You Are Not Alone

A friend of mine once told me a story.  Her surgeon husband was working overnight in the hospital, and she was home alone with her infant daughter and two-year old son.  Not only was the baby particularly fussy that night, but her two-year old had broken out in total body hives and was miserable.  She was going to give him some Benadryl, when she realized that she didn’t have any in the house.  Exhausted, sitting on the floor between two crying children, weighing the options of bundling everyone and leaving the house in the middle of the night or calling someone to help her, “it was the first time I felt really alone,” my friend told me.

After having my own two-kid moment of feeling alone this past weekend, now I understand what she was talking about.  After I was done wallowing just a bit in self-pity, it really got me thinking: what is about the parenting of young children that makes mothers feel so alone sometimes?  (And also likely fathers; however, I haven’t discussed parenting experiences with very many fathers).  Loneliness and isolation, these are themes that recur in my every day conversations with other mothers.  I read about them online.  I hear my patients’ mothers tell me about them, often without even realizing that’s what they are talking about.  I see them in the blank stares and half-smiles of other moms at the grocery and playground: we are all inhabiting our own individual spheres of Motherhood: separate, orbiting around but sealed off from one another.

The reasons for this are probably many: fatigue, time, frustration, our own inability to recognize when we need help and then ask for it.  And it’s usually not a feeling that is a poor reflection on the support we receive from our partners (though it often comes across that way).  It’s just… different, being a mother, which is about the best I can explain it.  Our bodies experience monumental changes in the gestation, delivery, and feeding of our babies, and I sometimes think that the recovery from that alone can take years.  And even then some things are never the same.  And yes, our own mothers, grandmothers, aunts, mentors, bosses, they are all supportive in their own way, but there is just something about having a community of other mothers of small children, who are in the trenches too, who are living the same challenges and frustrations at the same time, that is so important.

We all have our own reasons that we feel alone, different in every day and every moment.  It doesn’t really matter why, all of this is just to say, to my fellow mothers, when you have those moments, those experiences, those days when you just feel totally and utterly alone: you’re not.  While our individual parenting narratives are all unique, they are constructed around the same themes.  Whatever you’re dealing with, chances are at some point, we’ve all been there.

When you are so utterly exhausted that it’s physically painful: We’ve all been there.

When it seems impossible how much you can love but not like someone sometimes: We’ve all been there.

When the monumental task of caring entirely for another human being threatens to overwhelm you: We’ve all been there.

When all you want is 20 minutes to not be responsible for anyone but yourself: We’ve all been there.

When you don’t know how you can both love and hate breastfeeding so much: We’ve all been there.

When the accumulating piles: of laundry, of unopened mail, of anxiety, of responsibility, of love, start to feel like a crushing weight: We’ve all been there.

When someone has been touching you all day and you reach the nighttime breaking point: We’ve all been there.

When your head finally hits the pillow after the 2AM feeding and you hear your toddler call out for you: We’ve all been there.

When everyone is finally sleeping, and you toss and turn for hours: We’ve all been there.

When you can’t remember the last time you took a proper shower: We’ve all been there.

When your caloric intake for the day consists of string cheese, coffee, three fig newtons, and a banana: We’ve all been there.

When the pile of laundry on the floor becomes an undifferentiated slurry of clean, dirty, and otherwise, and you realize you don’t really care as long as you’re not naked when the UPS man shows up: We’ve all been there.

When you struggle with the fact that someone – your kids, your spouse, your dog, your job, your friends, your family, yourself – gets the short end of the stick every day: We’ve all been there.

When you’re not sure if it’s poop or chocolate: We’ve all been there.

When you wake up every day vowing to be the best possible version of yourself and you go to bed every night thinking of all the ways you failed: We’ve all been there.

In all of those times and in all of the others, fellow intrepid mothers, you are not alone.  So I tell you what I told my friend: Call me.  Call your friends with small children and just vent for ten minutes.  Or email or text or visit or take your babies and meet up for coffee or whatever.  So what if it’s the middle of the night?  Chances are we’re all awake anyway.  This mothering thing is damn hard and it is so important that we realize we are all sort of in it together.  In this post-modern world of child-rearing, we have lost the village that it takes to raise a child, and we mothers, we parents, need this village so desperately.  We need to reconstruct the village, to create a meaningful and supportive community that exists behind our closed doors and within our sterile suburbs.  Let’s be each other’s village.  Let’s realize that we are not alone.

