertility, with pregnancy, with depression, with nursing… with motherhood—doesn’t mean they’re winning some game we are losing. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It’s just not easy. At least, all of it isn’t easy. Not for anyone.

Motherhood is a stacked deck. We’re dealt the hand we’re dealt. I think it helps to think that every woman around has had at least one bad card, something she would discard is she could. And we all have our best card, too. Something to hold on to, to build a hand around.

The best part is—we get to discard what doesn’t serve us well. And we get new cards all the time.

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You are Not Me: Parenting & the American Dream

Happiest baby ever.

Articles with titles like, “Parental Anxiety? 5 Ways to Relieve the Worry” are a dime a dozen, but I recently read one with just that trite title that was really and truly helpful. 

Especially this little nugget that has been a skipping record ever since, “It’s normal to want our kids to do better than we did and not fall into the same holes. But it can be hard to see that perhaps that’s not where they’re headed.” Hmm.

A while back, my daughter uttered the sentence, “I wish I was dead,” twice in the span of a week or so. I. Freaked. Out.

I’ve been there. I’ve felt that. I have friends, multiple friends, who’ve ended up hospitalized from suicide attempts. I feel lucky never to have lost anyone that way, but I don’t feel far removed from it either.

So, I was terrified. Listening with my adult ears, filtering her words through the life I’ve lead, it was pretty much the worst thing I could imagine hearing from my child.

But then there was this nagging doubt, She doesn’t seem unhappy. There are no other warning signs. Maybe she had no idea what she was saying?

After talking with the school counselor, an administrator, and my therapist, I finally talked to a brilliant teacher. One who speaks fluent kid and can translate well for adults. She asked what my daughter was doing when she said it. “Laying down on the couch,” I answered.

At the time, I had been working an almost full-time job and both kids were in aftercare for the first time. In a short span of time, their days had gone from preschool and stay-at-home in their own space comfort to the length of an adult workday. She was tired. That’s what the teacher told me.

We have so many different ways of saying we’re tired—exhausted, weary, worn-out, fatigued, sleepy, drained… dead tired. She just had “tired” and what she felt wasn’t covered by that small word. Once I saw that and asked her about it and did something about it, there was no more talk of death. She really was just tired.

But, oh boy, did I totally go right there. And she was only 5 or 6 at the time. Imagine when she’s a teenager.

Happy babies!

All we really want is for our kids to have it better than we did. To be happier, healthier, stronger, braver… I think of it as “American Dream” parenting. A version of the American Dream for those of us who have struggled with such things. A hope that our children won’t share that legacy.

My particular legacy has definite roots in the family tree.

Time for a story. One I feel I can tell now that my grandfather has died. My mom told me about a time when my grandfather was so poor and so hungry that he went to visit a friend hoping to be fed. He didn’t ask for anything. That family was poor, too. He just hoped they would offer something. They didn’t. But he is asked to spend the night, which he agreed to do. When they went to sleep, he was so hungry, he ate their dog’s food. My grandfather was so hungry that he ate dog food. That’s the story.

I was never close to my grandfather. He scared me a little, even though he tried to be playful with me and my siblings. He was an alcoholic. He died of it, end stage dementia and all, sitting all day and cutting the newspaper into thin strips.

The one other thing that stands out, when I think of my grandfather and any relationship I had with him, is their basement. There was a room in their basement that looked like a grocery store. It was stocked with non-perishable food. When I was in college, they would always send me back to school with a grocery bag full of canned green beans and cake mix. Come to think of it, he was always cooking, too, a big pot of something German on the stove every time we visited.

The Depression hit him hard and he suffered for it. His life may have been hard, but his children were always fed. American Dream parenting. He did what he could.

And my mom, coming from this world, and all of it’s suffering and imperfect parenting, absolutely did the best she could do not to pass along to her four children the kind of suffering that she endured. American Dream parenting.

He did his best. She did hers. I do mine.

It makes me think of the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote about the social justice movement, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

That may seem too lofty, maybe it is. But for me and my family, living without depression and anxiety, without alcoholism, that is a “promised land.” And I really hope my children get there, even if I may not get there with them. And you know what? Right this minute, I really think they will.

Happiness is our birthright. It’s taken me nearly 40 years to be able to say that. I hope it seems like nothing to my kids. I hope they just are.

