Letter 95: Nuanced Motherhood

When we realize that motherhood is both difficult and wonderful

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Happy Wednesday!

Emily Fleming is back this week with a lovely letter on the nuances of motherhood as both incredibly difficult and breathtakingly wonderful. Emily is always insightful, and her thoughts in this week’s letter are no exception. As Emily writes, “Motherhood is hard. Motherhood is wonderful. Both things are true, and both can coexist in the same breath.” —Emily S.

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Click play to hear Emily read her letter.

“Your children aren’t your children. They’re the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.” 

Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

Recently, I have found myself running in circles where, by having children, I am in the minority. My work environment is full of adults who are childless by choice. I find their lifestyles fascinating, even enviable at times. Full of travel, free of sleepless nights. They alone dictate their schedules. From where I sit, such an existence is difficult to imagine. Like a mythical creature. 

For a long time, everyone I knew was somewhere in the process of having children. We had a lot in common: sharing joys, sharing challenges, at times even sharing in misery. Fellow parents could even be said to share in some form of a mutual Stockholm Syndrome, having developed a deep psychological bond with the tiny humans who hold our hearts (and lives) captive. 

Having in-depth conversations with adults who have chosen not to be parents has enabled me to more closely examine my own choice to do so. 

I know I am not alone in thinking this, but there are aspects of motherhood that I just don’t love. How mercilessly relentless it can be, for one. There are precious few opportunities to catch one’s breath.

Just last week, I barreled through a series of work shifts, desperately anticipating a couple of days off. I needed to tackle some household administrative tasks, nagging bullet points on my to-do list that had been there for an embarrassing length of time. In the middle of my last shift, I got a text from my husband that intricately detailed every single surface in the living room onto which our 8-year-old daughter had just vomited. 

Sigh. There went my free time. 

Instead of uploading financial documents and finalizing upcoming travel plans, I was keeping track of doses of nausea medicine and washing sheets and blankets. Even if I had the time amidst all that busy work to sit down at my computer, my mind was too distracted with worry over her current state of illness to have the bandwidth for anything else. 

My daughter recovered just in time for me to make it to my next shift. I dragged myself back to work, sleep-deprived and mentally weighed down by the tasks left undone. Using my remaining energy to just get through the day. Knowing it would be a while before I found another opportunity to carve out some time for myself. 

Relentless. And just so overwhelming. 

It feels as though nothing could be more important than the work we are doing with our children. At its most basic level, parenthood is keeping your children alive, thereby ensuring the future of mankind. More completely, to parent is to be responsible for shaping the heart and mind of another human being; one who is completely dependent on you to meet all of their needs. 

As my children have grown older and more capable, I am less occupied with meeting their basic physical needs and more involved with supporting their mental and emotional needs. Each of my children has unique challenges in these areas. I stay up nights replaying interactions with my children in my head, critiquing myself for being too short, too dismissive, too human. I encounter prosaic quips on social media, reminding me to have grace for myself. They do very little to ease the heavy burden I feel. 

Poem from And Yet by Kate Baer

We are so quick to follow up any critique of motherhood with some form of the sentiment, “But it’s so worth it!” How much more powerfully authentic would we be if we just let what is hard, be hard? As Erin Loechner puts it: “Authenticity, I think, is simply trying to find the kindest way to tell the whole truth.” Motherhood is hard. Motherhood is wonderful. Both things are true, and both can coexist in the same breath. 

You do not have to love every single aspect of a thing in order to love it fully. I do not love farts or snoring, limited electronic communication, or some of his hats, but I do love my husband deeply and fiercely. I do not love rectal exams, draining an abscess, or telling a person that someone they love has died, but I do love my work deeply and fiercely. I do not love the caged feeling of desperation I feel at the end of a long day when I am trying to put to bed children who have no desire to go to bed. I do not love cleaning up vomit or diarrhea. I do not love cooking meals that go unappreciated by little mouths. I do not love the anxiety that creeps over me whenever I think about school shootings, child molesters, or bear attacks (a true geographical hazard). But I do love my children, deeply and fiercely. And I love being their mom. Even when I don’t. 

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Emily’s 5 Favorite Things

• One of the small luxuries I have allowed myself is a deliciously scented body wash. I have found that I prefer richer botanical scents to overly sweet iterations. I can’t believe it took me this long to learn this, but men’s body wash has the musk I’ve been craving. This one is a current favorite.  

• My coworkers and I have been doing lunch collaborations in the emergency department break room as of late. We pick a recipe adapted for the Instant Pot, and each of us brings a few of the ingredients. The food cooks while we work, then we can all enjoy a healthy and delicious meal whenever we get a chance. We often pick something from Feasting at Home, as it allows us to accommodate our wide variety of dietary restrictions (vegetarian, dairy-free, gluten-free, etc). Her sourdough recipe is also my favorite. 

• Spring sports are upon us, but the weather in Montana didn’t get the memo. The field where my kid’s soccer and t-ball games are held is absolutely freezing. Enter the Poler Napsack. I might look ridiculous, but I’m warm. Great for camping too. 

• A few years ago I started keeping a notebook beside me when I read. If I came across a passage that struck me as memorable, I wrote it down. I now have several volumes of notebooks containing some of my favorite lines from some of my favorite authors. I find it delightful to comb through them years later. 

• TikTok has made headlines in my home state of Montana this month, as the legislature voted to ban the app from use. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this. For starters, I find it incredibly ironic that Montana, a state that highly values a citizen’s right to privacy, would take this action. But above all, I find TikTok to be an incredibly useful app. In under 10 minutes, you can laugh harder than you ever have before, find yourself moved to tears, visually transport yourself to incredibly beautiful parts of the world, and learn a new life hack or skill. Consider me ready to break the law. I love it here. 

With gratitude,

Emily Fleming

P.S. Extricating the self from work and letting it be.