Ma Maven | The Mom Without A Manual

Grief, sadness, heartbreak, disappointment, in this day in age there has been a desire to avoid facing trials of any kind like it’s the plague. Couple that with having to teach my children how to be emotionally sound and there lies a petri dish of a mess. What still amazes me to this day is how much my children could care less about the woes of my adult life. It’s as if they have pulled up lawn chairs that I have provided for them, and sat back to watch how it all goes down.

Granted they are infants and adolescents but nevertheless, I would hope that they love me enough to see what I’m dealing with and take it easy on me some days with the number of daily requests. I probably sound delusional because you and I both know that kids chilling out and caring for anyone other than themselves or their own needs is not happening no matter the weather.

I quickly learned that about eight years ago when I found myself battling postpartum depression. It was as though the world was moving at its usual pace but I was the one that decided to walk in slow motion. At the time everything that came my way was heavy, to say the least. My oldest son was just shy of a year old and though I didn’t expect him to be any type of emotional support for me I had a false hope that he could sense what I was battling because he would sit by my side as I cried myself to sleep during the day. Not climbing down off of the couch to destroy our one-bedroom apartment as I slept. And no I don’t think the jar of cheddar teething snacks that sat with us had anything to do with his desire to sit with his sad mother.

As he grew older I grew more in my deception that maybe he really did understand that mommy has her own set of struggles. I quickly learned that the lie detector test had determined… that was a lie (in my Maury- Povich voice). For example, one day I decided to rearrange our quaint one shared bedroom apartment around. I figured I could move the heavy furniture by myself with the wedge-it method. This is a technique where I would take a five-foot dresser full of clothing and shimmy it from left to right until I made it to my desired destination. This solo rearrangement has been a proven method that has worked for me for years. But on this particular day, the technique failed me horribly.

In the middle of me wedging this 100-something-pound dresser around everything falls over with me taking a dive forward to catch it. My toddler at the time was safely on my full-size bed witnessing it all literally go down. After our belongings hit the floor and I crashed into a few furniture pieces during my epic descent I lay there sobbing in disappointment and failure.

But wait, the cherry on top of it all was when my son rushed off the bed to then hurl his weight on top of me. In his mind, mommy is playing a game of pile on. Now you’re probably thinking, “What in the world does moving furniture around have to do with emotions and parenting?” Well, let me tell you. This is what it felt like dealing with my emotions while being a mom. I see what is coming and I try my best to handle the situation and as for my son, who is very much a witness to the tragedies, could not possibly comprehend that I needed help, not more weight added.

Even now that he’s nine years old when I am sad, feeling low, or even at my highest moments he may ask me why I am feeling a certain way about a situation but his mind is still child-like. Though I know he loves me his world very much still revolves around him. He’s not trying to give me a listening ear like an adult, because he can’t. He is trying to process how one minus two will affect him from getting his Pokémon cards from Target. My children are just children. New here and learning how to juggle the ups and downs through the scope that I hand them. They’re not capable of being an emotionally supportive friend. I must admit this lesson I’ve learned early in my motherhood journey has been nothing short of invaluable.

Some of the difficult topics about growing as a mom can be scary to talk about because of the amount of judgment and comparison that goes around on the parenting playground. However, my goal is to be as transparent as possible when sharing my experiences as a mom in hopes that I can relate to others out there who may feel like they’re fumbling through their journey.

That being said, please feel free to let me know what other experiences you would like for me to share here on my blog.