This is Motherhood

This is hard

Every now and then, as quiet as a whisper, a heaviness settles over. Denser than fog and thicker than a snowstorm, a mighty weight presses down upon our shoulders.

This is motherhood.

This is hard.

There’s a truth in life that you only learn when you’re on the other side of certain milestones, and that truth is this: Even the biggest joys can knock you down and threaten to keep you there. Even the happiest days of your life will have low spots where you’re trudging through the mud, just trying to get to the other side.

This is motherhood.

This is hard.

My children are one of the greatest blessings of my life. They have a bright joy that is unmistakable. Laughter that sounds like a symphony right from Heaven. Silliness that promises endless magical moments of imagination. I adore everything about them. Their over exaggerated giggles. Their tight necked hugs. The change in their little voices when they want something. Their sticky fingers and sloppy kisses. Everything. All of it. I frantically chase after the memories every single day, trying to bottle them all up in jars for safe keeping. Trying to put them on a self where I can come back to them in another fifty years and experience those memories as if they are happening all over again, right before my eyes.

Yet, there are days. Days when the very term ‘Motherhood’ has a weightiness to it. Days when I try to pick up this hat I am supposed to wear and feel the all-consuming pressure of wearing it. Days where I am so weighed down in this wonderful role of mine that I don’t know how to get back up.

This is motherhood.

This is hard.

I’ve learned, in my short three years as a mother, that motherhood can be both things. Motherhood can be the greatest joy of our lives and a weighted blanket pressing down on us. Motherhood exists in both ways: to fill our cups all the way up while we pour them all the way out. Ever full and yet always empty.

This is motherhood.

This is hard.

Here’s the thing we have to realize though, weighted blankets can be comforting because we can feel all the pressure of them and know that we can get out from under that at any time. This is true in motherhood as well. When the role of being a mother, when the weightiness of being a mother, presses down on us like a weighted blanket that we aren’t sure we know how to get out from under - that is when find our strength. That is when we learn just what kind of mother we are. There is comfort in that.

It’s the getting back up. It’s finding, within ourselves, what we are capable of as mothers. That we can be both the ones to bottle up all the memories and also the ones to withstand the pressure of all that is upon us. It’s finding out that we can trudge through the mud to the other side. That we will not be held down or held back. That we will not be buried under the weight. We are stronger than that.

This is motherhood.

This is worth it.

Let’s continue the conversation:

1. Do you ever feel the weightiness of motherhood?

2. If so, how do you find your strength to get out from under that weight?

3. What is a piece of advice you have for a Mama feeling that weightiness right now?

Want to read more Little Bits of Everything?

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• A letter on the toxic Postpartum Bounce Back Culture in our society and how to change the conversation

• A favorite on Millennial Fathers breaking generational cycles

• One of my most popular letters: When I Grow Up

• A letter to a grandmother that I lost too soon, What I Would Say Now