Being, Not Doing

"The beautiful chaos of a mother's heart"

Lately I find myself laughing at the parents who say “my children force me to be present.” Okay, maybe. In moments. And at certain ages. But my kiddos are now nearly 5 years old and nearly 8 months old, and I find it nearly impossible to be present amidst the chaos. Someone is usually whining or crying or shout-singing or laughing, so much so, that I truly cannot hear what another person in the house is shouting to me about.

I’m in the era that a mom of two (or more!) is warned about but doesn’t really “get” until she’s in it: the era when you’re secretly working harder than anyone else in your orbit and no one really cares or notices, except maybe your husband, but moreso fellow mamas, rooting you on if you actually make it out for a social event, or — more likely — from the other end of a cell phone screen.

Your time is split among two kids who need you and want you so desperately, and you desperately love them back but also oh my God, remember silence? Yeah, me either. To be clear, I’m not griping. I wanted and prayed for this and cried for this harder than anything else in my life for years, and it is the dream of my entire life to stare at my two children…I was choking back tears watching them cuddle in bed together just this morning.

“HOW ARE THEY REAL?” I say this out loud to myself and other people at least 57 times a day.

I’m the person that a co-worker of mine recently called “reserved” — if you know me, you know I am abso-fucking-lutely anything but. But she admitted it’s only because “she only knows me as a mom.” Maybe because I constantly talk about my kids at work and show pictures and videos of them to everyone. I’m that girl, and honestly, I don’t care.

And yet — it’s also fucking hard. This is what Jesse Buckley spoke of in her recent acceptance speech at the Academy Awards: “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart. Just as I show pictures from daycare to my co-workers and tell them “how am I supposed to LIVEEEEE, let alone WORK when I’m receiving pictures like this?”, I also find myself itching for “me” time. This comes at a particularly challenging time when my husband has been on several recent work trips, my kids have been sick, my car is in the shop, oh — and did I mention I just launched a side business? (More on that in a future post.) So it makes sense I would be craving time of non-momming. These days, I find it when I’m at work or getting a workout in before the kids wake up in the mornings. On days when none of that happens, I’m not the best mom/wife/person. I find more and more I need these pockets of alone or adult time to remember who I am outside of my family circle. It feels like a true identity crisis, and it’s been really hard and guilt-ridden. Hence, scoffing at the people who say their kids keep them present. My mind is swirling with birthday invitations, lunches, nap math, formula, diaper rash remedies, finances, laundry, work meetings, the last episode of Paradise that we watched and remembering to tell my husband that funny story that Jason Biggs shared on a recent podcast.

I made time for a formal meditation today. A 13-minute guided meditation by one of my favorite teachers, Cara Lai (look her up, she’s incredible), and inevitably my daughter walked in halfway through. I almost burst out laughing when she told me “Mommy, I pooped my pants.” The irony of hearing that as I’m meditating trying to remain calm!! And to top it off, it was immediately followed by Cara Lai’s voice guiding me to “listen and receive.” Oh my God, the way my mind turned this moment into a standup comedy bit or SNL sketch…and actually this was the moment when I thought I really need to write on Substack about this later.

I finished my meditation before cleaning up my daughter (for the record, it was not that serious an accident, and she later did, in fact, make it to the toilet for her much-needed “egress”). And did my meditation work? Mostly. It kept me calm in that moment. I still got annoyed later and snapped at my husband. But I imagine it would have been even worse had I not meditated. Meditation is all about “being” and not “doing,” and so, so much of my life is doing lately, it’s just so hard to be. Being is aspirational.

I know this: despite the chaos, I’m a good mom, a good wife, a good contributor to society. Eventually, I imagine simply “being” will solve my identity crisis and remind me that whoever I am now is who I’ve been all along.