When you become a mother no one tells you what really lies ahead of you. There is no mention of the self doubt. Or the hardest choices. No one tells you how much more difficult it becomes the older your little ones get.
No one tells you that motherhood is a continuous attempt to shore up what you know is best for your children against what you know is best for yourself. That at times these overlap felicitously, creating a single glimmering image of what you think motherhood is supposed to feel like all the time; blissful, reciprocal, the warp and the weft dancing together to weave a more beautiful whole.
But that at other times the space between the two feels like a chasm that cannot be bridged, your little ones’ needs and desires in opposition to your own. These moments feel hopeless and hard. They hold impossible choices. They’re spent grasping for what is right and questioning everything.
So often I feel like I am failing; I give until the well runs dry and then I believe that I can will what is needed back into existence again. But of course that isn’t how it works. I watch other mothers my age who dote endlessly on their children seeming to sacrifice themselves continuously with little to no thought for their own well being. I wonder how they do it.
