This past weekend, I was in Chicago taking a class and falling in love {yes, again. you can basically assume that I am always falling in love anywhere I go. more on that later}.
I didn’t miss my kids.
I enjoyed the glory of waking up in the morning without having to worry about angry toddlers yelling their way into my room for the first time in…I don’t know how long.
We don’t have a full length mirror in the house. There was one at the hotel. I looked at the mirror and practiced admiring my body. I recognized my body dysmorphia. I said hello, good morning, and fuck you.
I watched cable TV for the first time in, probably ever. I was exhausted, but I enjoyed watching Law & Order with all these fun commercial breaks. I remember when I used to be so annoyed with commercials. Now they sounded like music to my ears as I watched them without any interruption from small children.
I got to witness myself in silence and without external distractions. I got to watch my body move through the world on my own terms. I got to experience the day without a deadline or a timeline around when I needed to make myself available to small angry beings.
I was not required to have courage to show up with accountability for my children.
Meaning, I did not have to take deep breaths before going to pick up my kids fully ready to be the Best Mom Ever.
A few weeks before I left for Chicago, I invited Dan to see if one of this partners was available to stay over while I was gone because their relationship was getting more serious. She loved the idea as much as I did. While I was gone, Dan sent me messages and photos to tell me how much the kids were enjoying her and building a relationship with her.
I was so happy to see them all. “Happy” would be insufficient of a word to describe how I felt.
And then I started getting angry. I cannot tell you how many times people told me how I would feel jealous of Dan’s partners “replacing” me as my kids’ mother. How I would feel jealous that my kids would love them more. How I need to be “careful” to “protect” my relationship with my children.
All these stories around how I ought to think and feel about my children having more access to love. Stories that were never mine.
Where did I get the idea that I would get upset about my children having more adults in their lives caring for them?
Even if they ended up loving her more, wouldn’t that be incredible? That they would have access to the kind and magnitude of love that I never had access to because we were told that we need to have one mother figure who had the carry the burden of providing the impossible amount of love that I deserved as a child?
I was mostly angry at myself for believing everybody else and their experience of jealousy that I just automatically assumed that I would feel possessive and jealous about my children having only one mom in their lives.
So much so that I had assumed that taking on the sole responsibility of motherhood was the best and only appropriate option for my children.
A lie.
When I returned from Chicago, I was so delighted to see the kids for two reasons:
One, I had a chance to cultivate a relationship with myself first and foremost before needing to tend to other people. I came back whole, restored, and remembering who I am. The person showing up through the door was not exhausted Angela the mom running on fumes. It was Angela the human being.
Two, I was able to restore myself more deeply knowing that my children were not in any danger of a love shortage. They got to experience love from another person that both Dan and I cherished deeply in our lives. They got to experience a kind of love that was never available to me.
I had not missed the kids because I required myself to subscribe to the socialized role of a mother in order to relate to my children.
This never had to be true.
The thought that arose as I returned home was this:
“Wow, I never had to be the sole bearer of responsibility of mothering my own children.”
A few days back, Dan and I talked about our relationship to our parenthood. He had mentioned that he was always wanted to be a father, and there was no doubt in his mind. I told him that I thought I wanted to be a mother, but the origin of that desire was external, not internal.
I shared with him:
“There is also that differential in the way we treat father and mothers in a heterosexual nuclear family setting.
I don’t question your commitment and intention in becoming a wonderful father for our kids. There is also the currently prevailing cultural attitude that celebrates *any* amount of effort fathers put into parenting and takes for granted the same kind of effort that mothers put into our children.
I can’t count the number of times anything and everything you had done for the children were met with awe, and there is not one recognition when I do the same exact things.
Not even that, if I step one inch outside anybody’s idea on what it means to be a competent mother, there is now apparently an urgent fixing to do on my part.
Becoming a mother would be subjecting myself to a consistent onslaught of rebuke and judgment from anyone who has an opinion about what motherhood ought to look like.
So it’s almost like, why do I even bother?
I had made the decision to enter into motherhood primarily because it was the “right” thing to do. So much so that it was also the “right” thing to allow myself to be dehumanized if it meant that I belonged as someone who did the “right” thing.
I searched for belonging where it could not be found.”
Dan acknowledged the truth of my experience as a mother.
The reason I am breaking up with motherhood is that I am no longer available to fit myself into the role of a mother - or any role, for that matter - outside my original identity as a human being at the expense of my complexity and multitudinous nature as a human being.
When I agree to step into a certain role as a mother, I often find myself abandoning the complicated nature of how I feel, what I want, and where I am.
