Sorry, Shame: This Mama Is Too Busy Healing Her Girl to Sip Your Poison

We didn’t quite make it a year between visits to the walk-in emergency clinic. There are three things I have learned from the early morning trip to have two-year-old fingers checked out after a door slamming incident:

1. Telling personal stories on a blog means never having to guess when past major life events occurred. They also lend you strength you may have forgotten you had.
2. My little one is accident prone, tough as nails, and sweeter than I thought possible. My big one never means to hurt anyone and her feelings may be more wounded than her sister's digits if we're not careful.
3. I’m still woefully and beautifully imperfect. And I am still ok with that. Shame need not apply when I'm busy healing my baby and keeping the big girl from falling into the shame spiral.

Here's an updated 2016 version of that story from last year:

One of my girls had an accident this weekend. Though it was terrifying at the time, it ended up being relatively minor. Now I can claim a parenting merit badge my mom never earned: held my daughter as she got stitched up x-rayed and told she'd merely lose a pinkie nail.

It was an accident, yes, but it could have been prevented. I could have had my hands on the kids instead of sitting an inch beyond an arm’s length away lying in bed three feet away, utterly exhausted by another night of tag teaming sleepless children. I could have said “no, honey a five year old isn’t big enough to carry her one year old sister yet.” screamed "no, you will not slam that door just because your sister is trying to come into the bathroom!"

But I didn’t.

And we ended up at the walk-in med center, covered in blood all swollen up – and sidewalk chalk and dirt from what was supposed to be a typical Saturday spent in a yard just awakening to spring still in pajamas, eyes full of sleep.

We’re so proud of our girl for healing so quickly and handling it all so well. And I’m pleased to report that I’ve emerged from shame’s shadows. Truthfully, the horrible guilt dissipated within twenty-four hours. (Likely that’s because much of the swelling did too). 

Truthfully, I skipped shame all together this time because a shamed mama isn't a strong, compassionate, in control of her emotions mama who teaches her girls to be same.

No longer blinded by self-recrimination, I can simply hold my little one tight, overcome with gratitude and rendered speechless by how precious she is to me (and by utter exhaustion).

Yes, gravity won sibling rivalry made us all losers in that split second, but I forgive myself.

I’ve decided that I am mother enough for my daughters – even if I’m woefully and beautifully imperfect.

Echo Grandma by Guest Storyteller Evelyn Asher

As my thoughts propel through barren trees, the chill of a Northern Georgia winter diminishes. My heart travels on wings of love across four states to northwest Ohio where I picture two of my granddaughters, ten year-old Nora and 8 year-old Samantha, fastening their seat belts in their dad’s dated van.  Off these resilient young ladies go to their hip hop and jazz dancing lessons while their same-aged stepbrothers are scurried in another direction.

My younger son, 49, a bearded bear and a vivid storyteller, fosters fierce grandparent bonds and tends a family legacy. He remains in the frigid north to ensure he is an integral, stable part of his daughters’ lives.

“Hi, Grandma Asher.” I melt when these words greet me each time they phone.           

“What are you doing this afternoon?” I ask when the girls called to thank me for coloring books.  “We are going to Poppy’s. He isn’t feeling well.”

Tonight, I will craft a “C” poem on decorative paper and I will post tomorrow for weekend receipt. Enclosed will be two sheets of paper, suggested letters of the alphabet for a poem written in different script, and two self-addressed stamped envelopes. I delight in creating a collage of the girls’ poems and sweet notes that come back to me- sunshine in my mailbox.

When distance-induced heartache surfaces, I giddily send surprise packages. Sometimes I compose “fill-in-the-blank” letters and send them off - also with a SASE. I have learned to ask at the end of each letter, “What haven’t I asked you that you would like to tell me?”  About my new haircut, one tells me.

At other times, my heart spills over in when I meet a young mother in the check-out line and ask how old her child is.  I recently asked a mom at Michael’s if I could treat her child to something extra as I would if I my grandchildren were near. Gratefully, I had that pleasure.

