A Letter to My Mama
Thank you for teaching me it’s never too late for people to change
Dear Mama,
Mothers Day is approaching and I’ve found myself reflecting on how far our relationship has come. I started thinking about how grateful I am to finally feel able to celebrate you from a place of pure appreciation for all the things big and small you’ve done for me in the past two years and appreciation for the large role you now play in my every day to day life. I used to be jealous of my girlfriends who were close with their moms and chatted daily on the phone with them. I regret the time that I’ve wasted being mad or distant from you. We’ve had our highs and lows and in those lows, I would often ignore the urge to reach out to you and for that, I’m so very sorry. I’m learning now more than ever that becoming a parent is the hardest job in the world! There’s no instruction manual and you just have to try your hardest while it’s inevitable that you mess up along the way! We all just have to pray it all works out and our kids turn out okay. I’m sorry for ever putting you through hell as a teenager, disrespecting you and getting brave with my rebellion or disrespect. I’m sorry for not listening to you when you warned me I was making dumb choices just like you had made and regret yourself and choosing to make them anyways. I now have my own regrets that shadow yours that wouldn’t exist had I truly listened to you and heard you. I can’t imagine how frustrating for you that must have been. I’ve learned to turn these regrets into lessons, but sometimes it takes messing up and making mistakes a good six or more times for the lesson to really sink in. Im sorry you had to watch me go through those things while I recreated your own past and pain . I’m sure that couldn’t have been easy on you and now that I’m a mother, my heart aches for your mama heart. I wish we would have talked through those things more often. I’m sorry for any time I’ve ever hurt your feelings coming from a place of judgement and ignorance having never been a mother myself, yet. I’m sorry for the resentment I held towards you for years instead of working on my own healing and healing our relationship. More important than my apology, is my gratitude for showing me that people truly can change if they want to bad enough. Thank you for making me feel like I’m worth that effort. Thank you for trying harder to be more present in my life. Thank you for helping me so much with my babies. Thank you for doing all the little things you do for me what feels like pretty often these past few months, not one moment has gone unnoticed or unappreciated. Thank you for being the mom I’ve always wanted and needed. I’m so glad I get to talk to you every day now. I’m thankful you are always there for me to fill in and talk to about the serious stuff and the mundane things. It’s all equally important to me. I’m sorry if I have done a poor job of expressing how much you mean to me until now, but I thought it was long overdue. I would be lost without you! I’m so proud of the woman you have become. I have seen you grow emotionally and internally and now spiritually! Getting baptized with you on Easter Sunday was one of the best days of my life so far! I am so thankful to have such a special moment with you to cherish for the rest of my days. You have a loving and giving heart and you’ve put in the work to become more patient and present for those you love over the years and I see it and I’m grateful for it! You inspire me to continue to strive to become a better woman, mother, and daughter myself! I love you so much. Happy Mothers Day!
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Motherhood and Poop
There’s SO MANY things they don’t tell you about becoming a mother! I think it’s safe to say that most of us go into having our first child with so much fear of the unknown! One of the main ones being, “THAT comes out of THERE!?”Accompanied with panic. A close second, the gift of hemmrhoids. Kudos to the moms who went au natural, I, on the other hand, would like to take a moment and thank whomever created the epidural as it was as magical as it was scary. I didn’t know this with my first, but I found out before my second (and added it to the list of fears) did you know, PEOPLE POOP WHILE BIRTHING BABIES!? I mean, I guess when you really think about it, and oh buddy DID I, it sounds pretty normal as you are quite literally pushing a somewhat larger and more alive terd out that you then have to keep alive for AT LEAST 18 years. I didn’t care about the blood or the weird globs of stuff that plop out after, but boy was I concerned about the poop and I honestly couldn’t tell you why my concern was so heavy. I lived a relatively clean life until children. My mom says I manifested it into happening for myself because I didn’t do it the first time around. Honestly, I resented her for saying that, but she’s probably right. I get the nervous poops too so what’s more nerve wracking than birth!? Anyways, let me apologize by how comfortable I am with talking about poop, but I could accurately support that comfort with one word, MOTHERHOOD. It all starts when you poop them out. That’s followed by months of