"Chirren"

I recently have been feeling lonely and a little overwhelmed with the task of parenting. I've been aware of a few instances where my current reality doesn't match the perception I previously held when I used to imagine myself as a mother and my life in that role. I guess I thought I would always have the answers, or that I would enjoy literally every second. Maybe I thought my children would be always easy.

Sadness and shame can rise up when I realize this. It all together compounds the loneliness. The way I deal with this is by reaching out for connection with other moms and friends. Hearing that I'm not alone in my fears and worries is such a gift. hat a gift to hear that I'm not the only one and I'm not alone in my fears or disappointments.

Thankfully, I came across this excerpt by Anne Lammott who articulates my thoughts and feelings on the matter quite precisely. Her words are like a beacon for me, reminding me that I will be shown exactly what I need to know when the time is right.

Anne is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict author who shares her experiences about grace and change and life and God and relates them to mothering.

A quote from "Chirren", (Children)  a chapter in her book, "Grace (eventually)":

"A sober friend told me that while fear and confusion often swirl around us, faith is straight ahead: I trusted that even though I didn't know a thing about taking care of infants, toddlers, kids or teenagers, I would be shown the next right step on a need-to-know basis. I trusted that other parents would help me every step of the way, and that if I did not keep secrets when motherhood was going particularly badly, there would be healing and enough understanding and stamina to get by. And this has proven to be true.

I thought there would be a little more downtime. That's a good one.

I believed that at some point rather early on, a quiet confidence would inform me, and it did sometimes. But I was stunned by how afraid I felt all the time, too.

I thought a lot of things: There would be some sort of deep communion between me and my child, a fleshy communion of delicious skin on mine, of smells and textures and silences. This bond would be so rich and deep and intuitive that my lifelong quest for a sense of connectedness would at last be over. Much of this was fantasy, the longing of a lonely, scared child. But there was and is the experience of truly twining with another human soul. There was soft, unarmored baby skin, and that was priceless, and there was also much juiciness in our bond--although I was unprepared for what uncomfortable juice it would be, and how it came with such lumps and grit in it.

I believed that being a parent would be a more glorious circuit than it's turned out to be--that the transmission would be more reliable...

...Having a child, forces you to connect with your mortality, forces you to dig into places within that you have rarely had to confront before. What I found by having a child is a kind of eternity, a capacity for--and reserves of--love and sacrifice that blew my mind. But I also found the stuff inside me that is pretty miserable. I was brought face to face with a fun-house mirror of all the grasping, cowardly, manipulative, greedy parts of me, too.

I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from. Now when I watch him sleep, I know that he somehow came from life, only I cannot put it into words any better than that. "  written by Anne Lamott, all rights reserved.