Motherhood Uncensored

Women, stop bullying yourselves.

I've gained about 10lbs since July from a combination of all sorts of things, but mostly because of a life and priority shift from skinny jeans and marathon training, to work, kids, and eating. 

Also beer. or really, BEER!!!

{Due to the amount of which I've consumed, I feel caps and exclamation points are warranted here.}

I fought hard for those skinny jeans for awhile, even over my own psychological well-being and life enjoyment because I'm a 36-year old woman in America and I can somehow only be happy in my size 8 jeans and not the size 10s that are tight.

Looking thin over looking good. (There's a difference)

Which is so logical, right? Because the world knows, you see, and we definitely care about THE WORLD, and your husband, well he knows too even though he doesn't even really notice when you get your hair cut. 

No, I'll pass on your vagina because there's an extra roll on your side. 

SAID NO STRAIGHT MAN EVER.

So I cut out meat (logically) because I wanted to spend the time working and not running SO NO MORE BACON, KRISTEN. 

What I found was my psyche trapped in the most depressing, shameful, and unrelenting inner dialogue, one that I know so many women tell themselves every single day, hour, even second. 

I know this now because I decided to quit letting that anxiety bully me the fuck around. And I packed up with skinny pants and replaced them with bigger sized skinny pants (GENIUS!) and I started to do boot camp and run again BECAUSE I LIKE IT. 

And then when this happens you realize how fucked up it really is. The constant body talk everywhere. 

I got sucked back in last night, explaining the rationale for my new jeans to my husband because they cover the muffin top and he's all like "You have a muffin top?" and then I snapped out of it, though not until after I spent the hour and a half shaming myself. 

I understand that one little story from me isn't going to make you stop hating your body. And I get it. Even at my larger size, I'm thin compared to most women who would like me to shut up already. 

But look, if you take a moment right now and think of all the time and energy you spend in your day thinking about food and your ass and dress sizes and what you could do with all that, well I bet you'd have more time with your kids or more time for work or for doing things you actually enjoy, hey even exercising, not because you hate your waist size but because you like it. 

I take the kids to the playground, I cook more elaborate dinners that I eat. I did cut back on the beer and the booze because it was making me kind of an asshole. But I enjoy a soda every now and then. 

CRAZY TIMES, I know.

I even bought a bunch of cross stitch kits because now that I have an actual work schedule, help, and no lofty race goal to work towards, I have time to do stuff. 

And go figure, I'm happier.

You'd never let anyone talk to your kids like you talk to yourself. You'd probably never allow anyone to talk to you like that. 

So that bully in your head? Tell him to fuck off. 

You're beautiful. 

The end. 

Happiness is the best revenge

Through no real fault of their own, my parents hurt me immensely.

Of course, I write this knowing that in 20 or so years, my kids might say the same thing about me. 

But as much as I flub this gig up, and trust me, I screw it up big time, I know in my heart that it will be different for my own kids.

I hear parents talk all the time about how worried they are that they're going to screw their kids up like their parents did to them. I'm one of them. 

After therapy last week, my husband said exactly that. 

But I looked him in the eyes and I told him "Your parents never worried about screwing you up, so you're already one up on them." 

The second you break the cycle of whatever sort of dysfunction that has plagued your life, you're changing the path for yourself and your kids. 

It seems small, I know, but it's like a pick axe chipping away at a stone wall. Each hit matters. And once you do it once, you've got the momentum to do it over and over again. 

I looked in the mirror yesterday, feeling terribly disappointed that my mother didn't call or text or send anything for my daughter's birthday, something extremely uncharacteristic of her. Even though we're not really speaking, I just didn't think she would stop speaking to my kids as well. She knows my husband's phone number. She knows where we live. 

There are ways. 

But instead of reaching out to her like I always do, I just left it alone. Maybe she forgot. Maybe she was working. Maybe she sent a card and a gift and it just hasn't arrived yet. 

I've given her a lot of maybes over the years.

But yesterday, I gave her the last maybe:

Maybe this is really who she is. 

She and my father did things to me and my brother that I cannot physically and emotionally imagine doing to my children. And I've thought about them over and over for years now. I've beaten myself up for how I react to things in my life, the survival tactics formed as a child just to make it through a day in my house. 

But all the defense mechanisms and poor coping skills and psychological descriptions for "Hey you had fucked up parents" is letting the dysfunction win.  

Every time I look at myself miserably in mirror or feel guilty about the extra piece of birthday cake, it scores a point. 

When I shame myself, it celebrates.

I do not want my kids crying about me like I do about my mother. 

So I think it's time I seek my revenge.

I apologize to my children when I'm wrong. I do my best to talk through scary things with them, as difficult and painful as it is for both of us. I'm present for them, as best as I can be, and willing to tackle issues and challenges. 

I  want to be the mother to my kids that I never had. I want to be a woman who is a good role model for my girls and my boy. 

Not perfect. Just happy. 

The new normal

A friend texted to see if I was going to the neighborhood chili cook-off this weekend, and while for a split second I thought I might go because I wouldn't have to cook dinner, the thought of chasing after four kids alone in a mob of people brought me back to my senses. 

Don't be fooled. They're hooligans, I tell you. Sweet, adorable hooligans.

Then I feel bad that my kids might be missing out on fun things, like playing with kids they always play with anyway. 

But worse, I start to feel a little envious of my friends with two kids. 

Oh the sweet dinner I had with Liz and her two lovely girls when I was briefly in New York last week. The only thing they did loudly was slurp their soup and tell ridiculously adorable jokes. 

