expectations Archives -

Let it go. It’s all right.

September 5, 2015 by Farewell Stranger ·

I’m driving down a road I’ve never been on, sun streaming in, music on the radio.

I’ve run away again.

***

For the last few weeks I’ve been carrying the pain of this in my gut. Before that it was in my head, threatening to take over so I pushed it down, but it’s making me sick. It can’t be pushed down or ignored.

“What’s true is true,” the voice on the radio had said, reporting on someone else’s journey from pain to acceptance. “What’s true is true,” I thought. It is what it is. I can’t change it and it will happen whether I like it or not. There’s no point refusing to accept it because what’s true is true. It is what it is.

***
Acceptance is one thing. I’ve tried to get there. I sit and breathe and try to accept. I feel mostly flat.

Letting go, on the other hand, is active, deliberate. Letting go is hard, necessary.

Letting go is something altogether different.

I take a deep breath and think, Right. Let it go. And then the tears come.

This is the work I need to do.

***
Those who have been here before me assure me it gets better. Those who have already walked the path from married to not assure me there is beauty on the other side. Sweetness. A bit of freedom. A different but happy future.

I can see all of that. I can. I can see how it could be so good for me and even possibly better. I can see how my kids will be okay. But I can also see the big and significant things I’m losing.

***
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us,” said Joseph Campbell, whom I have quoted here before.

I had forgotten about that quote, hadn’t thought about how it applies in this situation until I read this very wise piece. And it does, of course, in much more literal ways than the circumstances I had applied it to before.

“Your post-divorce life may be radically different from the life you once expected, so you’ll have to refocus your vision to match your new circumstances. Divorce initiates major life changes, many of which are extremely unwelcome and difficult to accept… Events you once blissfully looked forward to — growing old with your spouse, sitting side by side at your children’s weddings, hosting your grandchildren together — probably aren’t going to happen… It’s not easy, but if you want to be happy, you’ll have to let go of the old image of your life and replace it with an exciting new vision of your own design.”

–Shari Lifland

You’ll have to let go…

***

Once again a friend has said, “You can stay at my place,” except this time it’s on the other side of the country. So here I am, in a place I have always wanted to visit, in a setting so beautiful it can’t help but inspire peace. The atmosphere of this place – beach and shells and quiet and shades of turquoise – makes me feel decidedly somewhere else. And very far away.

I have three days here to find myself somewhere I haven’t been. I have three days to let it go.

And when I get home I’m going to accept. And find a way to move on.

***

Driving down that road I’ve never been on with the sunshine streaming in, the voice on the radio is different.

“I’ve got a smile on my face, I’ve got four walls around me
The sun in the sky, the water surrounds me
I’ll win now but sometimes I’ll lose
I’ve been battered, but I’ll never bruise, it’s not so bad

And I say way-hey-hey, it’s just an ordinary day
and it’s all your state of mind
At the end of the day, you’ve just got to say,
it’s all right.”

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: admissions, depression, Divorce, expectations, going public, meltdown, perspective, travel

On High Standards and Hating Myself

October 15, 2013 by Farewell Stranger ·

A couple of years ago I wrote a post for Just.Be.Enough with this title. It sounds sensational, but it pretty much summed up much of my experience with PPD.

Motherhood is hard enough without the movie-perfect baby and the Mommy Wars, but when we add those things in and still believe we should be able — effortlessly, flawlessly, and with a smile — to live up to our own high standards for motherhood, we’re pretty much doomed from the start. I was anyway.

In any case, I reflected on that in my post, which I’m thrilled to have had published on Mamalode. Come and reflect with me, won’t you?

Filed Under: Motherhood · Tagged With: admissions, expectations, mom's instinct, perspective

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

May 12, 2013 by Farewell Stranger ·

Disappointment is a shitty feeling. It means you wanted something and didn’t get it, that you let yourself hope and that hope wasn’t fulfilled, that you opened yourself up to possibility and got shut down.

I am disappointed today and it feels petty and first-world-problem-ish.

It started with gratitude for a chance to sleep in and a small boy who put his heart (and hands) on paper. My boys said, “This day is for you” and I felt special and loved. All I had was one simple wish: to have a nice day with my family.

I did my part. I played along when the small boy wanted to lead me downstairs with my eyes closed. I let him make my breakfast even though it took longer and I was afraid he was going to pour milk all over the floor. I listened and responded and hugged and did all the things good mothers are supposed to do. But for the majority of the day he was—to be frank—quite beastly, and I stopped being able to do those things.

Our outing got rained on, which made it not worth what we had paid for it. We had dinner in a place that should have been lovely but was instead simply a spot to get some food in our tummies, taking bites in between admonishments to hold the cup with hands not teeth and to keep feet off the table, before getting back in the car and driving home well after bedtime.