Dance recitals are calendared for June. Will I be in the audience?  Perhaps. Whether I make the drive or not, I will always be in my granddaughters’ balcony, cheering them on.

Through the barren trees, my echo carries. Can you hear me now?  Can you hear me now?

Evelyn Asher is a business coach and poet who yearns to take her family on a Custom Sailing cruise.

Knowing Motherhood by Guest Storyteller Barb Buckner Suárez, #365StrongStories 56

My baby lay on my chest, warm and wet from being born just moments before. I called my parents to announce they were grandparents - again. This was their 10th, but my first. Still high on the other side of giving birth, I looked at her impossibly tiny fingernails, and dialed. My Dad picked up on the first ring shouting with joy. Mom got on next and the minute I heard her voice, I burst into tears. “I’m so sorry!”

Concerned, she asked, “For what, honey?”

“For all the times that I said I’d be home by midnight and didn’t come home until 2 am! For all the times you must have worried. For everything!”

She chuckled, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Which only made me sob harder.

How is it that the word “mother” remains unknown, unknowable, until you are a mother yourself?

Just as my mothering journey was beginning, the veil that obscured motherhood had been pulled away. Suddenly and with great clarity, I realized that all of those times I’d been convinced my Mom was “ruining my life” were just her attempts to save me from harm. I couldn’t make sense of this at the time. The center of my universe was me.

Now, holding this completely dependent, tiny little person, I realized the enormity of it all. I had just irrevocably committed myself to doing everything possible to raise this child into adulthood with an intact and healthy spirit. What the hell was I getting myself into?

I couldn’t believe that my Mom had made this commitment six times - all without a mother of her own to call and apologize to.

Where does this determination come from? To love so fiercely that your heart catches in your throat at the thought of your baby ever getting hurt?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. But my Mom was willing to show up and answer them. I’m forever grateful that I have the opportunity to show up and answer them myself, however imperfectly.

But I admit it: I’m looking forward to receiving that call to support my own daughters when it's time for them show up and try to answer these questions on their own motherhood journeys.

Barb Buckner Suárez works with expectant couples as they are preparing to become a family. She believes that every woman should have a birth story worth telling. You can find more of her writing at www.birthhappens.com

Held by Earth, Air, Fire & Water - No Matter What, #365StrongStories 52

Thanks to taxes and a toddler, I’m working on three hours of sleep. It’s like being underwater and floating in the air and mired in mud and burning with delirium all at once.

When I put it that way, it almost sounds like a spiritual experience.

I’ve roamed across faiths and devotional practices for half my life. Finally, I’ve found myself in the hinterlands between the Catholicism of my childhood and the Mother Goddess dirt worship that I’ve picked up during the quest. Ultimately, my home is made at the crossroads. You might choose to see this as a symbol of the cross. But I’ve never found much solace or inspiration in that part of the Christ story. Give me a divine birth and miraculous healings, please. Give me the goddesses who guide the travelers’ way.

North, east, south, and west and the elements that resonate with each - that is where I always come back to. It’s the very essence of being alive as I understand it.

The earth is our very bones. The air is breath in our lungs. The fire is the spark of movement. And the water all the sweat, the tears, and the blood that wash us full of life.

In these years of mothering young children when I feel almost perpetually off balance with exhaustion and a poorly tended body and soul, I would tell you I’d lost track of these elemental marks of aliveness.

But as I drown and float and burn and feel so stuck, It seems that nothing could be further from the truth. Even when I’m sleepwalking through a Sunday, I’m held by these forces, by the energies that compel this world, these bodies, the collective spirit.

No, you can't have chocolate with your whine. Mama can. #365StrongStories 49

There comes a moment in every child’s life when she stands at the top of the stairs crying “mommy, I need you!” It will be thirty years before she understands what mama is really doing when she calls, “Yes, darling, I know. Let me just get your cough medicine!”

Mother is actually going for a mouthful of Cadbury chocolate and a slug of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Good night, dear.