30 Something; Motherhood Part II, Mourning What We ‘Haven’t Lost’

Does anyone else feel absolutely steamrolled by this summer!? I can’t believe that I am planning for back to school and I couldn’t even tell you what we have done. If I am not at work I am with my son and if I am not with my son I am at work. And on the off chance that I have a break from either I am staring mindlessly into space. So it goes without saying that my own personal writing and posts have been pretty much non-existent. I am really hoping to get back into some sort of a pattern or routine and make this a weekly occurrence. 

I want to do a part two on my motherhood post that I wrote way back in June! It is so hard to encapsulate all the facets of motherhood in just a few posts, let alone speak for the masses. One thing that I have learned about speaking/writing my truth is that it can’t steer me wrong. If I guess what everyone else is feeling or try to be relatable I am usually way off base. We can’t fake authenticity. It is in the moments of vulnerability where I write what I know, feel and experience that I find true connection with others. If even ONE person can see themselves in something I share or experience, or any of us share, it’s pretty magical. 

With that being said….

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dream a Little Dream of You

Have you ever cried so hard in your dream you felt it in every part of your body? A visceral reaction that is felt with every ounce of your being? Sometimes this means waking up crying and other times I wake up with dry eyes but feel exhausted and drained from just the experience and memory of a big emotional release. This doesn’t happen often for me but when it does I can’t help but pay attention. As an avid and detailed dreamer I am no stranger to waking up unrested or a little disoriented. However, this one felt different. 

There were about 100 other things going on in my dream, running through my old neighborhood, I am sure people from high school were there (as they like to make a nightly occurrence), but then most importantly my son, my boy. He was a baby again and I was nursing him and watching him as he ate, just like I used to. Rocking him back and forth as he occasionally glanced up at me with smiling eyes. I knew in my dream that it wasn’t real and would go away. I ran to my mom (in the dream) and just sobbed heavy excruciating sobs in her lap saying “it’s going to go away”. Just then, still holding my sweet infant son, my amazing 7 year old boy comes bouncing up to us from across the street. Bright eyed, asking to play. I look down at the version of him I am holding and start crying “no mom! But I can’t keep both! I have to give one up!” The rest of the dream was me in a fetal position sobbing with every ounce of my body and bouncing between “it’s going to go away, and I can’t have them both”. 

Once again when I woke up I was dry eyed but the memory and sense remained. I shared the dream once out loud and immediately felt the emotion rush back to the surface. I couldn’t say it without crying, even now I can’t relive it, even in written form, without stopping to give myself permission to heavy cry. 

If that dream didn’t do the trick in getting its intended message across; I had another one a few days later. Equal chaos; changing locations, so many different people from past and present, and I was running from or to something. I started with Manny as a baby again and then something would happen where I would have to go and deal with it and I would hand him off to my parents, my husband or a friend.. Every time I came back to get him he was older and older by a few months. I kept having to leave and deal with all this chaos and would come back to my boy being just a tad older, looking slightly different each time. 

I am all for deciphering hidden messages in dreams but those seemed pretty clear. Something that I have clearly been subconsciously processing but had yet to name. These two dreams brought up such a real and important piece of motherhood/ parenthood that isn’t talked about enough. Which is, the sense of mourning and loss. Loss for a child that is still in front of you. 

Can we Call it a Loss?

I have always voiced the universal struggle of trying to do it all, mom guilt, missing out on time with my kid and being spread thin. Along with the ‘obvious’ hardships that come with that, I didn’t realize that I was also struggling with subconsciously mourning and missing every version of my child. Being able to hold space for both celebrating every new stage and discovery as well as allowing myself to be sad for the pieces of him that are but a memory. 

Both dreams somehow beautifully depicted the reality of parenthood and how all these different versions of our kid are gone in a blink of an eye. The first one really made me realize how devastating it can be internally that we don’t get to have ‘both’. We are letting go of moments every day that we never get to have back; the last time we rock our child, the last time we hold them while they eat, the last time they call us “mommy” instead of “mom”, the last time they pronounce a word like ‘teesh’ instead of ‘teeth’, the last time we can physically pick them up… 

The list is never ending. And yet I wouldn’t want to go back. Well, maybe for a minute, but not long enough to miss the incredible little person that he is now. The boy who runs up to me with the biggest smile and asks me to play, the one who shares his ideas on the world, who can’t wait to be done with camp or school to be with his ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’, the one who laughs until he can’t breath because some silly joke he made, who still holds my hand because he wants to feel me close… I wouldn’t want to lose him either. But I will. This too shall pass. 

The second dream portrays the chaos of life pretty accurately. The feeling of always “handing” our child off to something or someone else; our partner, grandparents, daycare, school, camp. And everytime we come back something is just a tad different. Sometimes they have literally learned to walk or crawl without us present, other times it's as subtle as they just look a little more mature than they did 8 hours earlier. Constant reminders that we are ‘missing out’ or that time simply keeps moving forward. Reminders that we don’t process in the moment or even truly notice. We are too busy living life, as we should be. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not there, that the ache in our heart every time something changes or new skills and developments are made, is very real and worthy of acknowledgement. 

But… then enters the guilt. The guilt that we feel we are missing who our child ‘used to be’, this human that is perfectly content being as they are. Sometimes he catches me staring at old pictures of him and says “I wish I was a baby again so you would hold me”. I hug him close, “I don’t buddy. I would miss YOU too much”. 

Acceptance

I wonder if we get to give ourselves permission to feel BOTH or I guess I should say ALL. I know that there is so much awareness about living and being as present as possible, and I agree. How else are we going to soak up all these little fleeting moments? To act as sponges, absorbing every ounce of our little loves, the way they move, sound, play, everything they say. It’s an impossible ask, but I understand making an intentional effort. I also think that we have to allow ourselves moments of reliving and even mourning the past AND looking forward to and maybe even getting a little anxious for the future. Sleepless newborn nights? Please press fast forward. Losing that precious newborn squish, the way they scrunch up and their little sounds? Take me back, for just a moment. 

As a mother, and honestly just a human, I am in a constant state of a million emotions. I am learning to slow down and recognize each and every one of them and allow myself to process them. I miss my baby. I have forgotten what it is like to hold him and feel him melt into my chest. I don’t remember all the sweet phrases he used to say and the words he once mispronounced. I will never again get to wear and carry him so close to me that we are one in that moment. 

I mourn it all.

But he still lays his head on my chest at night, for now. He says the funniest jokes and one liners making us both belly laugh until we can’t breath. He still pronounces words with emphasis of the ‘T’ sound making us smile at words like ‘burrito’. And for now I can still pick him up, allowing his long limbs to wrap around me and embrace me, if even for just a moment. This too shall pass, and I will mourn it again, but also I can’t wait to see what other little things will come up, giving me more to love, to appreciate and miss. 

I love you my ever changing boy.

Love, 

Mommy.