Holidays like Mother’s Day make me extremely anxious. I feel as though there are too many wonderful people to be thankful for and connect with and simply not enough time. A blessed problem I know so many amazing moms?
Motherhood has never been something I’ve ever done alone. Everything about it required I reach out to a veteran. I can’t even name all the times someone talked me down from a cliff over a rash I didn’t understand or a baby that wouldn’t latch, or a behavior I couldn’t tame. Moms out there [younger than me, my age, older than me, much other than me— all of them] reached out to me in the most God-appointed times and dropped names of good books, good sites, other good moms, or good practices to help me.
If 10 years of being a mother has taught me anything--- it's that you need a tribe full of other mommies to make it.
Husbands are great, professionals are lovely, but the other moms… those are who I was txting late into the evening [or throughout the night]. They are the ones who prayed for me from the beginnings signs of labor, got a stranger to give me a tip over voicemail to get that first latch to happen, brought me rice milk ice cream when I couldn’t have dairy while nursing a picky tummy baby, warned me about projectile poop in the carseats, let me know about a sale on Carters pjs, and listened to me threaten to drive away if all of their teeth didn’t just come in supernaturally in the next one minute pain free.
The moms I would sit with at the park feeling like I’d won a vacation just to talk to other humans who were bigger than 2 feet tall who always wanted something from me. Moms who got me. I mean really got me. Got the laundry piles, the grocery trips with toddlers and screaming nursing babies strapped to you, got the tantrums, got the yoga pants, got the messy bun, got the trashcan on wheels. The moms who mourned with you the loss your flat tummy, unscared even, boobs that still pointed up and hair that hadn’t fallen out.
So many times I’ve avoided a Dr. visit or ER emergency because I called a mom. They listened, the encouraged, the prayed, they were a voice of reason in my fluctuation of hormones. Moms who had seen that lump, or experienced that pain or had a cream [or oil!] for that.
I can’t write to you what motherhood would have been like without them. In different seasons, different moms were nearer to me, but in all seasons there were just the right ones. For pregnancy, birthing, nursing, health, child training, homeschooling, and general mommy sanity checks.
A few words come to mind.
Coffee. Wine. Girls Night Out. Crying. Playdates. Laughing. Parks. More Coffee. Jesus...
When I was down, they held me up, and when they were down, I held them up. Unless we were all down, then we just group txted till we all felt better. [Where were you group texting with my first three kids? For that matter, where were you DVR & smart phones with my first 3, I had to just nurse in the middle of the night and watch random episodes of Law & Order in the olden days.]
When self judgement and a failure diagnosis had me in its grips, it was you who pulled me out with "me too" and "thats normal" and "it's going to be okay" "give yourself and the kids some grace" and yes "this too shall pass".
I say all this to say, my friends, my dear sweet mommy friends, you have been such a treasure to me. Priceless in every way. I could not have gotten through this even one time, much less four times without you. It was always so comforting to know that I wasn’t the first person going through anything. Not the first person to have a strong willed child, or the first mommy to have a stubborn potty training child, or the first mom to have a dyslexic child, or the first mom miscarry. Through every trial and milestone you were there to say “I’ve been there, you will make it” and “I’m so proud of you, look what you’ve done!”
You are everything to me. I love you mommy friends.
Let this remind us all to reach out to each other even more. There are so many who could not write this because they have done so much alone. Jesus lead us to those who need a community, a tribe, a cheer section, someone to group text complain to!
