Heartbreaking motherhood

Grief, nostalgia and saying goodbye to the younger versions of your children

I did it. I’ve done a big bit of early motherhood. I’ve done all the hard stuff of the first bit of this journey. Those early years that are physically so hard and tiring. And yet I do not feel any sense of relief, just pain and sadness it was over so fast.

We are on the absolute precipice of change and transition and the ‘new chapter’ (whatever that means), no baby-ness remains.

But I’m finding myself suddenly in a panic, pulling out old toys from the cupboards we haven’t played with for a long time and recreating the little worlds we would make four years ago. Finding I am the one suggesting ‘let’s make a world today!’ when it used to be me being cajoled into into it. How the tables have turned. Me desperate to keep the playing going, the sort of play it had always been, and not recognising my fellow player is long past the phase of dinosaurs, cars, dragons and the beloved grimms rainbow. The realisation that the toys TOO, just like the clothes, will be packed away into storage perhaps never to see the light of day again.

Fucking hell it hurts. The nostalgia. The grief. The panicky feeling of regret of ‘did I make the most of it back then!’. It’s all so painful and fast and unforgiving.

I have a sudden and new fascination with older mothers at the moment. The one’s who have trodden this path already. I find myself staring at women walking along the road without any children dripping off of them. I want to ask them how they feel, do you miss their tiny bodies? Do you long for it back? How do you move through your life after a time when you were so very needed, to a time when you are not. We become redundant to some extent. We have been doing such an important job, some would argue the most important job. Yet there’s no severance package, there’s no references or recognition of all the hard work. No performance review. Just empty rooms.

So much is written about preparing for motherhood and how to navigate those early years. It’s all about problem solving the immediate-ness of young children, figuring out ‘who you are’ in your new role and making sure you adapt as quickly as possible. Yet I am struggling to find much written about when your children grow up and and start needing you less. How mothers adapt then. How they ‘find themselves’ after such an intense time of nurturing and caring. Everything changes for a second time. It is natural and it is right for our children to grow up and at some point leave us. Yet the pulling away is so excruciatingly painful.

I am far from that point of them leaving home, yet the growing sense of redundancy feels like it’s getting closer and closer. I have been so deeply immersed in my role, it is who I have become. I do not know who I am outside of motherhood anymore.

When they were little, there was a sense of stillness to our days. The most scared of times when I was the only one who could comfort them. When they were mine and I was theirs.

I miss our oneness, the way they melted into me. The hours filled with nothing but our togetherness, which over the years unbeknownst to me, has been so healing. They breathed new life into both of us. I enjoyed feeling like we were existing on the edges of life. The hazy in and out of normal life and feeling more connected to our own tiny world than the big one beckoning us out.

I know there is immense beauty ahead and yet for some reason already it hurts so much. I’m realising that the places I go to so frequently, like parks, will gradually lessen. Places I used to dread and hurry to leave, I will long for deeply. Pushing my child in a swing, slipping shoes onto tiny feet, lifting small bodies in and out of a car, holding their small hands. Their little knee’s, feet, shoulders, back, thighs, soft buttery skin. The most kissable of cheeks. Those squidgy legs have become long strong elegant limbs. You are heavier to hold. You are more independent.

Do mothers allow themselves to feel real grief about missing the younger versions of their child? Or do we feel like we can’t say anything other than gratitude and happiness 100% of the time? I’m often crying. Looking back at those tiny faces that have faded away and I’ve never felt a heavy ache in my chest of nostalgia like it before with anything else. I’ve never longed for a time back this desperately before. Why is it that it was so damn hard and so beautiful all at once that I want to stay in it forever?

I am aware that I have had ‘my turn’ at this phase and now it is to time to move on to the next bit and let someone else experience what I just have. We can’t ‘stay’ in it for too long. Life is swift and rapid in its exquisite beauty. And then it’s gone, and we keep moving with the unforgiving momentum of life.