floating

Motherhood is an instant life makeover, with a huge learning curve. Having always spent so much time with kids, I felt well equipped heading into this. Still, there are things that no matter how much you're told, how much you prepare, there's just no way to truly understand. Motherhood makes you stronger for certain, but what no one mentions is that with every moment that makes you grow, a new vulnerability creeps in.

Now, this is not intended like those elitist conversations you always hear in movies (and hopefully only in movies). "Do you have children yet? Well, then you really wouldn't understand, would you?" No, it is entirely possible to stand on the outside of a situation looking in and still manage a sympathetic connection. I know women with children who would have no clue how I could be so emotional, and childless women who can completely understand in parallel.

I'm a sympathetic person to begin with and tend to internalize the feelings of others to a fault. I absorb moods and find it difficult to set them aside. The thing I never realized was that the ability you had to absorb emotions before increases ten fold the moment you give birth. Movies you used to watch are intolerable. News stories send you to bed with nightmares and common gossip stops you in your tracks. Dave has now gotten used to me walking out of the room or simply asking him to turn off the tv, though I doubt he'll ever really understand.

Stories of family tragedy that used to sadden me in passing now shake me to my core as I step for a moment into that family's shoes. The baby who is battling the household cold one day and is unexpectedly gone the next. The infant who dies in labor, leaving behind parents who have to learn how to raise an invisible child, to live knowing they will never see his smiling eyes. Or the mom who miscarries and struggles with how to know her baby. The child whose entire earthly life is cancer treatments, who nurses to sleep forever after battles bigger than many adults withstand. The mom who has to kiss her five year old boy goodbye, knowing that the world will carry on without her tomorrow. She's not ready to stop being a mom and wonders what he will remember of her. And those are just families here in our happy, healthy social circles, not even ones in poor living conditions, surviving in the wake of war or natural disasters. Sometimes I feel too exhausted to begin thinking about the heartbreaking situations out there.

There's no correlation where tragedy hits. Private families, public families, good people, "bad" people. Life just happens, all of it to everyone. And it's too short, too sweet to pass up, too beautiful to take for granted. I had no idea going into this how raw motherhood can make your heart. Some days my whole body aches with the sympathetic pain of these families. And yet I have the luxury of putting it aside, wearing the sorrow for as long as it takes to gather perspective, but taking it off when it becomes too heavy. How is that fair?

I feel foolish for looking in, for thinking I can assume to understand even a little. And as I nurse my aching, teething daughter to sleep, fully expecting a lifetime of tomorrows together, I can't let myself go down the road of wondering why we're together when so many families aren't. All I can do to heal the guilt of luck is to try each day to appreciate just how much we have. It's the best I can do to stay afloat.