Example: I had thought for the longest time that I need to fit into the role of the Best Mom Ever that I needed to throw away everything (like it’s nothing) so that I can collect gold stars for how well I fit into that role.
No.
I had simply been subscribed to the wrong paradigm.
And here’s the new paradigm I am now invested in: Regardless of what role I’ve been ascribed to, including motherhood, I am a human being first above everything else.
This means that when I relate to my own children, I will relate to them as a human being. What do I want? How do I want to relate to them? How do I honor their humanity and sovereignty?
So when they want to climb on top of my body, and I don’t want it, I am going to express my desires to them without making it mean that they are “bad” children.
When they whine or otherwise annoy me, I am going to communicate to them how I am experiencing their humanity. What I am and am not available for.
I am going to trust their ability to experience their own disappointment and offer them the opportunities to honor my boundaries.
There was a moment where, a couple hours after I got home, I was getting ready to go out on my weekly Sunday date with Dan. Rhea appeared to be disappointed. She said, “You just came back from Chicago. You cannot leave anymore.”
I told Rhea, “I understand that you’re disappointed. I am very tired from the trip, and I want to go on a date with daddy so that I can have some time with daddy that I wanted. But I love you so much and I want to spend time with you when I come back. Will you be available for that?”
She rolled her eyes and said “fine” before she ran off and hung out with her younger sister.
For the longest time, I believed that I needed to be available for my children regardless of how I felt. That was the mark of a good, sacrificial mother.
This is no longer going to fly for me because that paradigm serves no one in my family.
The more whole I become, the more resources I draw from my community, the more love my children will receive from me and the people we care about.
And even if my children receive a different kind of love, or they don’t experience the kind of love they may have wanted, here’s the bottom line: I trust them to be able to resourceful in a world that will never give them everything they want the way they want it.
My calling as a human being is to offer as many resources as possible to them as little beings whose humanity I care deeply for. I will pick up the responsibility for nourishing and supporting them not because I need to but because that is how I experience and express my own humanity in relation to them.
Which means I get to love them on my own terms. I am no longer loving them under terms that anyone else as offered or dictated for me to operate under.
Ultimately, if my children learn anything from me, it will be how to love on their own terms as human beings. Not as daughters, partners, employees, sisters, or whatever. As an indescribably complex and multitudinous human being. (Though of course, if they want to subscribe to whatever role that delights their humanity, that is up to them.)
I have no interest in being a “good” mother. I have no interest in motherhood. It has kept me from relating to my children as whole human beings.
Instead, I have a commitment to loving deeply and messily in ways that may look vastly different from the way others love but is nonetheless the most truthful to me as a human being.
I craft my own experience of love. Especially when it comes to the kind of love that is too big for me to hold on my own, like the love I have for my own children, I will unburden myself from the requirement of holding it all by myself.
For me, this is the most generative way I expand capacity for love for myself and support my children’s capacity for love.
I invite you to ask: In what ways have you been told that the way you love is wrong? How will you unsubscribe from that narrative to craft your own experience of love?
***
Epilogue
I want to share how I relate to my own community and build my own ecosystem of support.
Before I left for the airport, I wrote a letter to Dan’s partner:
Welcome to our home! I am genuinely sorry and embarrassed that everything is such a mess. I know everyone who welcomes people into their homes says this, and I know (or suspect) that you’ll be very understanding, but still.
Anyway, just wanted to tell you that I am so glad that you are visiting, and I hope that this is the first of many beautiful steps ahead of our lives integrating & building community together through love + care.
I regret that I have been mostly emotionally unavailable to find more opportunities to connect with you because my life has been a shitshow. I have loved witnessing your connection w/ Dan grow deeper as I spend some time getting my shit together & restoring my energy.
I am just grateful that we are in this together, doing the work, loving magically, and being true to ourselves. It’s hard to find community in this very unforgiving world.
I look forward to connecting with you & knowing you more with time, and I hope you have the most amazing time w/ Dan & the kids. Can’t wait for them to build a relationship with you as well.
Lots of love,
Angela ❤️
What does it look like to build your own ecosystem of support? How is it nourishing for you, even if it looks different from the way others do it?
This! Ugh. Love. Chef's kiss.
You're totally speaking to one of the many reasons I don't want to have kids. The burden on me would be extremely disproportionate to the burden on my partner, and HE'S the one that wants kids. I'm not willing to sign up for that kind of commitment, to be fully responsible for other lives, while he is only partially responsible.
And this example of you cultivating community and support in your life, while intentionally staying in touch with your humanity and individuality, is so inspiring. I'm really determined to have more of that in my own life.