An open letter to Speaker Bosma and the Indiana Legislature: My husband and I have these two good friends.  Well, best friends really.  Casey and Annie are they types of friends most married couples probably have; the kind who will watch your kids in an emergency, pick you up when your car won't start, or bring you meals when you have a baby.  We've taken vacations together, we laugh, play games, go to movies, debate religion and politics; all in all the types of things that most people do with their friends. I have known Annie for a long time.  She and I went to medical school together, completed our internship and residency in pediatrics together, and even worked together in the same pediatric practice for a year.  Annie is currently completing additional training in pediatric critical care, spending long hours, nights, and weekends in the ICU to compassionately care for the very sickest children and their overwhelmed families.  She's really good at it.  She is the epitome of the physician you would want taking care of YOUR critically ill child should tragedy strike.  You could not quantify the number of families in Indiana who have benefitted from Annie's care.  This is just a small example of what makes Annie the type of person she is.  She never has a mean or negative thing to say about anyone.  She loves children.  She loves animals.  She's creative, kind, and funny.  She is that friend we all have who seems to make friends out of everyone she meets.  She demonstrates no external judgements about anyone, and is able to immediately find and bring out the best in everyone.  In short, she is a wonderful person, someone who has formed an essential part of my community and extended family here in Indiana. Casey and Annie were married a few years ago.  They spent the majority of their initial relationship apart, as Casey is in the Army and was working in Cuba at the time.  This was, of course, after an active duty tour overseas, serving our country honorably in Afghanistan.  Over the years, Casey has also become a very good friend of ours. Casey and Annie live in Indianapolis.  They have two dogs, jobs, and a house.  They want to become foster parents.  They want to have kids someday.  If you met them you wouldn't think they were different from anyone else.  Except, maybe you would, because Casey also happens to be a woman. I grew up in Indiana, attended medical school here.  I work here, I live here, I choose to raise my children here.  Despite the good-natured ribbing that I take from my coastal friends about living in "back-woods" Indiana, my husband and I have chosen to live our lives here and have been happy with our decision.  But, in all my years as a Hoosier, yesterday was the first day I was truly ashamed to call this state home.  Speaker Bosma's political wrangling of HJR-3 is beyond reproach.  Yesterday I honestly wished I could sit him in a naughty chair like I do with my spirited toddler and have him "think about what he's done." How ironic that HJR-3 comes to a vote just days after we celebrated the life of one of the greatest men and Civil Rights proponents of all time.  What would Dr. King have to say about Indiana entrenching legislative discrimination in the name of religion?  Lest we forget, the church, in addition to being a driving force behind the Civil Rights movement, was also one of the biggest opponents AGAINST Civil Rights for decades.  Slavery has been preached from the pulpit.  Oppression of women, abuse of children has been actively played out in so-called Christian congregations.  The Bible has been used to defend, for decades, some of our most heinous cultural institutions.  The most vocal proponents of HJR-3, what would they have said against Dr. King and his contemporaries had they been campaining back then?  What offensive racial epithets would they have hurled, what discriminatory beliefs would they have espoused, what would they have publicly preached in the name of supposed "morality" against Dr. King -- the same man who only days ago they lauded and celebrated? If your religion and your upbringing inform you that same-sex marriage is wrong, and that homosexuality is a sin, to that I say, good for you, feel free to live and preach your beliefs.  We could debate that point until the end of days and probably not come to an accord.  But here's the thing.  HJR-3 is not, actually, a religious issue, despite what you may so strongly believe.  HJR-3 IS A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE.  We are all, all of us, every single one of us, afforded the exact same rights and protections under the law according to the U.S. Constitution.  Religion may discriminate, and in fact it does so freely and willingly, but the law cannot discriminate.  If you want to fight tooth and nail against your church or your denomination performing same-sex marriages, then wonderful, please, go ahead.  But, under the law, you CANNOT deny rights to one group of citizens that are afforded to other citizens.  There is a reason that Lady Justice is blind, though this seems to have been forgotten or even willfully ignored in Indiana. In the end, this letter may not matter at all.  You have probably already made up your minds how you will vote today, and certainly mine is not the first "gay people are just like the rest of us" story you have heard in the past few weeks and months.  But I don't think I'm really writing this for you anyway.  I'm writing this for them, for Annie and Casey, and the countless other same sex couples in Indiana and beyond who today are feeling the sting of discrimination, hatred, and legisltative injustice.  What a morally reproachable state of affairs that an American soldier who risked her life in Afghanistan and a pediatric critical care doctor cannot even obtain a mortgage or file their taxes together. The thing is, Casey and Annie aren't our "best gay friends."  They are our best friends who also happen to be gay, which happens to not matter to us.  And it shouldn't matter to you. Make no mistake, universal same-sex marriage WILL be achieved in this country, and I hope, pray, and believe it will happen in my lifetime.  Now it's a question of how Indiana will be viewed through the lens of history.  Will we be the protagonists of our own story?  Or will we live up to the rest of the country's general beliefs about a state like Indiana? The choice is up to you.