Becoming a Mom... Again... Redefined

My girls

This post is long overdue.  When I returned to Canada in 2011 and shifted my blogging from Snippets From Singapore to Going Om, I wasn't quite sure what I would write about.  Several people were following me and enjoying my blogging and were excited to see what was next.  My Aunt told me I should write about becoming a mom... again.... after 40.  But I didn't.

Going Om became about my journey readjusting to life after returning to Canada, with a baby, without a job, and all the challenges and celebrations that life has brought over three years. It was about finding mindfulness in my life.  It was about getting healthy and well while chaos ensued around me.  It was about 'going om'.

But, for me, that was about being a mom... again... after 40... with all its ups and downs.

Because that's my life.  Or at least part of it.  And being a mom at any age with any number of children is more than just being a mom.  Us moms are more than moms.  We are friends and daughters and business owners and wives and yogis and runners and... and... and...

So I decided it was time to write about becoming a mom... again.... because my journey brought me to here.  And that, I believe, is something I had to accept.

I spoke at MoMondays in October 2013 about my experience of being a single mom (see a very short snippet of that here).  It was the beginning of releasing something I didn't know I was holding onto.

I had defined myself as a single mom for 20 years.  I WAS a single mom for 15 years, and then I wasn't.  I then had an awesome partner who shared in parenting.  And then I had another child.  And then I was married.  I had a whole family!  I wasn't a single mom anymore, and I didn't know how to not be one.  It was who I was for almost half of my life.

Over the past year, I have gone through a lot of wellness woes... if you've been following, you have read about a few of them.  A little while ago, I realized some of that was a result of my holding onto the definition of myself - a single mom.  I had an incredibly difficult time letting go of that version of myself because it was all I had.  All of my pride and success came from that.  I was good at it.  I managed it all so well for so long.  That 'fire in my belly' came from wanting the best for my child. And when I could no longer say I'm a single mom, I didn't know who I was.

I love my new life.  I love my husband and my toddler with all of my heart and soul.  I love my grown up daughter so much I could burst.  Amazingly, when I was pregnant on my youngest, I feared I would not have enough love to love her as much as I loved my now grown up child.  HA!  There is NEVER a lack of love.  Love can only grow.  There is always enough and then some.  Lesson number one.

I also feared I would not have time for my oldest's needs.  I would have a baby who is totally dependent on me and how on earth would I continue to devote my energy into my oldest??  Well, that didn't happen either.  First of all, I had a husband who also cared for my baby, my oldest, and me.  (I still am not used to it!)  I had to begin to allow him to do stuff.  Take care of things.  It was normal... it was his share of the work.  He calls it division of labour.  I call it awesome.  Second, my oldest was part of this baby's life - she is not a person separate from the family, and this new family thing can be pretty awesome.  She contributes and she receives.  (Maybe it's a little bit of birth control too:)

All wonderful.

Except that for a long time, I felt guilty about my husband doing things and my oldest daughter not getting 100% of my attention 100% of the time.  If my hubby got up in the night with the baby, I felt like I had fallen down on my job as a mother.  If he cooked supper... I had failed.  If he took care of getting snow tires on the car... yep... I was not worthy.  If my oldest got miffed about me not having the time to drive her to school, I was the worst mom in the world.  She was in university and we have a bus system.... yet, I was so accustomed to taking care of her every need that I didn't know how to let that go (I'm still working on that to be honest).

Crazy, hey?

But that is how it is when you define yourself by something.  I was successful in life because I was able to do it all alone (and quite well at the time).  I managed everything by myself, and was I ever proud of that!  And now I don't do it all alone.  My seemingly only success in life (oh, I know, there were many) is now something I am not successful at - because it doesn't exist.

It's not that I'm not still proud of being a wonderful single mom.  But I have had to go through a process of letting go of it.  I was hanging onto it for dear life... when it was taken away from me, I no longer had anything to be proud of.  I thought.

When I had that ah-ha moment that I was defining myself as being a single mom and I no longer was, I began to fully allow the new awesomeness into my life.  I laugh at my situation a lot - I mean, really... diapers... again.  I embrace having a toddler.  I have a renewed sense of child-like fun.  I am seeing the world through a child's eyes again.  I am actually enjoying bringing her to swimming and dance classes.... I thought I had done it, did it, got the t-shirt... but I'm actually loving it again.  I feared I wouldn't.  But once I embraced it all, instead of fearing it all, it all became so good.  So rich.  So meaningful.

And having a grown up child at the same time is 'da bomb'.

There are so many advantages to having raised a child before you have your next one... sure, yes, babysitting... but I don't expect that.  It's more about knowing that it's all going to be OK.  I don't fret about having the perfect birthday party or having the trendiest toys or the fact that she is not yet toilet trained.  I didn't really fret about that stuff for my oldest either, but I had an underlying worry that my way of parenting would mess her up.  Now, I don't really worry about that.  Because parents do mess up their children.  That's just the way it is.  No matter how hard we try not to, our parents have the greatest impact on us, and that is good... and it can also contribute to our humanly messed up ways - because parents are human too.

The first time around as a parent I used to say, "All you need is love."  And then I'd work really hard at making sure she knew she was loved and I'd worry that maybe something I said or did would have a negative impact on her future... so I'd work harder at being a perfect single mom.

Now, I know all you need is love.

<3