A matter of the heart.

One of my greatest blessings is also my greatest curse.  In my life, I've exerted a lot of mental energy attempting to appreciate the moment as it is happening.  It started when I was at boarding school. As challenging as that experience was at times, I knew it was dramatically changing the course of my life and I wanted to hold onto that in the moment-- to appreciate it, to respect it for what it was.  Based on the way I go about things, some people would call me a perfectionist, some would say I care too much about what others think. I might say those things about myself. However, these are not what motivate me. These are not what fuel the fire of my spirit. For better or worse, what burns inside me is an almost manic desire to live without regret.  To never have to look back and say I wish I took that more seriously. I wish I tried harder. I wish I understood how significant that moment was. I wish I gave more of myself.

Operating in this mode has helped me do some really exciting and brave things in my life. I have achieved and exceeded goals. I have been excellent at times. But I've also been way too serious. Too emotional. I tend to over think things to a point of debilitating. Sometimes I miss the moment while I'm busy trying to make meaning of it. What I have come to realize is that I'm in a constant battle of heart versus mind.  Sometimes my thoughts suffocate my ability to truly feel. Sometimes my thoughts overwhelm my heart with emotion. In either case, as often as I've hit the mark, I've missed because of this.

Motherhood has been no exception to this tendency.  A bond between a mother and a baby is so simple and beautiful, yet I find myself constantly thinking ahead to when Carolina is older and things grow more complex.  How will what I am doing now effect our bond, for good or for bad, later on? Will we always be as close as we are now, as our relationship changes?  How do I control this? I've found myself putting way too much pressure on it.  I’ve been telling myself our relationship is what will make or break my life. Since I found out I was pregnant, I promised myself that I would be as intentional as I can be when it comes to Carolina. I do not want our relationship to just be what it shall. I want to cultivate it. I want to think about her. I want to truly know her for who she is. I want to be as close to her as I possibly can. 

I need to remind myself constantly that I do that not with my mind, but my heart.

I got to thinking about the people in my life who have come to mean the most.   I realized that my brain has been highly impressionable. Lots of messages have been written on my brain. Different ones every day. Good ones and bad ones. My brain is where my insecurities and fears live. My brain holds a lot of chaos. Sometimes, I am embarrassed to admit, it seems that my brain is willing to listen to the message of anyone.  But my heart is of a different strength.  It has sifted out the madness and holds on to the brightest beauty and the deepest pain. It is not nearly as impressionable as my brain is. I might be able to count on my hands the people who have written their message on my heart.  And after thinking through this, I find myself asking: What was it about these people? How can I be that?  What is my message to my daughter and how will I be sure I write it on her heart? 

The truth is, I can't answer any of that right now. I cannot devise a plan to be sure this happens. Sometimes I wonder if we are so close to the messages from our hearts we can't even articulate what they are. From the people who have written their message on my heart, I have learned this- they first showed me their heart.  The only conclusion I can make from any of this is that the first step to writing my message on my daughter’s heart is showing her my own. I can know her by first letting her know me.  So rather than over think the message, I am going to try to tell myself to give my heart to Carolina every day. And trust that eventually, she'll give hers back to me too.

 

My first gift to my daughter was this piece of art, created by Kelly Place, who has, over the years, created some very special pieces for my family, including our wedding invitations.  I hope Carolina holds onto this forever.

 

A response.

This is me moments after meeting my daughter for the first time, after 16 hours of labor and an emergency c-section... taking Amy Glass's "easy way out." 

At first, reading Amy Glass’s article criticizing young women who chose to have a family made me want to laugh.  Then I wanted to get violent.  And then I wanted to cry, thinking about the world I have brought my daughter into, where it seems the more absurd you are, the closer you come to something like fame or notoriety.  For days I thought about my personal response to this nonsense, and I had to get it out. 

For the record, I am thirty years old.  I met my husband when I was 23 and was married at 26.  I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree.  By some standards, I have seen a lot of the world, by others, not very much. By some standards I had a great start to my career, by others I was puttering around in the meaningless.  I decided to leave my job when my daughter was 4 months old to raise her full time.  Some would applaud that, others (Amy Glass, I am talking to you) would need to try to hold back their vomit. 

As the overwhelming majority would agree, Amy Glass is dead wrong.  Whether or not I fit into her mold of “young mothers with husbands” she looks down upon, I take offense to every single word she said.  This is why.

It is people like her that led me into a rather productive but abundantly meaningless life before I met my husband and had my daughter.  People like her that made me think I needed to live my life like a story, packed full of accomplishments and adventure.  My husband was the first person who cared about what the most honest parts of my heart had to say, not the to-do list that had been written on my brain by every Amy Glass trying to recruit women to close their legs and open their minds to all the world’s ideas.  My daughter was the first person to look me in the eye and not wonder where I went to college or in what ways I was challenging myself.  Or what my ideas and opinions are.  She knew my smell and my heartbeat, and that was enough to love me.  

Amy Glass, you have it all backwards.  Getting degrees, and promotions, and traveling, and running half marathons are the things I used to do to make myself feel worthy.  I was blowing through that “to-do list for women who want to feel like they have earned their place in the world” like an unstoppable rebel force.  I have since realized that not one thing on that list said “be who you are.”  And what I have found in the past five years is looking two people in the eyes, my husband and my daughter, who want nothing more of me than that, has been the most difficult challenge of my life until this point.  It has forced me to look myself more honestly than I ever have before.  I began to learn something about all the achievements I was trying to collect.   They will never have the same impact that a person asking you to bare your soul will.  They will not be there to rub your back when you are sick.  Or wipe your tears when you cry.  Or sit with you at the end of your life and listen to you speak openly about your joys and regrets.  They will not remember you, they will not love you.  Your legacy will not live on through the things you teach them.  They will not notice the small things you do.  They will not honor you.  They will not breathe life into you the way that seeing your child take his or her first breath only can. You cannot love a husband or a child in the way you can love a career or traveling.  In a marriage and in motherhood, you cannot play a part.  You cannot hold your family at arm’s length.  You cannot reveal only the best parts of yourself.  For most of my life, this is how I was able to live. Now, every night I thank God for my husband and my daughter, who are asking for all of me, so I can know what that is, too. 

And to address the most laughable point: This is not the easy way out.  In times of stress I think to myself, why didn’t I just go to law school? Or med school? Or move back to London after I graduated?  I have these thoughts because they are my retreat.  They would have been a more comfortable route for me, because I see them as very concrete and predictable.  But I chose to live my life in real time, in chaos, in truth.  To let go of caring what the Amy Glass’s of the world think of me. I have put down my to-do list, and I am working on listening to what’s in my heart.  Creating my own measures of worth.  It has led to many tears and sleepless nights, but it is an education unlike any other.  Had I ever made it to the top of Kilimanjaro, or the floor of Wall Street, or wherever else you find worthy females, I’m not sure it would have even happened there.  

The freedom isn't in becoming a lawyer or a CEO.  Or backpacking solo across Asia.  The freedom is in being exactly who you are, and that is the piece that challenges you and takes courage.  THAT is the hard way. And for me, taking the hard way will bring me a level of success that is beyond anything I could have planned for.  I am not sure what my next step will be, but the courage I have to chase my dreams with my daughter and husband beside me is infinitely larger than without them.  The only thing in my life I can predict right now is that I will be happy.

And for the record, I love weddings and baby showers.  Being a woman is hard enough and we should get to indulge a little bit.  If that means my vagina is smaller than yours, so be it.