One of my biggest surprises as a parent has been how marvelously happy my kids are. I was shocked at first to see them just absolutely brimming with joy. I thought I’d have a mellow, maybe even melancholy, little one, but the happy just bubbled out of my babies.

It has tempered a little, of course, as they’ve gotten older. They no longer burst open with giggles over absolutely nothing. But they are still really happy kids. All I need to do is not ruin it. And not let the world ruin it. No biggie, right? 

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This is My Brave

…she's moving her body so brave and so free.
If I've got to remember that's a fine memory.
And I know…
That tonight will be fine,
Will be fine, will be fine, will be fine
For a while.

— Leonard Cohen, “Tonight Will Be Fine”

As a poet and a “mommy blogger,” I think a lot about over-sharing. Poets these days are not super fond of being called “confessional,” and anyone thoughtful who writes about their kids thinks a lot about their child’s right to a private life, now and in their online future.

So, as I write, I think… Do I really need to share this? Is it important to what I’m trying to say? Is it mine to share? Is it embarrassing? To someone else or just to me? Am I too mad or sad or whatever the non-alcoholic equivalent of drunk-texting would be? 

But even with my filter, I know I share things other people can’t say out loud. Or wouldn’t. 

And when I do this, I get called brave. It happens a lot, but still catches me off-guard.

Sometimes it sounds like relief, when people use that word—I can almost hear them breathe easier for a moment. Sometimes it sounds passive aggressive—Wow, that’s a very brave outfit you’re wearing! Sometimes it’s in the middle—a little uncomfortable but also grateful.

I’m not being cute or modest when I say that I don’t feel brave.

Brave—at least the definition my kids and I have agreed on, usually in relation to doctor visits involving shots—is being scared but doing it anyway.

That’s why I think it’s something not quite the same—I’m not brave to share, because I have no choice. If I tried not to share, I would be building myself a jail. If I tried to stop the words from leaving my body, they would brick up around me and I would die of it. If I didn’t tell the truth in public, I couldn’t be there. I’m sure it sounds exaggerated, but there are times when, if I didn’t speak, I couldn’t do anything. So it doesn’t feel like a choice. If I don’t write, say what I need to say, I am a wet mess.

I’m much more afraid to live a life where I don’t speak about the dark parts than to tell it like it is and let it all fall where it may. Would it be brave if I did that anyway? Kept my mouth closed? When I say what I need to say, I am building a scaffold around my body. It keeps me up when I might fall. When I say I have bad days, I don’t have to pretend, to hide something. And I don’t hide well. I think trying to hide would kill me.

I say the things I say because I want to be free. And I want other people to feel just a little more free. And because I believe storytelling saves lives. 

Apparently, I learned recently, there’s a t-shirt for that: “Storytelling Saves Lives.” Not quite as provocative as “Ask me about my abortion,” but really, truly the same thing.  

The shirts are the swag of an organization called This is My Brave. Their work skews a little on the Oprah side of things, but I hope they’re wildly successful. Their mission is essentially the reason I write about myself: “One day we will live in a world where we won’t have to call it “brave” when talking about mental illness. We’ll just call it talking.”

Every time someone tells me I am brave, I hear the lines from Leonard Cohen song above. I want to be this woman “moving her body so brave and so free.” That’s my ideal. I try for that. I try to throw off all the crap that keeps me from being free.

Last night, at bath time (too much information?), I watched as my six-year old daughter moved her naked self from her bedroom, where she undressed, to the bathroom with complete and total freedom. There are no thoughts that hold her back, no self-consciousness, no worries about who she is or how she looks. She just moves, from one room to another, totally free.

It’s almost shocking to me to watch it. How unburdened she is. How fully inhabited she is. Pure freedom. I can’t remember the last time I felt that way, naked or not. But I aspire. That’s where I want to be.

And to get anywhere near there, I need to tell you that I have hard days. That simple. Brave and free.

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How to be a Sad Mom

Do you ever have crying days?

Whole days where you can’t snap out? Where your face alternates between wet mess and tears-dried-stiff all day? Really low days when the slightest thing would push you right flat on the ground?

Days when you can’t do the dishes, can’t make dinner, can’t play a game with your kid? When you can't do more than just exist? 

And by exist, I mean watch Gilmore Girls or the West Wing again and again. So you can cry and your crying has some context. Do you have days when the just-barely-a-story plots of HGTV shows suddenly move you to tears?

One thing I loved about living in New York City is that you can walk around and cry and no one will bother you. No one will stop you or ask you what’s wrong. In the land of postage stamp apartments, sunglasses pass for privacy.

