I say that motherhood is hard. I say it a lot. Especially when I write.
Sometimes I feel self-conscious about this. I don’t want people to read what I write and come away with the impression that I define motherhood as hard. I don’t.
To me, motherhood is all things beautiful and amazing. Most everything good that can be experienced through life can be experienced through the family. The love and struggle and compassion and mercy and camaraderie, and warmth… it’s all there. We don’t often need to look much further.
And yet I am constantly saying it is hard.
And I write this blog for myself and for all of you. But mostly, I write it for my girls. I write it so that I can stay whole, so that I can remember who I am when I’m not mom. And this is a gift for them – my attempt at being a whole person for them.
But I also write it so they can look back years from now and know me then. I want them to know how very fulfilled I was doing this work that I am doing now. I want them to understand how much joy they bring to me. I want them to know what it was like being their mom. How much they changed me. How much they challenge me. How much they help me become the person I want to be.
And yet I am constantly saying it is hard.
And I will continue to say this. Not because I have a harder time than most with it. Not because it is how I define motherhood. Not because I want sympathy.
But rather, just because it is true.
It is hard waking up in the middle of the night for months on end. It’s hard putting your head down on the pillow knowing that the next time you open your eyes it will be to go comfort a crying baby. It’s hard to maintain patience when multiple people are asking for something every moment of the day. It’s hard having no privacy. It’s hard having too much to do. It’s hard having everything you do be undone. And it’s hard loving so very much and sending that love out into the world and praying that the world will treat it gently, will nurture it, and will give it back whole.
And it’s hard being mom because mom is more than a title. For many of us, it’s the title. We might have a dozen other titles and names, but mom is the one that always calls us home. Mom is the one we judge the others by. Mom is what fuels us and inspires us and what sometimes eclipses the other names even when sometimes we wish the others could have a little more time to shine.
And it’s hard being home. It’s hard being the one who is always needed because… well, you are always needed. Mom and Dad are the two words in the English language that can’t be replaced. You can quit a job and someone will come after. You can resign a post, leave a friendship, move out of town, but you can’t escape those titles or the responsibilities they carry. Because when you are mom, no one else can be you. And that’s an honor. And it’s hard.
And I say all of this, I write all of this, I preach all of this because we need to acknowledge that it’s hard. That it’s overwhelming. That most of us feel like we are failing most of the time.
Because that’s the secret we keep. That’s what we don’t tell each other. We might share stories of sleepless nights or endless piles of laundry, but how often do we share those deep feelings of inadequacy? How often do we tell each other that we wonder if we are enough? If we will ever be enough? How often do we confide just how lost and confused and scared and lonely we all are in this mess?
And yet we are. I would bet every single one of us, in our dark and quiet moments, feels at least a little bit of that doubt, of that uncertainty. And I bet all of us at maybe more times than we wish feel the weight of that responsibility.
And we keep it inside. I think maybe because that’s what our culture tells us to do. It wants us to portray motherhood as this crowning glory of every woman’s life. And for many of us it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hard.
Mothering is about love. It’s about more and less, but when it comes down to it, being a mom is about being love for someone else. And that’s supposed to be beautiful and honest… but they try to tell us that means it’s also easy. And it’s not.
So I write this because I want you all to see that you aren’t alone in your moments of doubt and sadness and worry. I want my girls to know that being their mother is the most fulfilling role I have ever filled. But I also want them to know that when they are mothers and they are sitting in a dark room in the middle of the night sharing sobs with an infant that they aren’t alone. They aren’t weird for feeling the weight of it all. No. They are normal. This is normal.
Life is about balance. And motherhood is about balance. It’s about balancing the needs of oneself and another. About balancing a marriage with children. About balancing responsibilities with caregiving.
And it’s also about acknowledging the balance between the easy and the hard. The good and the bad. The peace and the chaos.
There is not a single thing in this world I would trade motherhood for. It fulfills me in ways I never knew were possible.
But I won’t stop saying it’s hard.
That wouldn’t be fair to me. Or you. Or my girls.
If motherhood were easy, there would be no glory in it. When we love so deeply, we feel so deeply. And when we feel deeply, some of those feelings will be unpleasant and hard.
But I have yet to find anything worth keeping that wasn’t hard. It’s the challenge that makes it what it is. It’s the glory in giving our all that helps us understand who we are and who they are.
So yes, motherhood is hard.
And it’s beautiful.
And it’s challenging.
And it’s joy.
It’s all of it. And it always has been. From the first time a mother laid eyes on the first baby, this world has known the all encompassing power of motherhood. And it has been passed down through the ages from mother to child all the way to us and our little ones.
I’m proud to be a part of that tribe.
And I’m proud of the struggle.