On Motherhood and Fulfillment

For much of my life, mothering was all I could picture myself doing. As I neared the end of high school, when people would ask what I planned to do, I would tell them that I planned to be a wife and a mother. As I picture myself saying that now, I feel nauseated. 

It's not that there's anything at all wrong with being a wife or a mother, and it's not that I don't love being both of those things. It's just that I had so much to learn about myself, life, the world, the human experience: everything. I'm thankful I wasn't dating anyone seriously back then, because oh so much would change in the years that followed as I distanced myself from the small, homogeneous town I grew up in. I'm confident that I'm a far better wife and mother for the changes that occurred. But I digress.

Thanks to the fact that I didn't know anyone I was particularly interested in marrying (or, ahem, who was particularly interested in marrying me) when high school graduation rolled around, some combination of hard work and good luck or good karma landed me in a career. That's another story entirely, but by the time I met the man who would become my husband I was quite the independent lady, if I do say so myself. I was teaching at what I still consider to be the best Montessori school in the US of A, working in marketing, and running a small business of sorts. I was far too busy, but I was self-sufficient,.free, and in control. In fact, when I met the daddy, I had just returned from a thoroughly mind-blowing summer in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where I had gone simply to practice the language. Alone. I loved my life, and for the first time I realized that I actually loved myself, too. Things were by no means perfect, and I still had much to learn, but things were good.

Now here I am: a wife and a mother. I love my daughter more than I knew I was capable of loving anyone, ever. Like any couple, we have our moments, but I adore my husband and am incredibly thankful to be on this journey with him. I have no regrets with respect to the life I've chosen. That said, I finally feel that I'm recovering from "pregnancy brain" and "new mom brain" and I've reached a mini-crisis (and I use that term very loosely here) of sorts. The problem, I suppose, is two fold: I don't make any money, and no one cares if I get dressed in the morning or even if I speak in complete sentences, really.

I realize that my work as a mother is valuable. I do a great deal for our household and many days I work harder than my husband does, but I don't get a paycheck. We share a bank account and have more or less equal control over our finances. It's not an inability to go and get the things I need that bothers me, it's this feeling that I'm spending someone else's money. Even though I'm really not. For nearly a decade, I had no break between paychecks. I was always earning money somewhere, and for many years before that I scrounged up cash through babysitting and odd jobs wherever I could. Now I'm dependent on someone else's paycheck, and that's not easy to get used to. 

I feel like an understanding of child development is quite helpful in my parenting. I often employ the same principles I used as a teacher to prepare activities for Annabelle and to evaluate and change our home environment to remove obstacles to her development. I use problem solving skills throughout the day to try to determine what might be bothering her and how to fix it. Mothering certainly involves the intellect, but the majority of the day to day work of it is intuitive. At least for me, it's a nurturing, feeling occupation more so than an intellectual one. I am honored to be my daughter's mother, but there are days when I find myself, somewhere between cleaning poop out of the bathroom cabinet (yes, that really happened today) and scraping oatmeal off the wall, fondly remembering my days in the work force.

I know that my feelings are valid and they make sense, but a little voice inside me tries to tell me that they're inappropriate. Plenty of women (and men) would love to be in my shoes - how dare I be anything but thankful? The thing about feelings that seem inappropriate, though, is that everyone has them, and people too seldom talk about them, which is why I share this mini-mothering crisis with you. You see, I am thankful, but I'm also adjusting. Life is full of growing paints. It's full of challenges and confusion and feelings that just plain don't make sense, but we feel them anyway, and that's okay. 

Is motherhood fulfilling? My goodness yes, in so many ways. It fulfills so many longings in me - some that I never really knew were there to begin with. It fulfills me in ways I can't begin to describe. It just doesn't fulfill my desire to be independent and self-sufficient, but the funny thing is: I suspect I will one day realize that's a good thing. Perhaps motherhood is teaching me to relinquish a bit of control and find a different kind of fulfillment.