The Mother I Am

A few emails in the last couple of weeks from blog readers inspired this post. They suggested that I was a great Mother (or at least sounded like one) that they were envious to some degree of the deliberateness I put on mothering.

I wanted to clarify.

If you feel a little green it should be for the strategic and deliberation I put into parenting-that is fine. Feel jealous of that part-I rock in that area. Hopefully you will read my books one day and attend one day my hopefully famous key note speeches on deliberate and strategic parenting:) I deserve this envy If you feel at all envious of my actual mothering however…..don’t waste a single brain cell on this. Yours is probably much better. Don’t waste a single shade of green on me.

You see I am not a natural mother. I work hard at it. I really really do. And I love my kids ferociously..I do. But it is that part between loving them and showing them that on a daily basis that is hard for me.I am not a natural mother. And they are all naturally mine in every sense of the word.

Mothering is something I want to be good at, desperately; I know it is the most fulfilling job in the world, how these are the best years of my life, knows that there is nothing even comparable to this. but it does not change the fact that sometimes on a vacation or even a weekend I feel a strong need for an anxiety pill, or the fact that I often think in my head that I have to “deal” with my children” or the sheer fact that when I get to my office chair and sit down to the computer every Tuesday morning, I feel more instinct there and control that I ever did holding my children in my arms for the first time.

I learned to be a great mom. And I would say I am not great at all. I am highly visionary and strategic and well organized and very bright and very devoted and committed. But in between all these great adjectives- is a bit of a hot mess when it comes to mothering.

And this is why I likely need to write about parenting so often. To remind myself more often to try and be good at it.  Mothering is very unlike sleeping or reading or writing or planning or eating or spending time as a couple is to me. Natural. Needed. Instinctual. Mothering takes a lot of work for me to do. Sometimes it is super easy and natural to me-and as the kids get older these moments are more and more often. Much more so than when they were little. I feel and ease with teens that I didn’t have with little ones. I can relate to them, to their needs, to their mood, to their being irrational. I adore teens-there are so interesting and lovable in many ways. 

And even with this ease and adoration of this particular age I often cannot match my intentions to my behavior. I worry about their long term happiness much more than their short term happiness, in some ways it is great and in others it can be destructive. I let their teenage hood get to me to the core and eat me up from the inside. My intentions are always to love them and show them that-but it rarely makes its way to the surface I would imagine. I try my best but inside I know my best is not good enough. And I don’t have the energy to change it. Sometimes I wish I was more instinctual-that things were easier for me as a mom. That I was naturally good at this as I am at work. That I wouldn’t need to think about it all so much. I watch many mothers around me doing the same –they have good intentions but they sound like witches much of the time. The kids must end up resenting it-resenting all us bitchy moms who want only the best for them for their future but waste the present on nagging and teaching and bitching. It can’t be fun. Sure they will love us in 20 yrs. and look back and know we did everything for them-but their present experience of us now should be good too right?

But little kids annoy me to a large degree. I hate running after them-I hate reading to others-I don’t like showing people how to do stuff. I hate games and puzzles and most cartoons. On personality inventories I am the “BE Bold, be brilliant, be brief, and be gone!”  Fiery red style. Combined with a soft, sunshine yellow that truly cares about people, their needs, interacting loving, nurturing. I am a rare brand of determination and nurturing. Delivery and love. It makes me a great parent in a lot of ways, I am truly interested in my kids their friends, their lives, their decisions. But I also need them to be confident and capable and quick and listen to me-because I know what is best.

I am hard on myself in mothering. I know I am. I expect a lot of myself and am very unforgiving when I don’t perform. But I hear the way my kids friends describe me and our nieces and nephews and cousins etc. and they all say I CARE. I truly and utterly care about them-so that is good. And I show this all the time. All the time. So I should cut myself some slack right? (And maybe extend this love to my own children)!

But I try. God I try. I should be given a prize in my trying. And my heart aches when I see moms around me not fully enjoying every minute of those precious 5-12 yrs. of life of their kids as seriously after that family time is downhill. Trust me. Teen stage I love but it is very lovely in lots of ways-not as gratifying in many ways and more in others. You have to get it right in the 5-12 yrs. old piece-it is really your only chance to be a great parent-to set the foundation of your future family. You need to own this phase and make it more important than any individual need you have during those years, you need to commit to it, and dedicate to it whether forced or instinctual. It is your only time to get it right-it is the only time your kids will make it easy for you. It is the only time that you will be the center of your child’s universe and they will be watching your every move. Try hard to make these your family years and focus on family-which I have enough mothering and instinct in me to know. Bond them to you..Attach them to you…make them part of your life and yours their lives even if it kills you to do it. Don’t give up on every individual need you have, but give up on lots of them temporarily to show up for your kids. Start finding yourself again when they turn 13 as you will have a lot more time, trust me. Force yourself to show up to the parts of your life that are most important.

Never miss a ballet recital if you don’t have to. Don’t miss that family vacation. This much I know is true. Maybe I am a good mother?

I was great with babies. Not natural at all but really good. Great at getting my kids as they grew up to sleep, be good in school, be confident, make friends. I was good at pretty much anything I put my mind too. But I am not good at all the instinctual stuff. When my kid throws up in the night part of me wants to throw them out the window for disturbing my sleep, when they break something in the house-I might care more about the object than their bleeding heart. I often want what is right for me and care less about what is right for them. I am a better mother in writing than I am in person. My heart is revealed in written words more than in spoken ones. When I bake chocolate chip cookies (once a year from a mix) I eat the first one and hide three away to ensure I get more than my share.

Basically lets be real here if I was not the visionary I am …I would suck as a parent.

But you know what as I write this and expose myself in this way; I know what I have that most people do not. I know what I have those differences me as a person, a wife, a human and a mother. I have what I crave and love in others when I get to see it, I have what takes courage and heart, and I have something that will ultimately make me very successful in this parenting field.

I am authentic.

That is what the kid’s friend’s sense about me. What my friends sense about me, my colleagues. It belongs to me. It is part of me. It is who I am. I am not pretending for anybody. I am strong and I am weak. I am perfect and imperfect. And I am not shy to expose it and to say it. I am me. Here I am.

And it is this authenticity and deliberateness combined (my sunshine yellow and my fiery red) who makes capable of what I do in life and for what is ahead for me in the future. It is what makes me real and touchable. It is what makes you envious of me as a parent and what make me have the energy to go on every day. It is this weakness and this openness to let you share it it-and to actually admit it to myself that makes me the mother my children need.

It makes me who I am

The Mother I am. And the Mother I am not.

“I love them .And yet.”