No. 004: Motherhood and fangirling
No. 004
Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022
Haiii 👋
What a week, ya’ll. Is anyone else starting to feel the holidays approaching? There’s so much I love about this season—family traditions, the humbling reminder of our true source of hope and peace, candy canes (but only the rainbow cherry ones)—but if I’m not careful, the pressure can loom ahead like an ominous cloud. And it ain’t raining money or holiday cheer!
This time of year can bring up a lot of emotions for many, from gratitude to grief and joy to bitterness. However you’re feeling, be gentle with yourself and make self-compassion a priority. This might look like giving yourself the gift of sleep, saying no when your plate is too full, or journaling every morning. It’s easy to forget to take care of ourselves when we’re feeling overwhelmed, but this doesn’t put us in a good position to give the best of ourselves.
When you practice self-compassion, you can put compassion out into the world—and that’s what we need during this season. You never know what the grumpy person who bah-humbugged on your day is going through, so give them a break and some kindness.
And with that, I’ll cut this short—I need a brain break and some alone time. I always need some desensitization and solitude after particularly busy times or sustained periods of interaction (the struggle of an extroverted introvert!), and I’m okay with that.
I hope your week is full of lovely moments of awareness, reflection, kindness, and inspiration!
erin xo
In this issue:
An essay on motherhood
A little fangirling
The Ride of Motherhood
This essay was written a few weeks ago during my time with Cohort 9 of Write of Passage. What an awesome opportunity that has been! I’ll share more later, but for now, here’s another piece of the story.
The Florida heat is already sweltering as I cross the driveway, dancing gingerly among the boxes and smiling politely as I pass the languid Sunday morning browsers. They’re examining the treasures from my earlier life splayed out on blankets and sheets, fanning themselves and shielding their eyes from the sun.
Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I grab a trash bag from a box on the garage shelf and walk toward a folding table under a pop-up tent. An older woman is trying to hand my husband a fan of musty dollar bills, but he shakes his head and waves them away.
My head aches a little and I rub my forehead again, this time in hopes of easing the tension.
“Well thank you!” the woman is saying in a slightly-too-loud grandmotherly voice. “My granddaughter can really use these, she doesn’t have much. She’s on her own with the baby.”
I clear my throat, the thick warm air choking me as the words register.
On her own. Baby.
Just like that, I’m taken back 13 years to the green two-story house in the valley of South Dakota where I, too, was on my own with a baby.
——
I'd always wanted the Hallmark movie version of the start of motherhood. The tiny finger sandwiches and pastel dinner mints and toilet-paper-around-the-belly baby shower, the Welcome Home Baby banner and balloons on the mailbox, the family and friends hovering nearby with advice and helping hands at the ready as my happy husband and I bumbled and fumbled our way through the newborn stage.
What I got was a 36-hour labor with doctors and nurses hovering nearby to whisk the baby off to the NICU to treat his pneumothorax. I got an extra week's stay in the hospital to learn how to administer a precise dose of steroids and attach leads to a home cardiorespiratory monitor and do CPR in case my newborn stopped breathing in the night. I got a cold, snowy drive home to an empty house on Christmas Eve, where I cried as I watched the boy I'd loved since middle school read a book to our little boy as he lay sleeping. Blue light from the bilirubin pad inside his swaddle illuminated him like a glowworm, casting a dim blue light on the dark Christmas tree behind him. We’d pulled its plug so we could plug in our son.
I sat on the couch, feeling as deflated as my womb. This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
And what was coming wasn't how it was supposed to be either.
We'd barely figured out how to work the cloth diapers I'd stubbornly insisted on before the day arrived. That day we bundled up the glowworm, blankets and cords and all, and drove to the airport. The day my husband insisted we just drop him off at the curb and avoid going inside because he didn't want our boy to get cold. The day I hugged him tight, half savoring the moment and half rushing through it, trying in vain to avoid the pain of the long six months of deployment ahead of us. The day my best friend kissed his firstborn—his only born—goodbye.
The last day we ever saw him again.
——
I snap out of my reverie and clear my throat again.
“I’m so glad we can help,” I say with a smile, finally finding my voice.
