I've learned a lot about motherhood in the past year. It seems as if I have mothering from prior to when my Mom got sick and mothering after. Trust me on this one. It changed. It had to. My eyes were opened to so many things that-- like it or not-- I cannot protect, fix or change for my children. Big things happen in their lives that as their mother, I am helpless to shield them from. Life changing things.

You see your family going down a road. You think you know where it is going. Everything fits as it should and everyone has their niche. I will admit, while we were no Leave it to Beaver family, we had a good groove going. Then the unthinkable happened.

Mom got sick. So sick that suddenly I became torn between the intense and primal need to be with my Mom and the instinctual need to take care of my children. As my mother became sicker, the need to be with her began to over shadow my instincts to protect my children. To be there for every little thing. Sadly, I must admit, I was not much of a mother to them in the 6 months that my mother was in such critical condition. I knew more about the lives and the comings and goings of her ICU nurses than I did my own children. Those times I made it back to my own home, I was confused as to the simpliest things such as "what exactly are our local radio stations and tv channels?" Everything was upside down and inside out. Home was now where ever my Mom was. The house was where my kids and husband were. And trust me, there were many times I would wake up so very confused as to where I was that morning.

That to say, I wasn't the most attentive of mothers. Things slipped by me unnoticed. My children suffered in ways I never saw. School events that would have seen me there every time came and went without my being there. Whether I was in Houston with Mom or at home trying to sleep or catch up on life, I just wasn't where I would have normally been. Involved with my children.

The last day of school I clung to my younger son's teacher and wept. I thanked her. Surely I never would have been able to make it through the year without her help.

When Mom died, a part of me did as well. I was in a fog. Lost. Unable to figure out who I was. Being a mother felt so hard and so time consuming and so HARD! I didn't have the desire to be the Mom. All I wanted was to be the kid again. With my own Mom still alive. Needless to say, there has not been anyone knocking on my door offering me my Mother Of The Year Award.

And slowly, I am learning to forgive myself.

In the last couple of weeks I finally saw through my fog and was able to see the wreckage that was all around me. And I realized that now is not the time for super mom. Now is not the time to feel guilty for the time I had not spent with my kids. Now was certainly not the time to wonder where I could've made things better for them. Now is the time to let go of trying to be the perfect parent and just hold on as tight as I can to be the good-enough Mom. Being an available Mom.

I am starting to see the effects the past year has had on my children. One of them is having super intense anxiety issues. Intense as in life threatening. One is acting out with an attitude that makes Simon Cowell on a bad day look like Mary Poppins at her sugary best. An attitude that I know is covering up pain and insecurity. And finally, one who is regressing and wants no one but her mommy all day, every day.

I see irrational fears. I see acting out for attention. I have seen the worst that stress and anguish can do to a person. And I have seen it in my babies. That hurts. Knowing that perhaps I might've made things different is a question I am forced to push aside on a daily basis as it taunts me.

We are picking up the pieces. We are out of school and praying for a summer that is relaxing and one that can heal us. I am doing all I can to be the Mom they have missed the passed year while still trying to heal myself. But I have learned. Oh, how I have learned.

1- You cannot shield your children from the harshest realities of life. One day, death will touch them and sting their souls. The best you can hope for is that you are there to help heal the wounds.

2- You cannot always make it better. Sometimes, it just sucks. Period.

3- There is no right or wrong way to parent. There is just one way. The way that works best for you and your kids.

4- Moms are human. (I am still working on letting myself be okay with that.) Moms hurt. Moms grieve. Moms can cry at night, scared of the dark because of the images that loom in the night.

5- Kids are stronger than you may give them credit for....

6- Kids need to know it is okay to be weaker than they may think you expect them to be.

7- Sometimes, you just have to navigate the toughest of waters in motherhood without a map. This is where you have to learn to trust YOUR instinct. Your gut. And your intuition.

8- Finally, it is okay to screw up. Did you hear that, Moms? It is OKAY to screw up now and then. Do you know what that makes us? Human. Get used to it.

