Becoming and Unbecoming
A Meditation on Motherhood
This is a story all about how my life got flipped - turned upside down.
Oh wait… that’s someone else’s story.
Right - mine starts with a girl. And if we’re getting technical, it starts with a boy, which then leads to us having a baby girl… ”having” feels like the wrong word somehow. We were given a baby girl. She was extracted from my body and placed on my chest and we were told “She’s yours”.
Deep breath in. Full breath out.
And it felt so foreign. I felt numb. Partly from the epidural. Partly from the realization that I will never not be a mom now. I will also never be who I once was. There was no time to experience the weight of that realization - the before-and-afterness of it all.
No one spoke about it in the prenatal books I read [those were more like “Here’s how to swaddle your newborn so that they completely submit and stop crying, trust us, it’s easy” type of material]. And if someone had told me “Abby, when you become a mom, there’s an unbecoming that happens alongside it. Things change, inexplicably and indescribably so”, well, it’s not like that’s really something you can prepare for, now is it?
Four[ish] years in, and I’m still trying to process it all, the becoming and the unbecoming. These writings are dedicated to this new journey through motherhood. A way for me to metabolize all that I’ve learned and become and released and dissolved, all that I’ve seen through the eyes of my brave and beautiful daughter. And an opportunity to hold space for the loneliness of motherhood. Where you can [maybe] see your story in mine so that you know you’re not alone in it. A coming together of unbecomers - the mothers of this new world.
Deep breath in. Full breath out.
We’ve got this mama, and even when we don’t, we’ve got each other [and 90’s pop culture references].
sending big love and deep breaths,
abby