Motherhood vs. otherhood

I have some good news to share about this long-battled issue of separation anxiety. My daughter’s confidence has increased over the past few months and her anxiety has so decreased that she’s playing more on her own at home, doing much more for herself, and actually sleeping through the night.  Can you hear the relief in my writing? 🙂

Of course I’ve struggled for a few years now with my own need for space and time alone.  It’s challenging when an introvert has a baby who needs 24/7 care!  But then in December, I had a dream the jist of which was that I felt stuck, like its so hard to make life as a mother fit into life as the rest of me.   I realized I’m not doing a good job at balancing my motherhood role with all the other aspects of who I am.  By giving in to her needs/wants all the time, I am not modeling independence for her.

In this very real-seeming dream, I desperately wanted a job as a personal assistant to an admired celebrity that would involve using my organization skills and would be very personally meaningful but would require me being in Boston one day a week. Figuring out the logistics were tricky. It absolutely wasn’t an option (in the dream) to me to say “that’s not possible in my life right now” like I do all the freakin time for other things I want to do, whether it’s voluntary committee work, travel, or simply a weeknight lecture or book club meeting.  I was determined to do this.

BLENDING motherhood with the person I was before and the person I would like to be is just so much more difficult than I ever imagined it would be! I admit I wasn’t doing a good job of defending my personal time and space. I had been railing (mostly internally) at my daughter for her inability to simply go play in her room independently and yet I knew I need to create that firm expectation and defend the issue many times before she adopted it.

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“What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.” ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce

A mom friend told me once a few years ago that it was so hard to get her daughter to come downstairs in the morning for school because she was having such fun playing up there by herself. Granted each child is different, but I think of that often when my daughter won’t even let us be in separate rooms.  I was tired of feeling stifled and limited in my own house and so I finally sought out professional help. So much togetherness was not good for either one of us.

I am defending my right to do my own thing, even when my daughter wants to play with me.  Of course, I make sure we spend lots of quality time together, especially right when she comes home from school, but then we do our own thing for awhile, sometimes right next to each other.  She can see that I like to read, or write, or do my own thing quietly.  Hopefully she will want to emulate that!

I now feel that at least I have some amount of space in my own home and we are doing the work to make it happen.  There are protests sometimes, but I keep telling myself it’s worth it for long-term happiness and peace.  We are working on many issues that are leading to her independence and slowly but surely making progress on all fronts.  

Mr. B thinks maybe the successes come not so much from my daughter’s confidence and lessening anxiety but because I’d finally had enough and because of my gentle but firm stick-to-it-iveness.  Who cares why… let’s just celebrate!