To outsiders it may seem cold, but I think New Yorkers respect the difference between an actual emergency requiring intervention and allowing another human being to have a bad day without having to answer to anyone.

The suburban version, as far as I’ve surmised, is to drive around in your car, going nowhere, listening to sad songs on the radio.

For me, there just are days like these. I imagine there always will be. But parenthood complicates, as it does.

Before I was a mom, on days like this, I would wander drug store aisles for an hour before I even thought about what I was doing. It somehow seemed like the best way to fake looking like a functional human being. I mean, I was there, so I must have been doing errands, right? That’s a thing productive members of society do. Errands. Very respectable.

Being a mom makes being sad harder. It makes everything harder, really, but this thing in particular. Anyone with a kid can tell you—there’s no wandering aimlessly around a drug store for an hour time. Often, there’s no alone at all. Someone is always there, no matter what kind of day you’re having. 

When my kids were really little, on days like this, I would drive and cry, so they couldn't see my face. When they got older, the hiding places changed—kitchen, bathroom, wherever I could pretend I was busy doing normal things—even if the bad days didn’t.

Once they are old enough to know that they are not the only person in the world, kids turn into little mirrors, looking back at you, with their little faces matching your expression.

And you have to think about what you want them to see when they see you. Is it ok for them to see you cry? How often? And how can you explain it? Because those “why” questions come as soon as they can speak.

I think it's important for kids to see open, honest emotion. I don’t mind arguing in front of the kids, or kissing or anything else that’s part of the ups and downs of life. I think it helps them recognize what to do with their own emotions.

But sometimes it’s something else. Sometimes you don’t know what to let them see. It gets complicated to pull it all apart, to figure out what normal sad looks like and when it goes too far.

But what’s a normal sad day? When is it ok to let your kids see you cry? And when does it cross over into something else?

It’s hard to be sad when you’re still expected to be a mother. To feel the pressure of being responsible for another human being even when you feel like crap. The kids are there either way, every day.

These are the days when it really helps to know that other moms—your friends—have days like these, too. I know only because I ask. Most people don’t want to tell other people that they did nothing all day because they just… couldn’t. 

If you’re not sleeping and can’t even put together a complete thought, let alone explain why you’re randomly crying, another mom can tell you—that’s just normal sad. Just a part of being a mom. Get some rest, it will pass.

If you find your mind veering into scary territory where you imagine everyone in your family dies and you are a sort of numb kind of relieved to start your life all over again, it helps to know that just about every mom who’s honest will tell you they’ve had that thought, too, if only in low moments here and there. Not to worry, you won’t stay long.  

If it helps to hear — on those hard days, when the constant, high-pitched sound of your daughter’s voice sometimes makes you want to curl inside your own body — that other mothers know that feeling, and it doesn’t make you a bad mom, then you know it’s just a normal hard mom day.

But sometimes I feel so sad that I feel like I can’t be a mother. I don’t want my kids to see that. Or worse, to feel that.

When it’s at its worst, when there have been too many bad days… When it's gets harder to hide… When it comes out as impatience and feels like hatred… When I shake and shake and it sticks (it can be so sticky)… When I can't see through… When I forget that it will end… When I'm not sure there will be an end… When it feels like the new normal, like I have always been this way, this is who I am, this always-sad person… I worry. I worry I can't be a mom, that it's too much, that I'm going to ruin them. I worry they’re going to see this, learn this.

This kind of crying is not something I want them to see. There’s no way to explain it. Nothing to attach it to. It just seeps out from center to surface. Like sometimes I just feel saturated, can't take in any more. It isn't honest—it's a betrayal, a symptom of a sickness I don't want to spread, a fragility I'm not proud of.

Motherhood takes its toll. Every day, whether you're ok or not, you have to make it to the end of the day anyway. You have to feed them and get them to sleep, whether you think you can or not.

Ultimately, that’s the part that makes you stronger—the marathon mom part. The strength you create that gets you there when you don’t think you’ll make it. The endurance you build by simply enduring. Because there is nothing else, because it’s what moms do. By making it through to the other side where you can see that you are strong, you can endure. Because you just did.

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Moms Should Suffer

After ignoring nagging pain in my teeth for years, I finally went to the dentist recently.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had annual cleanings since kids came along, but skipped x-rays and generally dismissed the pain for a long time. I was pregnant, I was nursing, I was pregnant again, I was nursing again… I was busy. I was a mom with little kids. So many excuses. So many reasons to ignore myself.