Maybe the small boy was beastly because he was bored or excited or simply because he’s four. There is no way to force him to stop doing the things we ask him not to do, and we can’t duct tape him to the roof of the car.

In any case, I didn’t get my simple wish, and that’s disappointing.

And then there are two pieces I was hoping would be published and (so far) have not been. And a dear friend was left out of something and my heart hurts for her, especially because she gives so much to others.

I want to invite possibility and joy and wonder. I appreciate that beauty when it’s gifted to me, and I’ve had a lot of perfect days lately with sun, friends, food and family. Today just wasn’t one of those days.

But there are bigger problems in the world. I got what was important today – time and love and acknowledgement.

You can’t always get what you want, especially when you have a four-year-old. But I’m trying to remember that I’ve got what I need.

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: admissions, expectations

Say What You Need to Say

April 14, 2013 by Farewell Stranger ·

I’ve been thinking a lot about resentment lately. I suppose that’s normal when your entry into motherhood is a crying-filled, sleepless smackdown and you subsequently have a second baby who offers you the sort of experience you expected to have when you became a mom. At least it’s normal for me.

“This isn’t the experience with motherhood I wanted you to have,” I remember my mom saying to me one day while I cried on the phone to her when Connor was a baby.

It wasn’t the experience I wanted to have either. It’s not that I thought having a baby should be lullaby perfect, but I didn’t want it to be filled with quite so much despair.

The moment my mom said that to me is a milestone in my motherhood journey. From where I stand now I see that moment like a marker stabbed into the sand on my path, noting what came before and what would follow after. This is how the beginning will always be for you, says the sign next to it. You can’t relive those earlier months and your motherhood picture will always be shaped by this experience. You don’t get to do it again and have it be easier, more fulfilling, more fun.

No, I don’t.

But do I resent Connor?

No, I don’t.

***

I danced with Ethan this morning.

He was full of smiles when I went to get him out of bed to start the day. I fed him and then he played happily in his high chair while I had breakfast. He splashed in the bath, experimenting with what happens when he kicks his feet.

We’ve been working on sleep lately and this morning, not for the first time, he had a nice, long nap. He woke up, pink-cheeked and laughing. I fed him and then thought he might like some play time on the floor, but he didn’t. So we danced.

“Say what you need to say,” sang John Mayer, as I held Ethan around the waist and placed my hand in his small chubby one. He put his nose in the crook of my neck and leaned his cheek against mine. He let me sing and he stuck to me as I swayed, breathing him in.

***

If Ethan had been my first baby, I wouldn’t have spent so much time bouncing a screaming baby. I wouldn’t have logged hours in his room trying to get him to sleep and wondering at what point my sanity would actually break. I wouldn’t have been anxious about doing errands or shopping for groceries in case he had a colossal meltdown in public.

I would have been able to go to play dates without dreading having to go home and deal with him by myself. I would have had more hot meals. I would have had more meals, period. I would have cherished the time and his laugh and those slobbery, open-mouthed kisses without wondering why the lovely baby stuff had to be overshadowed by so very much hard stuff.

That sign in the sand is right. I don’t get a motherhood do-over, though my experience with Ethan has given me a glimpse of what might have been.

With a different baby, my early days of motherhood might have been more peaceful. They might have been more fun. They might even have been diaper-commercial sweet. With a second, very different baby, I can see it now.

***

Do I resent Connor?

No, I don’t.

I don’t resent him, neither the baby he was nor the boy he is now. But do I resent my introduction to motherhood and wish it had been different?

Sometimes. A little bit. I do.

Say what you need to say.

Filed Under: Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: admissions, expectations, perspective, telling the truth

Thoughts on Birth Plans

December 12, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

You probably know that the whole birth experience thing is kind of one of my passions, right? I spent four years being righteously pissed off about ending up with a scheduled C-section with Connor and the whole of this last pregnancy hoping for a different outcome. And I did get the med-free VBAC I was hoping for. (Yay!)

Last night I told Rich I kinda sorta wanted to have another birth just to know what it would be like. He looked at me like I was crazy. I don’t actually want another baby, and the thought of going through all that after-the-fact pain again freaks me right out, but I’m still curious about how it would go.

One thing I totally know — after my experiences and hearing others’ stories — is that you just never know how a birth is going to go. I knew that before I had a baby, and I really, really knew that once my first was born. And so I went into the experience with Ethan’s birth hoping and planning a little bit but trying not to get stuck on one particular outcome. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book reviews, Pregnancy, Stuff I like · Tagged With: expectations