Hitting the Wall

Sooner or later, no matter haw many books you read, checklists you fill out, or mentors you recruit you will reach your breaking point. In fact, the more spectacular you preparations, the more spectacular your breaking point may be, if by preparing you allow yourself the false luxury of assuming your breaking point can be avoided. Pardon the crude illustration, but you can’t have sex and your hymen too.
When you became a mother you changed states. You have taken on a new and demanding dimension of personhood. Perfectly good mechanisms for coping with and understanding the world are now completely inappropriate for you because you are a mother. The responsibilities of motherhood are overwhelming and boundaries that are even similar in meaning to those you’ve developed as an adult will not apply to this relationship for several years. Another human being has been given an all access pass to your life and it’s not going to expire for a very long time. Sooner or later you are going to pee while this person watches. Sooner or later, they will ask you for something you don’t have and you’re going to come unglued.
When life happens all over you, here’s what to do. #1 Put baby down and walk away. Most likely you’ll figure out what to do about this sudden insanity long before this child expires. No child will be permanently scarred by an hours crying. #2 Seek support. Call family, friends, neighbors, your doctor. Keep calling until you find someone to listen. #3 Cry. Let it out, your anger, your fear, your frustration, your self-pity and self-loathing, whatever ugly you’ve got in there, let it out. #4 Recognize that every mother since Eve has been here. You are so normal. Welcome to the secret club. Hallmark doesn’t make Mother’s Day cards about this, but this is why you get Mother’s Day cards. #5 Get over it. There’s really no other option, and when these feelings pass (and they will. It might take some Prozac, but they will.) all those other feelings they do make cards about are there too. You signed up for this personal development boot camp because nothing else could replace it for you, and there’s no greater reward than launching a new human being into the world.