I
am grinning as I wave my
family off the boat. (I am a
creative mermaid, of course
I live on a boat.) This is huge for
two reasons. First, I have work
that lights me up and fills me
with joy. I want to do this. I am
not forced into my job and I do
not drag my feet into work, I
want to run into it!
But, and this may just be even
more important, I am waving
goodbye to my two small chil-
dren and I am not feeling the
least little bit of guilt. Not even a
smidgen. And for me, and I sus-
pect a lot of moms, this is huge.
This was not something I was
born knowing. This wasn't even
something I had to learn. I had
to have myself broken to discov-
er. Forget about pouring from an
empty cup, I opened my veins
with my teeth to put my blood in
there. And then when that little
voice of doubt crept in asking if
this was healthy let alone what I
wanted, I would proceed to body
slam it with an elephant sized
amount of shame. After all, isn't
this what REAL mothers did?
My oldest was almost 4 and my
youngest not quite 2, when I
woke up one day to find out that
the woman I used to be, despite
my belief to the contrary, was in
fact not dead. It actually hap-
pened on a weekend with friends.
We were all staying on a lake
learning how to sail (a good skill
to have when you are planning
on moving onto a sailboat) and
the last night there we stayed up
late dancing. My partner took
the kids to bed and for the first
time in almost 4 years I let him
and stayed. And I felt a source
of real joy that did not originate
from my kids again. I had forgot-
ten how much I loved to dance.
It was then I realized that the
woman I was before children was
not dead. I had just ditched her
in a deep ravine and left her for
dead. That night she had man-
aged to crawl out. And thankful-
ly, instead of walking past her, or
even worse, kicking her back in,
I called an ambulance. She was
now on life support, but there
was hope!
The road back to me has not
been easy. And it was not im-
mediate. Society puts a lot of
pressure on women to be perfect.
We find ourselves struggling and,
unless we know where to look,
when we reach out a hand for
help we rarely get it. Instead we
get it slapped for ever extending
it in the first place. (How many
of us have asked about the dif-
ficulties of breastfeeding and
instead of loving support we get
uber moms talking about those
cracked and bleeding nipples as
badges of honor!) Thanks a lot for
your help! #nofuckinghelpatall
Or sometimes we find help, but
they rarely address the cocoon
phase. I think of life as a series
of cycles, and each one involves a
caterpillar component, a cocoon
phase and a butterfly phase.
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