A little over 11 years ago I became a mother. I can’t forget the moment I heard my daughter Eva cry for the first time. It is a sound that completely changes you, unsettles you, and savagely strengthens you at the same time. A dormant instinct awakens, but one that you recognize immediately as if you had known it perfectly all your life.
After this, you are there with that baby in your arms and you ask yourself, what do I do now? Because even if you have read a million parenting books, even if you have gone to all the prenatal classes, or you have carefully received all the advice from all the mothers you know, nothing and no one prepares you to be a mother.
It is you and that being for which you are now responsible, developing your own language, in which both parties learn and grow. And this happens no matter how you became a mom. For many women it is childbirth, for others, it is adoption or surrogate motherhood. No matter the way, when you become a mother for the first time you have no idea what is coming your way, wonderful and everything as it is, you have to admit that it is also very difficult. And the first time does not prepare you for the second, the third, or those that may come.
Nobody warns you that immediately your battles change objectives. Or that your strength will break just by hearing their cries, no matter how old they are. Or that you will develop superpowers just to protect your children against all odds. That you will spend sleepless nights taking care of fevers that you wish were yours, or healing broken hearts with kisses and caresses because they are the best remedy, and because as much as you want to stop their suffering, most of the time this is not in your control.
No one tells you that just as you will smile and enjoy being a mother, inevitably at times you will cry in silence when the weight on your shoulders becomes unbearable, or when you feel overwhelmed because it is a fact that motherhood also has a dark side. Or that many times you will look in the mirror and see a woman you no longer recognize, but despite everything you will learn to love, respect, and admire.
No one tells you about the fact that you may have to put your dreams on hold or change them in some way so that your children’s dreams can come true. That you will have to sacrifice time and effort because seeing them happy makes you happy. That after a while you will have to force yourself to rediscover your reasons, your strength, and your purpose so that your dreams finally come to light.
No one tells you that you will want to stop time with each passing year. That at some point you will look back and wonder where the mess, the crying, the diapers went, and instead, you will find empty spaces full of memories. That you will not mind not appearing in the photographs because all you want is to capture in images their moments of joy from the perspective of your eyes and your love.
Nobody tells you about the helplessness you will feel when you cannot control what happens in the world, or about not being able to protect your children at every moment and in every place and that is why when they leave home you throw a prayer into the void, trusting in an invisible protective force in which sometimes you don’t even believe that can exist.
No one talks to you about your loneliness, that conflicting feeling of wanting your time alone, your space, your moments, but at the same time about the pain that sometimes causes you to look around you and not find them by your side. Or the emptiness in your soul when they go completely to form their own world.
Being a mom is sometimes easy and simple. Other times it is complex and exhausting. What is certain is that in any case, you will love being a mother, that you will not imagine your life without being one. It doesn’t matter what they don’t tell you about being a mom, because in the end, it’s a wonderful daily discovery that no one can take away from you.
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Paola is the author of The Lake of Miracles/El Lago de Los Milagros, Shorty Tales (Cuentitos), and The Anxious Mom Manifesto: 18 Lessons to Control your Anxiety Monster. Find her books HERE.
Follow Paola @paobsur
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