Face, it Moms, we don't really have the answers. And let me bust this myth right out of the water as well: Neither do the "experts" because in the case of Motherhood, you really do know best.

So, if you ask me, the best we can all hope for is to get through this the best we can and help each other along the way. Then, and only then, will we be able to do this mothering more successfully and with less guilt. Just doing the best we can.

Posted by Jenn Satterwhite at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

I am changing. I'm not sure I am a big fan of it. Physically, you can see it. Those tiny lines around my eyes are not so tiny anymore. The dark circles under my eyes are darker. My face just looks different. Older. Wiser? I'm not sure. But definitely older. The past two months are taking their toll on me.

But it isn't the physical changes that bother me. It is the deeper, hidden changes I feel that I am fighting. I want to slam on the brakes and stop this. Other people, older people face the death of a parent. Not me. I am certainly not mature enough to handle something this hard. This heartbreaking. This life changing. I don't want to be that person.

There is a bond between a mother and daughter. Something that binds them together in a way that no other relationship can. Many women identify who they are as women and mothers by their own mothers. Whether they are trying to not "become" their mother or if they are trying to mimic the one woman they identify the most with. A deep part of who they are comes from their Mom.

What do I do when my Mom dies? Who do I become? Even though my mom has not been "my Mom" for years due to her MS and the way it robbed her of so much, I need her. Right now, she is still there. I can talk to her. I can hug her. I have always been "Sandy's daughter." It makes me proud. She is a very loved woman. If you have ever thought I was funny, trust me, I am nothing compared to my Mom. She has always been the funniest woman you will ever meet. Even now, she will crack a joke or laugh at her own expense. She sees humor in any situation. When I get in one of my silly moods or hit super sarcasm mode, the common refrain is "She is her mother's daughter."

And I am. I am my mother's daughter. And my mother is dying. A huge part of who I am is dying. And I just can't wrap my mind or my heart around that. I am not ready. I am just not ready.

Little things that seemed so important suddenly have lost so much of their power. My home is a wreck? So what. My Mom is dying. What's for dinner? Who cares! My Mom is dying. What have you written today? Nothing. My Mom is dying. When the grocery store clerk asks me if I have found everything I needed and how I am doing, I struggle with "Fine" but I want to shout, "I am in non-stop turmoil and want to just not feel this way. Do you have a product to make me better??!" Where I used to be hyper involved with my kids' schools, now I can barely muster the interest to pick them up after school, let alone know what is going on during the day or when they have tests, programs or special days. I feel like I am moving under water while the rest of the world is flowing in the fast lane.

I know I am depressed. Who can blame me? I know that. But in all honesty, how do you not feel anguish as you watch your very own flesh and blood, your hero, lying in ICU suffering? How do you not let it take over every emotion you feel (or try not to feel)?

I am grateful I was able to spend so much time with her when I was in the hospital during their lock down. I was there around the clock to be able to cool her with a rag when her fever rose. I was able to hold her hand when she got dialysis. I tried so hard to comfort her when she told me she was scared. She asked me if I was scared too. How do you answer that? How? So, I looked into her eyes, and with all of the strength I could muster, I lied to her. I told her that I was not scared and that I was there for her. I told her to take my strength and know that she is not alone. When she fell asleep I whispered, "Yes, Mommy. I am very scared. I want my Mommy. But you should not be scared. I don't want you to be scared. Forgive me for lying."

I'm changing. And I don't like it.

Originally posted on Mommy Needs Coffee on September 29, 2005

Posted by Jenn Satterwhite at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

There is something so utterly ironic and frustrating about being sleep deprived on a regular basis due to your four toothed cheese eating crawling roving smiling 10-month old, only to have your husband thrash around at 3:00 a.m., get up to go to the bathroom, heave his 200 pound frame back into bed so hard that your 5 foot 9 inch frame literally BOUNCES off the bed. Then he pulls all the covers off you, leaving you awake and shivering. You spend the next 60 minutes thinking about evey person you ever slighted, every shameful thing you have done, every decision you regret, and you analyze all of these events and wonder if you were just truly manifesting your own shameful dysfunction, or if all of this was just part of what led you on the path you are on. Who the Hell knows? The path may just end up leading to elightenment. Hell if I know.