Those little kids of mine have had dental appointments every six months that I wouldn’t think to skip—and they have nothing wrong with their teeth.

But when it came to taking care of myself in this basic way, there was always something else that seemed more urgent. I know I’m not alone in delayed self-care. It’s one of those mom-things so prevalent that we hardly notice it. 

But like they say about justice, “Self-care delayed is self-care denied.”

It turns out that my pain wasn’t caused by a cavity, as I’d assumed. Apparently, I clench my teeth so much that it’s causing general gum sensitivity. Which has built up to the point of acute pain. The two dental assistants—both older women, moms and grandmothers—both said that teeth clenching is a classic mom problem.

As my dentist said, “You can’t really get rid of stress as long as you’re a mom, so we treat the impact.” His own wife, a mother of four, has been wearing a night guard—the main recommendation for treatment—for about twenty years. I can’t stop being a mom. So minimizing the impact mom-stress has on me is pretty much my only choice.

Stress is no joke—we suffer from it, our bodies suffer from it. Our near constant stress builds up in our bodies to the point of physical pain. Pain we often ignore for as long as possible.

In my case, the stress-induced jaw-clenching got so bad that… I finally *had* to deal with it.

I’ve been thinking for a long time about sentences like that one: “It got so bad that…” In my early mom years, I caught myself saying things like that A LOT. And I knew I had heard that voice before… from my own mom. 

It got so bad that…

“At six months, my son was up six times a night and my exhaustion got so bad that I was afraid I would drop him trying to carry him down the stairs.”

“Our house was such a mess. It got so bad that you could smell the dishes piled up in the kitchen sink when you opened the front door.”

“We have so much laundry piled up. It got so bad that we were rinsing out dirty underwear in the sink just to get dressed.”

It’s like we can’t justify doing something to make our burdens easier until they reach some kind of terrible climax. Even when we can see the bad thing coming from a mile away, it’s not until it’s right on top of us that we feel like we can justify doing something about it. Unless I’m in tears, unable to cope anymore with some stressful thing, until someone gets hurt or something breaks or I’m so ragged I become physically sick, I feel like I can’t intervene to make it better. 

I can’t ask for help unless I have a terrible story to tell first. It’s like I’m afraid that I’ll be judged for taking care of myself before I fall apart. If it’s not clear that I’m about to absolutely collapse, I’d better keep trying, even if some part of me knows where things are headed.

But I know I can’t stay up every night and not suffer. I know my husband and I need to have date nights before we feel like we’re strangers to each other. I know I need time alone before I start to yell at my kids. I don’t need to wait to hear myself yelling before I step back and realize that I need a break.

So, I’ve tried to make it into a kind of mantra. Instead of waiting for something (or someone) to break, I’m trying to make things easier starting at the moment when I realize it’s not sustainable behavior. If I start to hear myself going down the “it got so bad” road, I try to intervene on my own behalf before the bad thing happens. I try not to wait until I have that sentence I could say to everyone that will make it plain to see that I had no other choice than to make my life easier.

Clearly, I have more work to do, because it got so bad that I had sharp jabbing pain in my mouth. I had to go to the dentist. I had to take care of myself. Because it got that bad. Actually, I needed to take care of myself before I let it get that bad.

By the way, the mouthguard really helps. Why did I wait so long?

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Imposter Mom Syndrome

Both times we left the hospital with new babies, I felt like an imposter. Like an overgrown teenager who didn’t take the grown-up test and wouldn’t have passed. “They’re really gonna let us just walk out the door like this, with a baby human? Who’s in charge of checking in to make sure we’re doing it right?”

I’ve talked to lots of friends about this imposter syndrome, and they have had this moment, too. One day, you wake up and the police officers are way younger than you, and it’s weird.

But I realized something this week: I’m a grown-up.

No, really, I totally am. Leaving a job that wasn’t working for me or my family was a decisive move. One of the most self-directed intentional thing I’ve ever done. There have been a lot of “Sure, why not?" moments along the way. There was an open door somewhere and I went through it.

This time, when my life wasn’t the way I wanted it to be, I changed it.

For now, I’ve renewed my stay-at-home status. There are people who believe I am doing just the right thing, focusing on my family, not working outside the home. Some of them, I would not like very much. And there are people who think I’m a relic, not living up to modern day commandments. I probably wouldn’t like most of them either.

