It's an odd world I inhabit. A world suspended between that of adults and children, workforce and home front, religious and secular. Sometimes it seems like a parallel universe - population 1.
But I can't be alone in straddling these social lines. The idea of being an engaged community member, worker, and friend, while also being a parent and spouse, is not a rare one.

So why does it feel so lonely? Why are so many of us convinced that we are alone in our experience and struggles?

I think it comes down to this: the language we use to speak to, and of, other women, and the simplistic way we think of ourselves and others.

We have "mama"ed ourselves into a hole

There's a right way to be a mother. Or at least there is a little scrap of rules for what a good mother should look like and do in many minds. It normally reads something along the lines of "makes the same choices I have made" irregardless if that is a reasonable expectation.

I saw this in what could only be called "pearl clutching" by some mothers over the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
I assumed the hoopla would be over the language and sexual jokes.
But no, that would be your run of the mill pearl clutching, this was a new level.
They were upset that the lead character agrees to go on tour without a pre-laid plan for her children. In fact, every night she spent out pursing comedy as a career might as well have been a personal affront to mothers everywhere. They interpreted another woman's choices, a fictional character mind you, as a method to "make fun of people who value raising children."

No matter that this was an entirely different time and place, or, ya know, fiction. There are rules and standards for what it means to be a good mother, and they just so happen to line up with my own choices, huzzah!

Because we are mama tribe! Mamas unite! Mamas-who-look-and-think-and-do-like-me-because-we-are-the-saviors-of-all!

Y'all, we can't do this and then turn around and complain about burnout and isolation. 

I can't even count how many times I have seen women exclude other women or persist in continuing unhealthy situations. I then watch those same women post sunshine and rainbows, of said situation, on social media. #blessed

This is perhaps one of the few times I think the academic phrase "complicit in their own oppression" is an accurate descriptor.
Women are the ones who have hurled  the most vitriol at me - a stranger on the internet. Women are the ones who have refused to cast me because I'm a mother. Women have made cliques and iced me out of groups I started. Yes, there are bigger factors in all of this, but I don't think they would have as much control if women would stop consenting to be weapons against other women. If women would stop weaponizing against themselves.

The truth is for every possibility automatically eliminated as a potential for another woman leaves another possibility eliminated for herself. Not out of necessity, but out of an oversimplified idea of who she is and who she can be.

There a flatness to this "mama" world. Where we call strangers on the internet "mama" as some form of false unearned intimacy. Where talk of "my mama heart" takes the place of having normal human empathy.
We miss the multi-dimensional whole person that is so desperately desired when discussing children. Children are whole persons. They get to have hopes, dreams, and aspirations. They can to be living, growing, people. Why can't their mothers?

Time to take up some space!

This isn't about being abrasive or confrontational.
It's about not apologizing for being a human being with gifts and wholeness and possibilities!
It's about seeing yourself as a person of worth that is not defined by how well your parenting choices line up with the current fads.

Don't be afraid to wear multiple hats. Sometimes I'm a mom of three at home and up to my eyeballs in constant laundry, books, and cooking. Sometimes I'm a young woman out with friends or attending a talk or performance. I can discuss books, current events, and ideas just as well as I can cooking and parenting.

I'm not doing this to check all the boxes so I can claim "not just a mom". I'm doing this because this is what it means to be honest about who I am: body, heart, mind, and soul.

I long to see more honesty from other women. I long to be more honest myself.

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Related Posts

Authenticity and the Curation of "Real"

Women We Won't See

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What are your thoughts on "mama"isms? How we encourage more multi-dimensional living among parents of young children? What did I leave out here?

When Your Children Inherit Your Struggles

I would wager that the majority of parents have something about themselves they would rather avoid passing down to their kids. Maybe it's a short temper, a struggle with reading, or anxiety.
Mine came unexpectedly because it had never occurred to me it was something that could be passed down.

I have always been on the flexible side, but I chalked it up to having been involved in dance since the age of four. Dancers are just flexible people, right?
But I'm not just your run-of-the-mill flexible. My greatest pregnancy struggle is not nausea or food issues - it's arms and legs that fall out of socket from such basic tasks as lifting a grocery bag or sitting oddly.

In high school I was obnoxiously proud of what I could do. Making pretty stage pictures comes easily when your legs and arms are so hyper-extended. I assumed when I came back to dance after my second child was born that I would have to spend a lot of time getting flexibility back.
Strength needed some work, yes, but flexibility? Apparently those were factory settings.

It never dawned on me that they might be genetic settings.

Our first two babies had some of the traits: turned out hips, tendency to stand with feet turned out, hyper-extended arms.

But nothing like our third baby.

