I cried several times last week.  I admitted this to my mom’s “support group” but rather than affirming my experience (as I was expecting) I heard crickets.  I thought being a mom meant we all had a hard time and then talked about it.  I can’t be the only mom who cries sometimes…right?

On Wednesday I made it to mama and baby yoga (win!).  The class was lovely and I felt calm and grounded despite a mid-class tantrum from The Beast.  Afterwards, a few moms invited me to join them for lunch.  Yay!  Mom friends!  I ordered wine and was feeling generally warm and fuzzy as I settled into an afternoon with my new community.  But The Beast had other plans for us.  She started fussing and crying and causing such a beastly ruckus that I had to leave the restaurant.  It was clear that she was starving and I was inconveniently out of milk, cracking my previously established yogic equanimity.  Adding to my frazzled state of mind was a healthy blend of shame and insecurity.  I was in the middle of lunch with a group of moms I barely knew, and I was the only one with a screaming child.  Furthermore, I was the only non-birth mother in a sea of “real moms” which meant that I was the only one who was not breastfeeding and therefore lacked the ability to meet my child’s immediate needs (in hindsight I acknowledge the flaw in this logic).  Feeling flustered and embarrassed, I rushed home, leaving a full plate of food and an untouched glass of wine.

For the whole rest of the week, I brooded over my failure as a mother:

And on, and on, and on…

The next several days were not easy.  The Beast was being beastly which was likely spurred by a cold that we both got, but also likely due to my emotional distress.  They say babies are hyper sensitive to your energy and The Beast was clearly my mirror.  My patience was thin and my insecurities chipped away at my confidence in my ability to successfully care for my child.

My tears followed The Beast’s tears so that we were both full of despair.  This couldn’t go on or we would both go mad so I did the only thing I knew to do, I ate my feelings.  Chocolate is the classic method for feeling consumption, so to avoid eating handfuls of chocolate chips outright, I baked (c0de for: I ate spoonfulls of cookie dough) semi-healthy “Trail Cookies” adapted from Oh She Glows.  They are simple, fast and most importantly, they contain chocolate.  They are also (relatively) guilt free as they are vegan and gluten free (if you use GF oats).  I didn’t have pecans so I used walnuts, I subbed golden raisins for cranberries and I replaced the maple syrup and brown rice syrup with honey.

Here’s a crappy photo of the delicious results:

After binge eating trail cookie dough (don’t do this at home, kids), some good ‘ol lezzie processing with Mrs S, a visit from my best friend…

and a Sacred Awakening card reading,

I had some ideas about why I went off the deep end.

I realized that I continue to struggle with not being the birth mother of The Beast.  I never thought this would be such an issue for me because I intend to carry our second child, so it’s not as if  being a birth mother is an experience that I am missing per se.  And yet, there are clearly defined gender roles in the context of parenting and when I’m feeling particularly insecure, I struggle that I can’t fit into these boxes.  I’m still trying to make sense of what it means to be a mom, when, you know, there are two of us.  I think sometimes my experience is more similar to that of a dad.  Is it?  But, I’m still a woman, and have womanly thoughts and womanly feelings (…).  I realize that rather than trying to fit myself into a box, I might benefit from allowing myself to exist successfully outside of classic gender roles (like the time I dressed in drag as Danny Zuko for Halloween and felt like a whole new woman).

 

I also must be hyper-vigilant about silencing my inner critic.  I practice self-criticism so often, and I’m quite good at it, but no matter how much I practice or how good I get, it still never serves me.  Weird, right?  Instead, it dampens my energy and creativity.  It eats away at my inner peace and equanimity and generally makes the already challenging task of parenting even harder.