I made a promise to myself to publish this blog before the end of August. I started writing it in July, and was surprised to see that it’s been two months at that time since my latest post. But better late than never. I’m shooting for one post a month, and here’s my long overdue post.
Last month, we turned three years old- he as a toddler, me as a mom. It was the first time we threw our son a big birthday party with all of his friends. It was heartwarming to see how much he grew since his second birthday. This year he was old enough to decide who came to his birthday party, what flavor of cake he wanted- it kept oscillating between vanilla and chocolate even after we placed the order (we eventually ended on vanilla), and the theme of his party- Paw Patrol. On the morning of his birthday, he helped me sort the party favors into different bags, making sure he got one for himself too. After all, he’s the birthday boy, and he made sure that everyone who came to his party knew that.
We played, we laughed, and we sang happy birthday. And as my little one blew his three candles, I blew the imaginary candles on my motherhood cake. I too celebrated my own milestones. And as much as I would like to write about how my big boy has developed over the past year, I think it’s more important to talk about what I learned as a mom. In some aspects, my child’s development is a function of my own.
Over the past year, I’ve learned that how I react during my son’s distress has a huge influence on how the situation unfolds, and that taking a few deep breaths always helps. I’ve learned to let my child express his emotions, even if it meant screaming. And while it is my instinct to want to make him feel better right away and make the “bad” emotions go away, I learned to stand back and let him sit with his emotions for a little bit, as long as he’s not physically hurting anyone. If I always rushed to make him feel better, he would never learn how to deal with his emotions, especially the strong ones. And I’m happy to see that he’s becoming more resilient, and that he doesn’t get as overwhelmed by his strong emotions as he used to, simply because he had the chance to experience them.
I’ve also learned that it’s important to let my child play independently, to let him occasionally navigate his environment on his own. Because I’m away at school for 8 hours a day, I used to have a tendency to overcompensate for the time not spent with him, and I felt that each moment I had with him needed to be a special one. However, with time I realized that not only is it OK for my son to play alone, but that it’s more important for him than for me. He became more independent, entertaining himself when my husband and I were busy or tired. It also made him more compassionate. He saw me as a human who is sometimes busy and tired, rather than a superwoman who never got drained. And he started to show more emotional understanding than I ever thought was possible for his 3-year old brain. This growth made our weekends more fun and relaxed, and made the quality time I spent with my son more enjoyable.
I could write endlessly about the things I learned, but I wanted to dedicate the rest of this post to the most profound skill I developed over the past few months- one that probably had the biggest impact on my motherhood experience, and life in general. I called it a skill, but I think of it more as emotional growth. This skill/emotional growth is the capacity to hold two contradicting feelings/thoughts at the same time and be in peace with it.
As humans we have a tendency to label things, to try to divide everything into categories. It’s our way of simplifying the complex world around us, of having comfort knowing that some things are certain no matter what. We like yes or no, love or hate, black or white. However, I think this tendency can hurt us sometimes. I can’t tell how many times I heard people say that a certain decision they made was the best or worst decision of their lives, or how many times I read books or blogs that talked about finding your one true passion. I think it’s hard to be 100% certain about most of the decision we make, either big or small. Those statements promise certainly in a mostly uncertain world. And trying to find that certainty in our own lives can lead to constant disappointment, because feelings fluctuate with time, even for things we absolutely want. Most things in life lie in the grey spectrum where one doesn’t have a definite permanent answer. It can be two different answers at the same time, and I came to understand that it’s OK for it to be this way.
I haven’t gone through an experience in my life like parenting, where I found myself learning to embrace that I simply couldn’t put all my feelings about it into a single category. Although I just wrote about how most things in life are uncertain, being a mom was one of the very few things I always knew I wanted. Yet, as much as I want to say that I love every single moment of parenting, I know this isn’t entirely accurate. But I began to understand that those feelings are part of the experience, and they don’t need to define it. I wish I could think of a better, less cliche metaphor, but the first thing that came to my mind is how thorns are part of the rose stem, yet they don’t necessarily prevent us from enjoying its scent (cliche over). There are days when I miss certain parts of my old life, like going to the movies on a Friday night with my husband, or having a leisurely start to my mornings when I could sip my coffee and daydream. However, I’d be doing myself great injustice if I didn’t acknowledge all the simple daily joys that flooded my routine days. Being a mom taught me to look at life with fresh eyes in ways I never thought were possible for things that I got so used to. Like watching a line of ants carry food crumbs into their home with my son, or stopping by the construction site near our apartment to watch the diggers in action. Or taking my son to the beach for the first time and running with him along the seashore as he giggled uncontrollably every time the waves reached our bare feet. Every experience I went through with my son became a new experience for me. I became more present, and more engaged with the world.
In short, having this emotional capacity has given me the ability to take a more holistic look at my own life. It taught me to objectively observe my feelings, and embrace the difficult ones that come even with the decisions that feel right to me. As easy as this is to write now, it was much harder to remember in moments of adversity. But once I began to internalize it, I saw how much it changed the way I related to my decisions and feelings.
I had entered the realms of motherhood thinking of all the things I would contribute and teach my little one. But as I reflect on the past three years and the person I was when I first became a mom, I can’t help but think that I’ve learned much more than I taught. I was the one sitting behind the desk in the classroom, and I have to say, it is such a humbling feeling.