This week it hit me—I’m in charge of me.  The only question I need to answer in my current self-doubting, insecure incarnation is this: Am I ok with me?

I know that sounds horribly trite, like a big fat cliché. I’ve had these thoughts many times, but this time was different. Because this time I’m a grown up.

The people who would judge who I am based on my current state of affairs—one way or the other—will step off, as we used to say back in the day, if I feel good about what I’m doing and emanate that feeling. Or at least I’ll stop seeing their judge-y faces because I’m too busy living my life according to my own, grown-up desires.

Don’t get me wrong here. There are days when I’m no Rosie the Riveter. The self-confidence required to not only figure out what you want to do, but to do it and not ask anyone else for advice, that’s pretty grown-up. There are bound to be slip-ups.

In grad school, I had a professor who told me that my poetry is “not for everyone,” but that people who “get” me will “really get” me. It’s kind of like being okay with that. I’m not for everyone.

Over the last six years, since I have become a mother, I have found it incredibly hard to be okay with me, to feel confidence in my choice, but I never really figured out whether those questioning voices were coming from someone else or from me.

When I was first home with my first baby, I went through a whole messy process of trying to figure out who this new person was. She doesn’t work, she runs playgroups, she does mommy and me yoga. Was that ok? Was I happy? Did I need more? And then the anxious questions tumble out… What if my husband left me? What if he suddenly died? It was a vulnerable place to be and it made me very insecure—financially and emotionally.

Home again now, after working a real, pays-me kind-of-job, I’m cycling through all of that again. All of the doubts, the insecurities and the questions came back at me full force in a way I had not expected.

Working at a job gave me the confidence that I still have value in that part of the world, that I have something to offer and am welcome if/when I choose it. I spent money without checking in first, because it was my money. And I hadn’t even really noticed that, when I wasn’t working, I had felt like it wasn’t mine. With the first paycheck, that feeling of security came back and reminded me what life is like when you earn your own money.

That may be the hardest part of being “at home” for me—completely relying on another person in a whole body-whole life kind of way. Just like falling in love and realizing what you’ve just handed to someone is the ability to hurt you.

Having kids adds to this, because it’s about more than whether I get hurt, it’s about my instinct to protect these vulnerable offspring who have been entrusted to me. What if I’m suddenly, by accident or choice, the only one to love and feed and clothe and support them? Yikes.

Having a job comforted that part of my mind. I thought it would last, but now I think it’s just a part of it. Being a “stay-at-home” mom is a choice to be vulnerable, and it needs to be paired with the peace of mind that I would be able to do all of those grown-up things if it was left to me alone. And then letting it go.

Because you can’t think about all of the weight of that every day and stay sane.

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6 Articles Every Mom Should Read

In case you missed it (or if you're too cool to read anything about parenting), this is my list of must-reads. The best of the best in recent writing on being a parent. I hope to keep adding to it and would love to hear suggestions for the most brilliant writing you've seen about parenting our littles.

One.

Open Letter to New Mama Me

Written by a mom of older kids, she shares what she knows now that she wished she knew when her kids were new. I wish I had read this as a new mom. I wish every new mom would read this. There's a very memorable image about Google Maps that may require a tissue or two. If you've been there, you will still remember how it felt.

Two.

Don't Carpe Diem

You know when you're in the grocery store, covered in snot and at your wit's ends, about to burst open because your baby has been crying all day? And then some sweet old lady says, "Treasure every precious moment." And you kinda, just a little, want to punch her in the face. Yeah, don't seize the day, that'll drive you crazy. 

Three.

Mom Stays in the Picture

I still remember my mom in a kelly green bathing suit, looking great, even if she hadn't recently had four kids, telling my dad not to take her picture with us. I'm glad he did anyway. I love that picture. Your kids will love every photo of you, especially if it's with them, because they really do love you and think you're beautiful.

Four.

Is Motherhood Causing My Depression? 

The chicken or the egg, in the age of choice parenting. This is hard, raw, honest...

Five.

Orange Rhino

I'm sure you never yell, but just in case you ever feel yourself going there, break the glass and read this emergency intervention essay. Seriously, it really will make the yelling stop. At least for a little while.

Six.

The Overprotected Kid

A long but deeply insightful look at what anxious parenting does to kids (and parents) and all that our kids are missing that really, truly used to exist in the world--and not even so long ago. 

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