As she continues to chat with my husband, I turn and kneel on the rough concrete in front of the boxes of clothing. I rummage through and start picking little pink onesies and pajamas out of the pile. I try not to look too closely as I pull out the palm-sized socks, the polka-dotted footie pajamas my daughter wore when she rolled over for the first time, the flowered bibs that were once finger-painted with every vegetable of the rainbow.
My fingers brush against the soft fuzz of a pink blanket. I smile again, for myself this time, as I remember the joy of wrapping both of my daughters in its softness, bundled sweetly like little gifts.
They were gifts, my baby girls, treasures I never imagined I would receive.
When my husband was shot down on that devastating day in September, my dreams of having a big family were shot down along with him. When I’d finally opened my eyes from the darkness and allowed myself to look ahead at the new life I’d been thrust into, all I could see was my little man and me, the Dynamic Duo against the world.
I couldn’t imagine more children, another spouse, a different family. Nor did I want to.
I didn’t think the cracks in my heart would ever mend enough to hold anything more—and I knew it wouldn’t survive another break if I lost anyone else.
But hope is a powerful thing.
It swoops in with gentle feathers when you least expect it and softens your memories. Just a touch of its feathers covered the pain of loss with the joy of love when I said “I do” seven years later. Just the softest touch and the searing pain of childbirth was dulled just enough to make me excited to experience it again—twice.
One gentle brush and the rollercoaster of life before me—the one that had screeched to a halt and forced me off at stops I didn’t want and whipped me around until I was dizzy and broken—didn’t seem so frightening anymore.
Like the rush of adrenaline after a thrilling ride, there's something intoxicating about experiencing incredible joy after a devastating loss. It opens spaces you didn't know existed within you, soothing the tender spots as it fills you so full you think you might burst, compelling you to ride the roller coaster again and again.
That’s why, when it was time for the ride to shut down, I threw a tantrum like an exhausted toddler at Disneyland. I didn’t want to stop having babies. Ending that season of my life felt like being forced off the ride in the middle of a loop, reeling and dizzy, with no possible way to right myself. I wanted to finish the ride.
I wanted to keep being excited.
I wanted to continue to be hopeful.
My husband, the man who was tender and patient with me as I learned to love again, wisely knew it was time to get off the ride. He wiped my tears and held space for me to grieve. And eventually, I realized it wasn't really about a new baby. (Okay, maybe a little bit—have you ever smelled a newborn's head?)
Really, it's about what birth represents.
It's the promise of new life, the reassurance that love can be found and given again and again. It's the hope that even in the deepest of pain, you can be healed.
It's about letting go, throwing your hands in the air, and enjoying the ride.
——
A hand touches my back, and I look up at my husband.
"Ready?” he asks.
“Ready,” I say with a smile as I stand.
I pause for a moment, the bag's drawstrings in my hands, and close my eyes. My heart swells with gratitude. Gratitude for the gift of my children, for love past and love present, for the ride of being alive. As the memories swirl in the thick air around me, I silently fill the bag with the best gift I can give—hope.
Hope for the mother filled with uncertainty, who right now is in a painful season of her own life. Hope that some of the love threaded through these tiny baby clothes will wrap them both in a blanket of comfort and warmth and help them see that an expected twist on the rollercoaster isn't necessarily the end.
Hope they’ll look back on this season with grateful hearts, knowing that pain and heartache can be transformed into love, hope, and healing.
You see, we’re all on the ride of life. It’s a ride forged by both the choices we make and the circumstances that are out of our control. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it's slow. Sometimes it's smooth, and sometimes it’s so rough you think you won't make it off alive.
But it’s always moving forward—always taking us somewhere.
And even though we can't see what's around the bend, and we don't know where it’s going to end, we can choose to breathe in the glory of each twist and turn and smile at the exhilaration of the ride.
I open my eyes and hand over the bag.
☐
[originally published in my essay collection on 11/6]
And now for something completely different…
A little fangirling over here—Zapier replied to me! Little big things like this affirm when we’re on the right path and living authentically. Everyone should feel free to be their silly selves! ✌️
An actual video of me, right after:
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(A middle-aged lady in a button-down and pajama pants just squealed like a pre-teen in her ergonomically-friendly home office chair. You’re awesome! 👏👏🤓)
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Oh my, Erin. This was moving, I'm sitting at my desk with tears in my eyes. Thank you for being brave enough to share, and being so wonderfully draped in hope. Inspiring writing and an inspiring life- thanks for sharing.