quite literally counting and logging their poops. Some of those said poops being logged on the poop paper are launched so aggressively out their arse you don’t know wether to take cover and leave them to fend for themselves or just throw the whole baby away once they’ve bathed in it as it climbs up their back. They grow so fast that you don’t have to log the poop anymore but you still have to make note of how often it’s happening and be alarmed if it’s not enough or too much or if it’s too hard or too soft. Then after a year or so, you get to potty train! I could go into details about all the places I have found poop during this process with my older two, but I will sum it all up by sharing with you the fact that my oldest stopped me from doing dishes by pulling on my shirt, “here go mommy” as I go to grab it, and by IT- YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS, right!? Anyways, as I go to stop myself from grabbing it, I begin to question everything about life and I also begin to wonder, “does this count as potty training?” Okay so I’ll give you a minute to recover from that now that we’ve touched base on years 1-3. The next chapter, 4-6, is what I like to call, Skids. I feel skids is a reasonable name for this phase of child rearing because it rings true for more than just in their underwear, which is frequent might I add. You know how kids wipe their hands all over their clothes or whatever they’re sitting on while eating something messy? Now, equate that to pooping. Horrifying, right? I’ve found a skid on the WALL and I’ve found skids on the outside of the toilet multiple times. Worse than any horror flick is the unsuspecting skid of poop that makes its appearance known while you’re innocently minding your own dang business! Then there’s the inside of the toilet- because their little butts only go so far back, at least half the time there’s poop missing the water of the flush. Why don’t they prepare us for these things? I don’t know, but that’s what I’m here for. The mere mention of poop sends these little creatures you’ve created into a laughing frenzy and don’t even get me started on farts. I’ve quite literally sat and watched my daughter shit herself trying to push out a fart to be funny. As I’m watching it unfold, her faces goes from that of laughter and entertainment to “uh oh” followed by concern and regret. To answer your question, of course, she was warned of the possibility. Aren’t they always, though? They never want to listen to mamas warning and then end up suffering the consequences and in this case, the consequences stunk. Pun intended. The second time I’ve dealt with a potty trained child of mine pooping themselves was a day to remember. It was beautiful outside and I got the urge to walk with them to the park in our neighborhood which is about a mile from our home. I put the baby in a carrier on my back in an effort to “get a workout in.” Hindsight, I probably endangered him back there from being keeled over in pain laughing so hard! Anyways, we get to the road that leads us to the park and my middle child says he has to poop. At this point, there’s no turning back around and making it home to the toilet. So I tell him the end is near and to just focus on the finish line, he can poop in the woods! The further we get down this street that seems like it’s got to be the longest one in our neighborhood, the more he begins to quite literally waddle and sigh. At this point, I’m already weak and crying at the waddle but I pick up on the fact, it’s indeed, what my mom refers to as “turtle heading.” So I tell him to clench his buttcheeks and we all kind of pick up the pace. We get to the last of two houses on the street and we can see the park and we all start cheering! Then I watch as the excitement turns into panic on his face and his head starts to look down at the ground and everything becomes slow motion. “NOOOOOOOOOO!” Screams my daughter in absolute horror as poop plops onto these poor innocent peoples driveway. I immediately search for signs of life near their windows, expecting the poop police to come out and yell at us for having pooped in their driveway. Then I realize there’s no one at the window and remind myself to mother my son who’s momming me as I come back to reality. “Mommy! I JUST SHARTED ON THEIR DRIVEWAY! I couldn’t hold it! My buttcheeks just weren’t strong enough! What are we gonna do!?” I look at the dollop of poop that made its way out onto the ground and make my way up my sons legs with my eyes to discover the trail the poop had taken on it’s way down. I can’t breathe because at this point panic and laughter had taken over my body. Tears are rolling down my face and I forget I even have a baby on my back. I wish my mom was here to tell me what to do right now as I forget I’m the mom and they’re seeking direction from me. I called my boyfriend to deliver us a care package to the corner by the park and said an unspoken apology to the neighbors with the gift in their driveway. They honestly don’t prepare you for these things and I hope my message can help enlighten those of you on the fence about having children, MOTHERHOOD = POOP.
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