Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The real deal

Being home on a mostly unpaid maternity leave really crystallizes how much wrong there is with this society. I knew it would, but reality has hit hard.

When I see happy, smiling portraits of parents with their multiple joyful children, I wish it could be like that all the time. I wish I never felt alone or isolated. I wish I could always feel complete as a mother AND a thinking person contributing to change-making in the world. But mothering alone, especially in isolation, does not satisfy this urge. I miss teaching. I miss being out and about in the community. So many amazing events I've had to miss because our cars are shot and because getting out with two under two is just too difficult. Also, there is the fact that a newborn needs to nurse and be changed frequently and makes a lot of noise, so I can't really take him to too many places where noise would interfere with an event.

Having no family nearby is difficult. My mother was here to help for the first three weeks after Solomon was born, which was a godsend. But now my man and I are alone. He has a new business to tend to and no employees beside himself, so he is not able to help very much or to take care of essential things that need to be handled on the daily. Life is stressful right now. We are both sleep-deprived, one of our kids is sick, the two under two need constant attention, we are struggling with transportation issues, we don't have much of a support system... This is hard!

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