For several months now I've been watching a series of videos called Momversations. It's a simple concept whereby a group of some popular bloggers get together and pose questions to one another via video. And not questions just for the sake of asking questions, they're all genuine issues that the person is struggling with. Ex: Should we have another child?, What do you do if you don't like your kid's friends?, Are you raising your child with religion? B laughs every time he hears audio coming out of the computer because he knows what I'm doing. "Honnneyyyyy... you watching the mommies again?"
I don't think it's a big secret that I have an insatiable need for genuine conversation. The feeling never goes away and honestly, it rarely happens. I feel so squeezed by the hurried and politically correct nature of our world that I feel like there is so little space for two people to just sit and say things that are in their heart without dismissing them away for the sake of every one's comfort, or having people become horrified by your honesty and jumping to conclusions. I think it was a huge driving force behind why I started the writing therapy business. I look around everyday and I see that there are things people need to say, just to say them, but there isn't a place to do that. And the wonder of it all is that usually when you can just say it - once - it releases itself from you. If you can just get another person to understand what you've been through, that nagging voice leaves and you're a little bit more free.
Whenever we would run a class or a retreat, one of the biggest messages was that we were all in a safe space to heal and be heard and it was ok to say whatever you needed to. This was just as important to the healthy women as it was to the cancer patients we worked with. When you gave people the place to voice what you're not supposed to say, they walked away lighter. And the thing that always struck me was how normal and rationale and understandable every one's "secrets" were.
They felt that they had given up too much of themselves while raising their children, they missed being sick because it gave them a purpose and a focus, the don't love their boyfriend as much as they used to, they feel trapped by their families or their jobs, they had no desire to ever have children, and on, and on, and on...
When I was watching this latest video this morning, Is it harder to be a wife or a mother?, it was such an honest question with genuine replies that the video really reminded me of what I long for in life and what I long to give to other people. I'm not a mom yet, but I fully envision that there will be moments when I don't like our children, when I wonder why we ever had them and where all of my time went, and why can't they just raise themselves for a while. Luckily I have friends and family who are more honest than most and would most likely not flinch if and when I call them to say that, but I know everyone isn't so lucky.
As for whether motherhood or marriage is harder, I obviously can't say yet. Not only am I not a mother yet, most of the last five years with B has been wonderful. I adore him beyond words, I never get sick of him, and I want him around all the time. I know it won't always be this way and life is cyclical by nature, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the times that it is.
1 comment:
That was the clearest explanation of what drives you in your business that I've ever read from you. Thanks.
And that was the funniest of the few momversations I've seen.
Obviously, I'm going to say that motherhood is harder. Unmedicated. Medicated, marriage is harder, but that whole statement is so ludicrous because I'm basically saying that I have to be MEDICATED to survive motherhood. But it's also true. Life is absurd.
And by the way, I was never here. You never saw me.
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