A Mothers Journey

From the moment as mothers when we realize we are forming a human life we feel so many emotions: feelings of uncertainty, love, worry and the biggest one, fear. Coming from a difficult upbringing the fear of inadequacy and "Will I be a good mother" often strikes a panic in me and then a flood of sobbing. Discipling a child, I'm always thinking "Will he hate me? Am I traumatizing him?" and often I hear the echoes of my mothers voice as I yell "No!" or "Don't do that!" I've gotten to points that I've deeply regretted out of frustration but the heart of a mother is always yearning to understand our children deeper, to love them more and in ways better than we even knew as children. It doesn't come from a place of wanting to be better than our parents (necessarily) but wanting to be the parent our children deserve.

From the moment I laid eyes on my son I knew "I don't deserve you. You are the most perfect and beautiful thing I've ever created and I'm going to miss this so fiercely." I knew I was going to miss the long first night in the hospital holding him for the first time, not wanting to sleep because I couldn't stop gazing at him, thinking "I created you. But you are too perfect to be mine." also I couldn't stop worrying he would be scared, after all he had just come from the darkness and who was I? You knew my voice, and my body, but I knew he needed to know me on the outside: my face, my smell, my skin and that I would love you and never let anything hurt you, not the way I'd been hurt or felt. I could never abandon him, I knew he needed me and I needed him.

My son is now approaching 2 and now I only begin to reach the most painful part of the journey which is learning to let go. Every new level of independence is a step he'll need me less and maybe I still need him just as much as I did when I discovered him. In reality I've been learning to let go since the very beginning, since he left my body and he began to grow and learn outside of me. Since he began to hold up his head and crawl and smile and laugh and make my heart feel all the warm bubbles of emotions. Oh what a beautiful and painful journey it has been.

I know I hold on too tight and I know why. In the bluntest truth of confessions of a writer my son was conceived during a difficult time, during a time where I needed a thread to hold on. I felt so many things slipping from my grasp, a tragedy befell my family that I didn't know how to live with, cope with and now I still try to heal with. The long story short is my heart was broken, and I became a single mother unexpectedly and then he became my life line. They say that God often gives us our children when we need something to live for, and somedays I can honestly say he was my only motivation to get out of bed, to strive everyday.

Raising a child during a traumatic time, and under traumatic circumstances I do realize can create an almost unhealthy level of dependency; we see shows and movies about how Postpartum affects women; well I had pre-partum.

Years before he was born I struggled with the idea of having a child, even though it had come to me in a dream that I would have a son. When I was maybe 18, I saw him clear as day in my dream; long blonde hair and blue eyes. He was in a field of wheat laughing and playing only moments before dusk.

It had been revealed to me in many sequences of a dream the meaning of my name and why it had been given to me. My name is Hebrew and it's from the bible but also had a deeper meaning than I ever even knew. My name Jordan is a country but also a river and the name means "crossing over". It had been revealed to me that I was going to cross a river that maybe I wasn't ready for and my heart needed to be prepared; it needed time, it needed to heal, it needed to learn to love and it desperately needed to learn to love itself. I'd say in that time from 18 until he was born I went through a great deal of challenges that brought me to the point that I am now as a mother. Many people ask me about his name and this is why I chose his name River.

At 18 in my life, my life was about me; my happiness, my success. I struggled from homelessness only until recently. I traveled on buses, trains, and could have slept in the busy Boston Station or heck anywhere I pleased. I had very little regard for my own life, I was forced into survival mode. When he was conceived I had the unimaginable happen, I lost my husband in a way that was unforeseen by both of us. We had some legal issues that forced him away from us, the way it happened caused a great deal of blunt force trauma to our hearts.

It was a lonely time, I clung to my son as the only piece of my husband I felt I had. There was so much uncertainty and grief and he saved me. If it wasn't for my mother and grandparents who had taken me in I cannot say where I would be. My mother and grandmother were my comfort sometimes in difficult nights, always there to offer me a hug or to soothe me in a way that made me feel like a little child again; vulnerable and needing to be held in a way that showed me it was going to be okay. Many people have one mother in life, and in many ways I had two. My biological mother, was there in the very beginning of my pregnancy and my grandmother in the end until it was time to be reunited with my husband and his father.

Now the wounds seem to seal as now my husband develops his own relationship with his son and I watch them bond in the ways I did from the beginning, my heart still aches for the time lost but it embraces the future ahead. My husband and I now prepare for our second child in July and I can tell you my heart goes through the emotional rollercoaster all over, only now grieving that my son may feel like he doesn't have me all to himself. I've been at his every beckon, he has become my number one priority and now he will need me so much but just a little less than the next little human to come into this world. I struggle with guilt in pushing him towards independence and I try my best to make him feel included, but it just feels like it is never enough.

I write and share all of this because I feel we all have a story, and the journey of being a mother or a father is a constant one of fear and sadness but the most overwhelming level of love a human can know. Sometimes it all feels like too much, with the world so chaotic and spinning out of control, so many variables we have to accept and adapt and adjust to. In these times it can help to know that we aren't the only ones who ache and struggle and its okay to feel these things. It is totally acceptable to break down and wonder if we are doing a good job, and if you do this often I can promise you that you are absolutely doing the best possible job and that from a mother to a mother I have been there. If you never questioned your role or your adequacy maybe you should write the manual to parenting, but if not your on the same train as the rest of us. Remember momma, or poppa, or grandparent raising your grandchildren or to the parent who has taken in another child as their own "You are doing the best you can." I believe in you, and I can tell you your child loves you and needs you more than you can imagine don't give up on you or them.

Sincerely,

Jo.