it is what it is

midlife musings on motherhood

Yesterday I awoke in a terrible mental state. Over the course of a few hours I collapsed into a full emotional breakdown. It was not caused by any one thing, but by the cumulation of so much change and loss in the last few years. I cried hysterically and felt besieged by all the existential questions. I felt alone and ashamed of my life. Unmoored. Without hope.

I texted my bookclub group to let them know that I was really struggling and could use a friend. The 30 minutes that one such friend spent with me that afternoon meant everything.

Her advice was simple: look at your life and accept it, “it is what it is” and allow yourself to feel all these feelings. Don’t let your thoughts carry you away from your feelings, but stay close. Feel them deeply, bravely and painfully.

At this moment it is good for me to feel my feelings, without looking for solutions and without thinking of alternative paths that I did not take. Something about facing them and accepting them calmed me and calms me like nothing else.

A day later now, the realization suddenly blossoms within me that I have been at such very low points before. I remember now how my life seemed over when my first business failed in the wake of the 2008 economical crash. For the first time then at the tender age of twenty-seven, I realized that even if I lost everything (which I didn’t), I could go on.

And then it seemed like my life ended when my baby was terribly injured at birth. Witnessing her life of cruel suffering was the most excruciatingly painful experience I have ever endured. I would have bargained almost anything to save her, to heal her, but instead she died at 11 months old. Yet while she still lived I did learn: my life goes on. Eventually, I chose to pursue my own interests and small joys despite her suffering. And to let her go. To keep on living with hope and curiosity, not just being alive.

Contemplating divorce was another cavern in my life story. The idea felt like the ultimate failure as mother, Christian and daughter. Until it wasn’t. Until I realized that all the costs of divorce - in financial and social security, in day-to-day logistics and in relation to my loved ones - were necessary in order to keep living. That being halfway alive was not the story I wanted to tell, especially to those loved ones. It turned out that adventure and love and flourishing were on the other side of that gorge.

So you see, I might have faith as I face this chasm. I might not falter in the face of great life change. I could theoretically take the loss of motherhood in stride.

Children are supposed to move out, to not need you, to cut ties and make their own surprising choices. It is healthy that my 8-year-old now spends half of her time with her father, post-divorce. With my older children now flown, this nest is empty half of the time. I am forty-two, and I saw it coming - that my older children would leave. But nevertheless or maybe because of the sudden, bi-weekly absence of my youngest, the transition shocks my system.

I have experienced motherhood as one of life’s greatest joys and one of life’s sweetest sources of meaning. The flip side to that is the gap created when things shift. I am still a mother, I know; but it doesn’t feel the same and it doesn’t fill my days like before. I have so much more time, so much more freedom and so much more ME. Sometimes that is a joy, and other times it is gaping hole.

Who am I? Who do I want to be? And what is this life for?

For now, acceptance. These are the choices I have made and how my life is shaped. I can’t go back. It is what it is.

And feelings: a jumble of fear, shame, curiosity, grief, loneliness, love, humility.

Heartfelt gratitude for the friends who answer my call.