by Sarah K Grundy

Motherhood. I wish this was a parody, or narrative of the underlying meaning of a splendid, abstract art exhibit, but it's an autobiography and I'm not alone.

 I think women are lying when they say they wouldn't change anything if they had it to do all over again knowing what they know now. Of course, we would and we'd do it way smarter ten times over and over if those chances existed. I don't believe we only get this one life. I have been here before and so have my children. The flesh just seems to help spirit manifest and keeps on going with, or without us. 

So, let's not pretend for the kid's sake, or to protect our precious ego or reputation. Let's instead get real and deeply honest. 

From the corner of a crowded cafe, it makes my ass twitch when people far too attached and delusional say things like, "but if you went back and did it all again knowing what you know now, you wouldn't have x, y, or z." No, I would not. 

I was that sister and friend talking people out of parenthood after I saw. Naturally, they ignored me as the call of the wild persists like a she-wolf after her prey. When I say, “The world changed colors after bringing life,” that's literally what happened to me. I looked out the window and it was like I just woke up on a different planet. 

I saw. I saw and heard things I never knew existed before, but they were always there, and isn’t there something terrifying about that reality? I saw. I saw the world for what it truly is and that's not child and family conducive most days, and in most ways, as I thought in my innocence. The world has changed from what it once was, but it's also not ‘the village’ they say it takes to raise a child anyway, your babies will want and cry for you.

Just you. Daddy won't make the cut or the nanny. Neither of them smells like you, or have their milk in their breasts, or the heartbeat and vibe they knew for practically a year in your womb. 

It's you. Just you. There will be no novel writing while they nap. No! So stop it. You'll be laid out drooling, begging for sleep, or mercy until they wake you again. Even decades after they stop waking you up, your body will still be waiting for it to happen again like an old war wound from combat days and sleep will remain an elusive memory. 

They’ll grow, and things will change, yet it’ll be 2:30 AM and you’ll have adapted to wired from being needed to death for well over a decade. And I had help. Lots of help. That's a story for another time. My body knows sleeplessness, navigating emotions and deprivation on a soldier level. I had to learn how to train my circadian rhythm under highly undesirable circumstances in order to keep up with that 'having it all' lie, masquerade, and charade. 

Lies. When you can sleep again, you'll stay up just to get time to yourself, and a glimpse of yourself, your life, at whatever cost. That cost is delirium. It's not sexy. It's not humorous. It's serious, like a heart attack and you will beg for death, but instead will get eternity. It's not like the movies; That fun satire, the rush of busy living and chasing the dream with your fancy stroller, heels, and bouncing, gorgeous hair. No! There's diarrhea on your fancy stroller, crusty breast milk in your hair, and your feet are too swollen for your Jimmy Choos. Plus, you don't care because you're too fucking tired to do anything about it. Don't trick yourself into believing it will be different for you.

Stop smelling people’s cute, chubby babies, watching those stupid commercials, reading the intoxicating magazines, and get real. Don't engage in seduction. Fight back against nature! You wouldn't lay down and die in a tornado, would you? No! You evacuate. I saw. I saw what it took to raise magical humans in the current world and keep them that way.

Pure magic doesn't quite exist the same way now that your endless nights of vintage French wine, gourmet meals laced with enchanted mushrooms, fine dining restaurants, diva dancing, and mingling with intellectuals have come to an end. No! It's principals from the murky black lagoon and parent-teacher meetings with women who don't even like you at all and who will be talking about you behind your back secretly wondering if you’ll steal their crusty, used-up husbands.

It's endless years of snotty tissues and baby vomit in your favorite Hermes purse that took you 8 years to buy. We can't fathom that while we're filled with a calling to create that dates back lifetimes, filled with love, hopes, and dreams yet to be obliterated to bits by motherhood and adult-onset ADD, which arrives just when you think it's almost over.

But, it will be different for you, right? No! It was two very small slivers of opportunity that made me a mother and it nearly did not happen at all. I almost saw too much, before the children had the chance to get here through me. I feel all of them would have made it here with, or without me. They are powerful spirits with, a destiny about them!

They won. I don't feel I was really made to be a mother. I mean, I love taking care of myself, privacy, adventure, and having alone time way too much to be needed as much as you are as a mom. Don't you? Freedom was my most cherished possession. The thing about motherhood is even when they're not there, they are and so that bond takes over you and becomes the most important aspect of everything in your life.

I saw. I saw the crimes the world was capable of committing and who I'd have to become to protect them from it, and eventually who they would need to become to live as part of it. 

I saw. I saw overpopulation. The earth needs fewer new children and more warriors right now. Mothers who will build a fortress of wealth and bring in lots of children and motherless—Surrounding the said fortress with hounds and ravens getting stronger by the day, while learning the strategy needed to survive here and hopefully flip this crazy world right side up again.

I saw. I saw that it was a selfish choice to give into the craving to make more of me and my love. The children without homes, the adults who've never known love, and the amount of mothering this world needs on a grand scale weren't clear yet in my mind, and had I known I would have been able to be more of service and chosen differently. 

I saw. I saw that it's either you have children, and that becomes your service, your mission, or you make a monumental shift in our beautifully handicapped world by fostering and mothering it, delivering a new creation to it, but not both at the same time. That's what we think before having kids. “I can so totally do and have it all at the same time.” No, we can not. That is a lie. You will not like the end of that story. It will come with heavy sacrifice and possibly heavily medicated. Do not let them feed you that lie. Do not tell yourself that lie. But, you will and you'll think I'm crazy, or that it will be different for you. Until it's not. 

So, yes, had I known then what I know now, I would do it all over again and thoroughly different. Will you? More here in The Washington Post on the over glorification of motherhood.

Disclaimer: Advocate for speaking the truth, raising warrior women, making the impossible possible, and not glorifying it. This is written because women aren’t sharing the full truth of motherhood with each other or the world.

Image and Text COPYRIGHT © October 2018 MAZEYLOTUS