Felicity has all of the hallmarks of hyper-mobility. She could not pull up to stand until almost 15 months because her ankles are so unstable. She struggles to compensate for a body that does not give natural resistance when moving beyond the point of stability.

How I know that struggle! I have to work hard to stay strong enough to not experience frequent dislocations. Wear gloves on my hands to stabilize my finger joints on bad days. A brace on my ankle when working on new turns so I don't sprain it - again. Pay attention to how I walk and stand and sit so I don't accidentally knock something askew.

It hurts. Often. It took many years of trial and error to understand how to minimize injury.

It never occurred to me that I might one day have to translate those solutions to use on my baby.

I know exactly how hard it will be for her. I feel all that pain, and I felt cheated.

Carrying this cross wasn't that big of a deal when it was just me. I can handle pain. I can deal with compensating for the rest of my life. God made me good and stubborn, and I can stubborn my way over many a mountain.

In my head I had made a deal with God: I carry this quietly and it stops here. 
But that wasn't fair.

Because for all the pain and difficulty extreme hyper-mobility can bring, it can also be a blessing.
I don't struggle to move.
I can find a lot of comradery for my freaky talents among fellow dancers - who are often selected because they share these traits.
I have to humble myself enough to ask for help when I need it. The consequences are too high if I fail to let others help.

Struggles, especially life long struggles, can be a magnificent blessing. They change us. They mold us into being people we would never have become otherwise.
Carrying a cross has given me a greater possibility for empathy, and a path for understanding what my own daughter will face.

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To read more about Felicity's story:

Are there crosses in your life that are/could be shared by your children or other family/friends? 

How do you handle it?

When Baby's First Shoes are Prescription

Moms worry. About anything and everything under the sun at some point.
As a society, we're used to it. We expect it. So much so that we tend to ignore motherly worries wholesale - including the ones which should not be ignored.

When our third child took a little longer to get moving than other babies her age, I wasn't worried. Kids develop at different rates, right? Anyway her brother and sister were late walkers too.

But Felicity wasn't moving at all. She could sit, unsupported, by 4 months, and that's where she stayed.
She wasn't rolling, crawling, creeping, scooching, or doing any other method of locomotion.

At 6 months.

At 9 months.

At 12 months.

At her 9 month doctor check up I was worried. But when I mentioned she wasn't crawling yet I was brushed off. Told to wait for the 12 month visit.
So I did, but something didn't feel right about it. 5 months seemed like a long time to go without any gross motor improvement in an infant.

Searching online wasn't much help. Parenting forums are filled with anxious parents concerned about their offspring's progress. Most of the answers involve something along the lines of, "My child wasn't crawling at all at 10 months. Then he started walking out of no where!" Only to mention a comment or two down that "out of nowhere" meant, "after months of extensive OT and PT".

At 11 months I was done with waiting.
Done with getting told that "mothers are often worried too early."
With being told it would be easier for me once I "had more experience with child development" (which apparently two previous children of my own, four younger siblings, and a crowd of nanny and babysitter kids didn't achieve.)
Done with being treated as an anxious worry-wort for having valid concerns.

I put in a referral to our state child development program. It's a long process of: phone evaluation, in person interview, in person evaluation, a meeting to go over the results, a meeting to decide on a plan. THEN we can finally start getting help.

It's not easy to qualify for services in just one developmental category. Felicity really only struggled in gross motor. Her fine motor skills are excellent, she had been using a handful of words for a while, and clearly did not struggle with social or mental skills. She just needed help with gross motor, but she needed it badly.

Bad enough to qualify.

For a child this young, a physical therapist comes to our home once a week. I work with her to create challenges for Felicity that are built into her natural routines, using items we have in the house.

She has made a lot of progress! She started army crawling. Then suddenly was up on her hands and knees crawling. She was pulling up to her knees to get items from the top of the coffee table.

But something still didn't look right.

When Felicity was put in a standing position she would clench her toes like mad, her hips were crazy turned out, and she was not stable on her ankles in the slightest. Even with her increasing muscle strength, she still wasn't getting any more stable on her feet.

The therapist decided it was time to talk about orthotic help.

The appointment to get fitted for ankle orthoses was hard for me. The orthotist noted how incredibly hyper-mobile Felicity is - not just in her ankles but over her whole body. How almost overdeveloped her muscles have become because of her attempts to stabilize her incredibly unstable joints on her own for so long.

It wasn't hard to hear because of how much my baby needed help. It was hard to hear because I should have known better.

I have generalized hyper-mobility.
I have to work hard to stay with a certain level of muscle tone just to keep my pain levels down.
I have to be smart when I move to prevent injury.

How do you respond when your child has inherited your struggles? How to feel when your child is hurting - and you had something to do with it?

More of this story next week!

Because it's getting long...

Update: The follow up is here!