Lost & Found - A Mother's Life

The day my beautiful daughter was born was monumental for two reasons. Firstly because I finally got to meet the human being that I had grown and carried for nine-plus months, a tiny creature that shared half my DNA and whom would be the only legacy for my own life. Secondly, because it was at the moment of her arrival that she was found that I became lost. Adrift from the human being that had been carefully and consciously molded from thirty-four years of life on earth. 

I lost the ability to think about anyone but her. I forgot that I had basic needs and wants. I became childlike in many ways. Fearful of the world, of things that could take her away or me away from her. And because I had been taking care of my own emotional, physical, and financial needs for over ten years I didn't have anyone who knew how to take care of me and I didn't know how to ask to be taken care of. Certainly not anyone who had done that in the last decade. So it fell to my mother to step in and step up. For which I will forever be grateful for.

I thought that the fragility of life resided in the tiny human that looked up at me. But a few years on I realise now the fragility was in me. I went from being a confident, settled, happy, driven, ambitious young woman with the world at my feet to someone I didn't recognise in the mirror. Completely lost in the world I had created, I had wanted. Had I wanted this? Had I known the truth would I still have done it?

Piece by piece I searched for the parts of me that had been lost. But after an unsuccessful search for over a year I realised that she the woman I once knew didn't exist anymore. How could she? She was from another time, another me. I looked at her in photographs and envied her. The hours and days of self-indulged time at her fingertips. Creativity her priority, the centre of her being. And I wondered, how in a blink of an eye she had left me.

And so I did what anyone would do. I grieved. I allowed myself to miss her, to think of her, to reminisce,  to be angry of the time she wasted and the potential. And then quite unplanned. I said goodbye to her and accepted she would never come back to me.

The next journey I would begin was both exciting and daunting and it is one I am still on today. I realised that I could choose who I wanted to be next. I could improve upon the old model. I could make her stronger, healthier, kinder, tougher. The kind of woman who takes no prisoners. The kind I admired as a young woman. The kind who learns new things and climbs new mountains. I never could have anticipated how much I would have to fight for her though. How easily she could be silenced, lost somewhere in the background of my chaotic noisy life. Some weeks she is completely ignored. I see her sulking and I shrug my shoulders. What can I do, the baby is ill? What can I do there isn't time? What can I do ...? But usually, within a few weeks, she's tapping her foot so dam loud that I can't ignore her anymore and I go over and join her. Pick up where I was last and continue climbing another mountain.

I used to feel guilty about not doing enough for my child. Now I see that almost everything I do is in some way directly or indirectly for my child, even taking care of myself, my needs my wants. I'm glad to report that now two and a half years after my daughter was born, I actually feel guilty about not doing enough for myself. And I think that is a good change in the way I see myself and my life.

Photo by Jan Alexander pixabay.com