And the 2-kids neighbors with their overnight babysitting co-op where they trade children for sleepovers on some weekends so they have the house to themselves. Makes me well up just thinking about it. 

This feeling I get doesn't mean that I want to give up two of my children or wish I had stopped having babies after Drew, mind you.

Though that sort of nonsense might get me a lot of traffic and send my ass straight to Good Morning America. 

But I am a little jealous of the quiet. And the freedom that allows my 2-kids friends the ability to get up and go places without a ridiculous amount of fore thought and packing and handwipes. 

Most of the time I just suck it up and go, and then render myself either completely and utterly exhausted or frustrated, or a fun combination of the two. 

Other times, like this weekend, I realize my kids will be okay without the chili and just do what I can to get through the night without completely losing my shit. 

Even those expectations seem too high. 

It's completely my own problem, of course, because as much as I tell people that with big families you have accept the chaos, it's so much more easily said than done. Not just because you're so freaking tired but because it's very counterintuitive, at least for me, anyway, to just let stuff go. And because when all you see around you is families with two kids it's hard to not feel like you're completely falling apart at the seams. 

There's still part of me that likes things "just so" or really "just not all over the floor please so help me God." 

But when it's one against four, or heck, even two against four, there's only so much you can humanly do before losing it.  And then you have to decide whether it's better for the kids to remember you as a raging lunatic with a relatively clean floor and organized Tupperware cabinets, or as a relatively happy mom with a fair bit of disorder. 

For now, I'm aiming for somewhere in the middle. I am a keeper upper after all. An annoying high achiever. And I hate having to tell myself "but you have four kids, Kristen" because I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROARohgodwhopouredoutallthecerealonthefloor.

I'm reminding myself that double the kids means double the work. And double the joy. In small bits now, but in big wonderful chunks later on. 

This I know. 

Until then, I'm doing my best to create our own normal. A new normal.

It may involve breakfast for dinner instead chili cook-outs, but last time I checked, sanity tastes good any time of day.

Home is where the heart is. For now.

I audibly groaned as I saw the security line at the airport, snaked twice around the terminal, corralling people in two separate areas before even getting close to TSA, so far back that when I rolled in, I was well past the roped section. 

I pulled out my phone and took a step every few seconds until I was stopped abruptly by a large Asian family in front of me as we finally hit the first corral. I peeked up from my screen long enough to see them, now split, with the younger couple stepping out of line after hugging a pair of older couples and saying their good-byes, though still walking next to them outside the ropes as we all moved forward.  

I didn't think much of it and went back to scrolling and shuffling slowly forward. 

When we moved through to the second corral, the family embraced again, except this time when I looked up, the girl in the younger couple was sobbing as she held one of the older men.

She could barely let go as we continued to walk forward, and held on as long as she could, then turned quickly, running out through the revolving door. 

When I turned back to the family still left in line, I saw the mother quietly wiping away her tears, her head low, the father's hand resting softly on her shoulder.

We need those fast forward buttons pushed sometimes. Because soon 2 will be 22. The kisses will have to last a few months not just a few hours. 

And the long embrace will never be long enough.

As I watched those parents in front of me, all the moments when I just wanted time alone, when I impatiently shushed them to sleep sitting quietly in the corner of their room, when I sent them back to their beds for the 400th time in the middle of the night rushed up through me with reckless disregard.

I cried quietly and looked down, shuffling forward towards home.

 

Where my heart is. For now anyway. 

Look to the right

A tweak in my neck this morning has left me only seeing what's right. 

I couldn't have made up a stronger metaphor for what my life needs right now if I tried. So much lately has been about what's wrong.

I'm carrying a lot on my shoulders these days, much of it by my own doing. It doesn't help that I had to stop taking the meds because they destroyed my stomach. And the nuva ring I started last week was making me so anxious that I had to pull it out. 

Or maybe that's my own hormones. It's hard to tell lately. 

I stared at my body in the ballet class mirror, larger than I'd want it, flucuating, I swear, every couple of weeks courtesy of hormone surges that I'm pretty sure push me up and down a clothes size. 

If I'd run more, or eat less, or JUST ONE LESS COOKIE God I'm too old for this bullshit.

I realized the other day as I stumbled through the woods on a Monday evening run with neighbors, the last, slowest member of the group, that I just want to feel like I'm good at something.

That sometimes just finishing, doing, or surviving isn't enough. 

I know it's the old kid of an alcoholic coming out, someone I've done well to scold and punish until my mom lets her out of the corner again and says "It's like your father risen from the dead!" when you are just doing a regular old nice thing like clean her disgusting house. 

And my shoulders ache with the weight of that burden. 

My best was never enough in my house, you see, it always had to be "the" best, and since I couldn't always be the best I just didn't try a lot of things. I just gave up and watched and waited and hoped because I didn't want to mess up or fail. Even though my best was often better than anyone else's it just wasn't good enough. 

Quinlan tried out for The Nutcracker last week and didn't make it, but God I was so proud that she tried, the odds stacked against her based on age and ability level, because I would have never done it. I would never have even tried. 

She stared her failure right in the face and flipped it the fuck off. Metaphorically, of course.

I told my mom I couldn't carry her shit with my dad anymore. And the nonsense between my husband and his mother that works it's way into our daily existence has no place here.

And I'm trying hard not to care about messing up, about being the slowest one at the back of the pack, when it comes to being a wife, a mother, a person. 

I'm looking at what's right. For now, because I have to. But even after I can see both ways again.

My best is enough.