I have cut people out of my life because they disappointed me. Because they made me feel small and ahsamed. I have cut people out of my life for my own self-serving purposes. My load was lighter without them. I am thinking back on a particular time when I was careening through life, gooning wine like I was being chased by someone who was going to take it away. Trying so hard to make things feel right. And Failing. I was doing things that were damaging to me, and to other people and feeling terrible and ashamed.

I wonder where that all came from. How long it built up in me. I wonder if I am really done with that dark stuff. I sat in bed for an hour, staring at the clock and feeling the shame over me like a pall. Now that it's written into actual words, I see that perhaps it's not as huge and crushing as it felt an hour ago. I think maybe I can roll that huge boulder a little to the left and pull my squashed, pulpy mangled soul out from underneath it. I would really like to put my pulpy soul back to bed where it can go back to sleep and let go of this horrendous guilt and self-inflicted angst.

While I am at it, I hope to take that little voice in my head that tells me "you are a goddamned idiot" behind the house, put it out of its everlasting misery and bury it for good.

My therapist told me the reason I was feeling more keenly emotional about things was because I am writing more. I suppose that can't be a bad thing. I am just afraid of what rotting carcasses I might find as I clean my mental house and clear away the newspapers, take-out boxes and beer cans that have been cluttering my landscape and hiding all the monsters that I can't see, but can hear. They make creepy rustling noises. I am scared to see what they look like. It makes me think of the time I was babysitting my younger sisters and Betsy, the youngest and probably six years old at the time, came upstairs from the basement TV room looking pale and scared out of her mind. She told me there was something moving aound under her chair and she didn't know what it was. I went downstairs and there WAS something under there, making a huge racket. I didn't know what kind of scary creature was lurking there, but I just squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the chair away. A blackbird flew out from under it. We started shrieking and laughing and running around. After it flew upstairs, we closed all the drapes and opened the front door to guide it out. It flew right out the front door to freedom, never to be seen again.

Originally posted on I'm Ablogging on June 28, 2005

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Mrs. Bevans,

I am not sure if you remember me after all this time, but I hope you do. I have meant to write this letter for years. It's embarrassing that it has taken me this long, but here it is.

I was in your 5th Grade class at Lyndale Elementary. I was the one with a bad haircut who wore the same pair of jeans every day. I got in trouble for reading in class. I read in class most of the time.

I was very into Betsy Byers books, and "Where the Red Fern Grows", and "Summer of the Monkeys" and about a million other books. It must have driven you batty, but you were always certain to let me know you supported my READING, just not when I was supposed to be listening to how to add fractions. You made it seem like my pretty darn near obsessive compulsion for reading was a GOOD thing. You would suggest books for me and I usually loved them. You checked my eyes for tears when I finished "Where the Red Fern Grows" in class. When I got to that ending that tore your heart out. That was so bittersweet. It makes me sigh to this very day, thinking of those hound dogs, and the boy who saved his pennies in a coffee can in his barn, and the love that Dan and little Ann had for each other and for their boy master.

I have lovely warm memories of your classroom that year. The rest of my life at the time, not so warm and lovely. The 5th grade was a difficult time for me. My mom had gone back to work, and I was pretty much saddled with the child care responsibilities which meant I had to be home every day after school to watch my sisters. No play dates. Not that I had many. My best friends were my cousin Tiffany and Jenny, and Tiffany went to private Catholic school and that was the year Jenny decided she liked Amy Kibler better. I was friendless. And NO ONE wants to be friendless in the 5th grade. NO ONE.

