Saturday, November 04, 2006

the condition or quality of being human

its sad that i have not been motivated much to post on here, afraid i think is an acurate portrayal of how i have felt about it... unmotivated and afraid to let you in and tell you the truth... life for me these days has not been a bowl of cherries. in my quest for excellence (although truth be told still having a hard time letting go of perfection) i have been afraid to tell you that i don't have it all together.. i have many times had to hang on for dear life because if i didn't hang on i would surely go to the looney bin. now i am not sure exactly what my feelings or lack of feelings mean but i do feel safe to say that my thoughts and feelings this past week have been sometimes borderline scary.. ok insert note to all of you here: this is not a cry for help... i have been ok with help.. this is just an admission of my fear and a need to come clean and say i do not always have things all together and to somehow put it out there here in blog land that THAT IS OK!! being a mom is hard in fact its a passport to many feelings... lonliness, craziness, even hair pulling madness at times.
we love our kids right.. we do the best we can by them and still somedays we feel we might loose our minds. i think i am doing a pretty good job with these two and feel i keep somewhat of a clean house, i manage to do laundry and get supper on the table most nights.. but if i look deep down there is more that i need... more peace that needs to settle and surround my whole self...
somedays being knee deep in poopy diapers and mounds of laundry and dust circling my water cooler and screaming that i can't seem to do anything about gets to me. it just does and that my friends makes me what i fear the most... human.
i am going to post this instead of reading it over and analyzing my thoughts, afraid of the comments i will get because i long to be real i long to overcome my fear and just be human.

10 comments:

SuJ'n said...

thank you for sharing, heather. i'm sorry that things have been rougher than you hoped/imagined. i hope this is just a crazy season and that sunnier times are around the corner. it's a difficult task to be entrusted with so much life and responsibility. i'm glad you have help and community to support you while it seems like life is slipping through your fingers. you're loved and treasured.

Anonymous said...

Heather -

I often say that being a mom is the most difficult job in the world, and you can't anticipate it until you're in it. For me, the lack of control is difficult to accept at times (most times!). As I've become older, I'm realizing that my sanity and peace with myself and my reality come when I don't try to regain control, but just BE who I am.... AND let my girls BE who they are. Life is much easier when we're real and transparent. Keep that up and you'll be fine. Try to pretend that it's all good and the fogginess of motherhood can threaten to overtake you sometimes. I like that you're real. That is something your boys need you to be too -especially as they are growing.

Karla

Anonymous said...

I often have a hard time admitting that I too feel like I'm gonna lose it some days. Some days I do lose it, but I manage to wait til Devinder comes home and then I lock myslef in the bathroom with tea and a book till I'm all pruney. Of course if Lily is crying then I only achieve plum like status and have to get out of the house. It sounds horrible, but it's the only way sometimes. Just a walk around town by myslef, or a trip to a coffee shop alone, or if I can swing it, dinner or a movie alone is all I need to feel refreshed and ready to go again. This weekend my husband took care of Lily while I painted our bedroom. It is work, not rest, but I felt so relieved to be accomplishing something other than laundry that I feel great now and ready to begin another week.

Anyways, I hear ya, I'm sure most mom's do, and most of us only have one child to take care of, so we have mucho sympahty for you girl! I also find that talking to other mother's really helps. We are in a play group and last friday it seems we were all just needing to release out thoughts and vent a bit. Just hearing of other mother's going thru the same emotional roller coaster I was made me feel like a better mom, you know, cause it made it normal somehow.

The Pauls' Family said...

It seems like every moment I have to decide: what are my priorities.
Is it spending time with my husband, is it a clean house,is it a discipline issue, is it a child that needs to be cuddled and the list goes on and on and on and on....I think you get the picture. I, like you, have had to come to accept these facts; I will not have it all together, my house will not be spotless again probably until my kids leave home (and then I will probably just wish for someone to come mess it up!), I will not always have the energy I need to get all I want accomplished done, But I take one look (okay, sometimes two or three!) at the gifts God has given me, and I see it is all worth it, even if I don't have everything under control. Heather, I don't have it all together either, and who ever said that mothers have to act like they do? Good for you for not putting on a front, I do that far too often. I don't have it all together, I have hair pulling days, motherhood is not easy. But if I focus on my shortcomings, then I become out of whack. Instead I need to focus on verses like the old Sunday School verse, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength."
Excellence, not perfection.

Anonymous said...

It's definately okay to be human - but sometimes it is HARD, especially as people who expect perfection from ourselves! I have to admit that I fear that I will also fail myself once our baby arrives, and that I won't be able to keep up. I will be praying for you, and hope that things get a little easier.

... said...

heather,

i know we don't really know each other, but speaking from a mother's perspective (and as a cousin to dave) i think it's safe to say that even if the house is total chaos and dinner is burn black, your boys (all three of them) will still love you. you are one person caring for four (yourself and hubby included) - occasionally you will miss a laundry cycle and won't get dinner cooked, and that's OK. i'm positive that i can say dave didn't fall in love with you for doing his laundry or dusting the house. so take a deep breath and remember that it's all going to be ok. life was never meant to be mastered, so do your best and leave the rest! :)

Anonymous said...

I learnt the hard way that there is no such thing as a perfect mom, only a good enough one and that you are indeed.
Welcome to the human race. I remember the days I needed to give myself permission to be human. It's funny, but true.

Love you lots,
Mom

lagiulia said...

Thanks for writing this, Heather. It's so helpful to the rest of us to know that there are others out there going crazy too! Having twin babies is really something. Some days you just can't win, no matter how hard you try. One boy is happy, the other is not. You get that boy situated, the other becomes fussy. Moms of singletons will never know the special kind of joy we experience with twins, but they will never know the utter desperation either. My boys can be pretty easy to take care of one week, and then everything will change- they change- and I just feel utterly hopeless, like life will never calm down and I will never have anytime for anything other than being their mother - and not a good one at that. The next week they'll mellow out, and my outlook improves - I have hope again that just maybe I will have enough energy and sense of self at the end of the day that I could do things for me, like writing music or another creative pursuit. Right now I'm going through a period where that can't happen, and it's soul crushing sometimes. The boys have been a real handful lately, all over each other, whiny, very clingy. It's been hard. I am hoping for an upswing soon. And I hope that for you, too. To say it's not easy is foolish. It's HARD. Beautiful, wonderful, lucky, extraordinary, yes. But it's hard, and that's a large part of the truth, too.

Heather said...

lagiulia - finally yes.. you got it.. the essence of what i was trying to write. thank you..its not about questioning our worth as mothers.. we know we are good at it.. its about finding the time and space to be US.

Angela Oliver said...

Heath... I love when you're human.

I remember it so much especially in Ottawa... and I actually felt privileged to be a part of that in your life.

Have a drink and think of me and help me "cheers" to living life.

You're an awesome example for me
Love you much