On being mothered

I love Kelly Rae Roberts’s post on being mothered, mothering, and becoming who we are meant to be. She writes beautifully about her own journey towards motherhood, the heartfelt progress of which I’ve enjoyed following. But the part that I’ve been thinking today is her reflection that ” i am mothered by so many people and friends in my life and that i soak in these moments as my favorite moments.” She writes about how she can’t get enough nurturing and mothering lately and that she is trying to “be present for these offerings” rather than dismissing them, as she might have in the past.

Kelly’s words summon two strong feelings for me: a familiar and tinged-with-sadness awareness that I feel a similar need for support now, and a deep gratitude for the people in my life who have provided the nurturing friendship she describes.

I relate intensely to Kelly’s description of a heightened sense of wanting to be taken care of. What I don’t understand is why.

I’ve been focusing this summer on my mothering, trying to be as engaged as I can be with my children. I’ve been trying to offer them special experiences some of which I hope will become the glittering gems of memory that stud our recollection of certain times in our lives (in this case, their childhoods). Despite all of this summer’s joyful adventures, though, I’m struggling. I ache to be nurtured, for the kind of gentle witness and patient holding that Kelly describes receiving from her friends on a weekend away. It’s easy to assume that I am tapped out from the effort of this active mothering, drained, but I know that interpretation is simplistic, and that the weather inside of me has a more complex source.

Some of this is just my baseline, and reflects both my persistent difficulty in receiving help and my discomfort with true vulnerability. But more than ever, I find myself feeling lonely, and un-seen, un-known, and I am unsure about the rising volume of this need. As I change and grow, are some of those sources of support I counted on the most falling away? Am I walking through a valley that I need to cross alone, before reentering a more comfortable, familiar world?

Though I am in a fallow period, on a lonely passage, I still feel tremendously thankful for the people in my life who do support and take care of me. My parents (and let me be clear that when I talk about being “mothered” I speak about that broadly, Mum, I am not speaking about you!), my sister, and some very special friends, the native speakers of whom I have spoken before. This small group of people, a handful or fewer, have made me feel not alone and not crazy more times than I can count. I am deeply grateful for their patience with me, who can be so difficult and dark.

I recognize this as a time of transition, so perhaps this sensation of chill is just that my native speakers are changing, new teachers emerging. My deep longing for nurturing likely has almost nothing to do with those people doing the supporting and everything to do with me. I am so very raw right now, for reasons both known and unknown to me, and I guess it makes sense that this is accompanied with a persistent sense of being alone. And I am acutely aware of the tremendous gifts that this rawness and sensitivity brings with it; I can feel them showering over me, even on my sad days.

In the midst of this ache for being known, which rises and falls from potent to vague, I still feel certain that I am headed in the right direction. Even in the darkest moments there is a shimmer of truth and of calm that is new. I am, I know, becoming who I am meant to be. I cling to this, and hold it close as evidence that this too will pass. It always does. “That is life’s greatest sorrow and greatest solace. It goes on.” (Mary Pipher, Seeking Peace)