‘Good Enough’ Mom
This month I’m focusing on starting the new year by letting go of old sh*t.
You know, poor decisions I may have made, things that didn’t pan out the way I would have wanted and definitely that freakin’ top I ordered from Lindy Bop that was clearly too far outside of my comfort zone.
The one thing that has been weighing on me since I went through treatment for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) is the version of me that my older son got for the first few years of his life. I realize to most that it probably doesn’t make sense since, you know, that’s not exactly something I can predict or control. If I could, I sure as f*ck would not have chosen it. I didn’t even know I had it for the first year.
Mental illness can be very sneaky; it doesn’t always manifest the way you’d expect. It can creep in little by little, and then one day you wake up and realize that your new normal totally sucks.
From late 2015 to the beginning of 2018 I was a ghost at best. And not like Marilina, the ghost my oldest once told me was standing in the corner behind me as I was talking to him in our dining room a few years ago.
I sh*t you not: Marilina. What 2.5 year old knows that name?!
December 2016
It completely sucked (the being a ghost part, not the actual ghost in our house. She’s been pretty tame so far.) After my first son was born I was so anxious (and depressed.) Then after receiving the wrong treatment plan and I became pregnant with my second son, the perinatal depression set in HARD.
I will always wonder if my son felt my anxiety while I was nursing him or if he will remember the times when he was crying about something that he was unable to communicate, and I couldn’t figure it out so I’d have to walk away in frustration. I wonder if he will remember at the beginning of my pregnancy with his brother when my fuse was very short and I had zero energy to play with him.
Undoubtedly, I will always feel some heaviness when I think back to the beginning of his life. I tell him I love him about 40 times a day but I still worry that my PMADs irrevocably set the tone, and that he will never truly feel how much I love him: the immeasurable, all-consuming love that would lead me to walk into fire, a tidal wave, a lion’s den or to the ends of the Earth for him without a nanosecond of hesitation.
PMADs was not my fault, but it happened and it may or may not have affected how my son ultimately views me, our relationship or his future relationships. I won’t know for some time, but I do take some comfort in the fact that I was able to recover. At this point all I can do is double down on being the best version of myself because that's what he deserves.
Being a parent is a trip, y’all.
Being a parent and being human? That sh*t is hard. Hopefully, this year I will make peace with how that portion of my life unfolded, and move forward to make the next three years of my son’s life pretty f*cking awesome.
With warmth and gusto,