Dear tired, burnt out, mother

"I wish I could tell you how time passes regardless. How nothing is permanent. How much that feels like an overwhelming relief and an overbearing grief all at once"

Apr 17, 2024

Dear you,

I want to start by saying that I wish we lived closer.

I wish, so much, that I could share these words with you in person. I wish I could take you out to your favourite cafe. I wish I could buy you a hot drink of your choosing and a pastry as big as your face. I wish I could hug you and hold your hand as I gently dispute the stories sold to us before the babies got here.

The story that the first three months are the hardest. That it gets easier with time. That having three babies is as easy as having two or that the shift from none to one is the hardest. The story that tells you that my truth in all of this should be the same as your truth and that lays guilt on, thick as butter, when that is found not to be true at all.

I wish I could sit, silently and listen as you share your story. Your truth. I wish I could interlace it with my own, carefully, showing you the parts that are the mirror same and the parts that are as different as the sun from the sea. I wish I could show you how that is all perfectly okay.

I wish I could tell you how time passes regardless. How nothing is permanent and how much that feels like an overwhelming relief and an overbearing grief all at once for me. How does that sit with you, in your body?

I wish I could gather you up and take you back, through the ages. Pre-industrial revolution. Pre-capitalism. To the before. So you could see clearly, what community looks like. So you could see the children running together in packs, like wolves. Some clinging to the leg of their parent wolf but most free, exploring, learning, safe, as the mother is free herself to be whole. I wish I could fully explain that the struggle you feel is real. You are not a failure for finding this hard. It is hard. And you are being failed. By a societies belief in a nuclear family that needs nothing but a small group of beings, separate, each inside of their own homes.

We were never meant to do this all alone.

Your desire to be free is as real and as deep as your love for the beings you have created. It’s existence means nothing of your love for them. We need to have a purpose in this world and very few of us can find that in the monotonous task of nappies and snack time and sleepless nights.

The sleepless nights.

That continue long past everyone else’s attention span.

As you sit at work or at home with your second cup of coffee barely taking the edge off and you wonder how you will ever again be a complete person.

It will come.

I promise.

For now though, please know that I see you. And please know how much I wish I could take it all from you, just for a second, just long enough for your arms to recover enough to hold it all again. The tasks or the baby or the expectations - whatever is your personal struggle or weight you carry - just for half an hour for you to nap or shower or finish that task you’ve been planning in your head all day. Desperate to complete it undisturbed. I wish I could take that for you. I wish I could give you that. I should be able to give you that.

And so know, also, how hard I am trying to break down those large stone walls built around us. The ones that look like tax returns and endless meetings and wrap around care stress. The ones that make it feel like we can never fully stop or put it all down or exist outside of it. How hard I work to break that apart, to find a new way, one that allows me to..

For now though

Please just know

how much I see you.

Please just know

How much you matter.

Please just know

What a miracle you are.

With love & care,

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