Amy Kibler and my former best friend Jenny would terrorize me on the school bus. One afternoon they went up and down every aisle, whispering behind a "Fame" l.p. record. They would look at me and whisper presumably mean awful things about me to every single kid on the entire bus, all the way down the aisle. They probably said that I wore the same pair of jeans every day because they were the only pair I had. I tried so hard not to cry. SO HARD. But my tears betrayed me and let them know they had done it. They had hurt me. They had humiliated me and made me cry. There was a boy named Matt who was popular. He sat down next to me and said "Don't pay any attention to them. They're just being mean."

I still think of the kindness of that boy, and the compassion and bravery he displayed risking that. It could have been his social death. It could have made him the pariah of the school bus, sitting next to the dork that was getting her 5th grade ass handed to her in the popular wars on the school bus. God I hated that bus ride. Straight home on the bus every afternoon. 30 minutes of being on the losing end of 5th grade class warfare with that God Awful nasty Nancy Parsons, who along with Amy Kibler, seemed to have taken my friend to the other side.

I was so alone, and every day I had to face that bus ride home to take care of my sisters who didn't even care about my stupid bus nightmares. THEY had pants. Ungrateful brats. They got pants and they never had to ever DO anything but eat oreos and watch Little House on the Prairie in the dark of our basement. If my parents had paid me for my hours of latch-key services I may have been able to buy some fucking pants so I could stop being teased, but the needs of my siblings always seemed to trump mine. Someone always needed some fucking dumb-ass glasses or something. Stupid sisters. I wished so many times that I was an only child (and yes, I now realize that my sisters are the greatest asset I have in this life but at the time, hey, we were working for the same limited resources).

I was on the losing end of our own household trickle-down economics. Trickle my ass. There may have been a fine mist, but all I know is I never got my fucking new pants, which in turn led to the social impalement I received on a daily basis.

My bus torture continued. So did my long afternoons with my sisters. I tended to take out my frustration on them, and tortured them in turn. Then my mom would get home and yell about the mess I had made and something about how sick of kids she was after teaching the ungrateful urchins herself all day (she was a teacher too) and she was tired and yada yada yada.... There was not a whole lotta love in the afternoons at my house.

But that was the bus, that was at home, not your classroom, Mrs. Bevans. You didn't allow that bullshit in your classroom, and you called the ringleaders of social torture on their crap and I loved you for it. I am not sure how you cracked the code. But what you did was create an environment where I could actually learn. They should implement a special Maslow's Pyramid for 5th graders. Somewhere between self actualization and basic physical needs there should be a "not being tortured for having only one pair of pants" and that would be just under "learning fractions".

You met with my parents and came up with a set schedule of times when it was acceptable for me to bury my head in a book. You sat me down and pulled out my test scores (high) and laid it next to me homework scores (low and spotty) and pointed out the disparity. I wasn't stupid! I was just lazy! And you called me on it. You were one of the first people I recall telling me that I was smart. I so needed to hear that. I needed someone to notice me. And you did Mrs. Bevans. Thank you for noticing me. Thank you for encouraging my love of books and for convincing me that not only was I not dumb, but I was actually smarter than most of the kids in my class.

That was the year I started developing just a wee tiny little bit of self esteem. YOU seemed to like me after all. You were everybody's favorite teacher and you LIKED me. You made me feel like you even liked me a little better than Nancy Parsons and her minions, the instruments of pre-adolescent social impalement.

Thank you Mrs. Bevans. That spark you gave me lit a little fire that I still have burning today. I was in such desperate need of that little spark. Of all the teachers I have had, you had the largest impact on me. Thank you for caring. Thank you for being so good at your job. Thank you for not allowing social torture in your classroom. You are truly the best teacher I ever had. I know you lost your husband years ago and I was so sorry for your loss. I hope you have a lovely life because you deserve to have a lovely life. You made a difference in my life and I will always be grateful for that. You are a gifted teacher. I was lucky to be your student. My life is better because I was your student. Thank you.

Meghan

p.s. I have lots of pants now.

Originally posted on I'm Ablogging on September 5, 2005

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)