Confession

I have been a mother for four years, but I have never mothered a child past the age of two. I don’t know how a three-year-old thinks, looks, or acts. For eternity, Lizzy will be frozen at the age of two. For two years, I have been trying to just get back to the two-year mark with Cecilia. Now that we are here, I don’t know who I am or what to do.

When I was a little girl, I used to look forward to the days my mother would have recess duty so that I could run up to her, hug her, and have the treat of seeing her in the middle of my day. I never understood kids who were embarrassed by their mothers. I idolized my parents and believed they knew everything. This perception, of course, began to crumble with the advent of adolescence, as it must. At some point, we learn to see our parents as people and not superheroes.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Cecilia confessing that I don’t know what I’m doing. I told her that I felt it was important for her to know that I encounter moments when I feel weak, afraid, and alone. I told her that what matters is continuing to fight for what is right and to speak the truth even when doing so doesn’t seem to matter. I told her that sometimes life is about planting seeds in a garden that you’ll never see.

My first Mother’s Day with Cecilia was spent recovering from her birth and drowning in grief over Lizzy. My second Mother’s Day with Cecilia was spent visiting Lizzy’s grave for the first time and planting lavender in front of Lizzy’s headstone. My third Mother’s Day with Cecilia was spent planting vegetables in the garden with my big sister and watching Cece chase after the hose in endless fascination.

Since Cecilia’s second birthday, I’ve been thinking constantly about my own motherhood and about parenthood in general. I think I’m afraid that I don’t measure up. I think some secret part of me feels Cecilia deserves so much better than what I have to offer or even than what I’m capable of on my best day. As I look over to watch her sleep, I still marvel at her beauty, her purity, her innocence, her fragility. And I cannot understand why God would place this wondrous, loving, terribly dependent creature in my broken hands.

I want to be so much more than what I am for her. I feel like a child admitting this, but I don’t know a better way to say it. I’m constantly measuring myself and constantly falling short of the person I want to be. There was so much in my own body and brain that needed to be healed prior to becoming a mother. But we live in a society that doesn’t protect or respect mothers, and so most of us find ourselves pregnant and giving birth before we have had a chance to understand that our bodies and brains will never be the same again.

What good is it to say that I believe Cecilia deserves better than me? I am what I am, and I am all that she has. This alone should be enough to require me to silence my insecurities and rise up to the task at hand. If what I am is not enough, then I must find a way to become more. It is as simple as that.

And yet, nothing about motherhood is simple. How can we possibly navigate that paper-thin line between leaving the worst of ourselves behind and giving only the best of ourselves to our children? The two sides must inevitably blur and bleed into one another. Perhaps the best we can expect is to attempt to staunch any bleeding before it becomes a hemorrhage.

I think I’m beginning to understand my own limitations better. Similarly, I’m beginning to witness and accept the limitations of my own parents, my own family, and those individuals whom I love and respect. This process is, I think, inherent to the act of self-definition. To understand ourselves, we must name ourselves, and to understand our stories, we must tell our stories.

I have a story to tell the world. It’s a story about birth and death and motherhood. It’s a story about sight and blindness and wishing to die and learning to walk. I think I must tell this story to survive myself. I must tell it to become the mother Cecilia needs.

There is a place where we come up against another person’s free will and history and pain. It is a sacred place, but I think we are taught in some ways to violate this place in others. Blinded by the lens of self-focus, we tend to assume, judge, and self-congratulate rather than listen, be present with the other in his or her dilemma or pain, and then help in whatever way we can. I know this is a constant challenge for me. I feel I am always at war with myself in trying to banish and tame my need to be right or to know better.

I keep asking myself, what do I really know? What does anyone really know? At best, we are all engaged in a circus of endless educated guessing. I’ve been reading several books on neuroplasticity lately and it’s clear that the brain undergoes physical changes with every experience, particularly during trauma. How many traumatized brains are we encountering every day in the world? How can we possibly gauge what another person has gone through and why and how those experiences are shaping his or her current perception of reality?

I think I’m undergoing a revolution of sorts. Since last summer, the line of Aaron Burr from Hamilton, “I am the only thing in life I can control,” has been resonating very deeply with me. I feel there are many cultural paradigms being forced on us from every direction right now, and it is simply impossible to fight them all. I think I must do what I believe to be right as a woman and as a mother and allow that to be my focus. I must follow my advice to Cecilia and fight for what I perceive to be right and speak the truth, regardless of whether or not I see an impact in those around me.

After all, the one person whose impact matters most is Cecilia. She has been given into my hands very literally so that I can impact her with my vision of truth and reality. The responsibility intrinsic to this can feel crippling at times. This is why I must be better, do better, choose better. For her. Always for her.

On May 22 of this year, I will have known Cecilia for one day longer than I knew Lizzy. I realize that for most parents, this is the constant state of reality, always walking into the unknown. But for me, this is a mammoth mental hurdle because a part of me will always believe I failed Lizzy sixteen days after her second birthday because I could not keep her alive. And yet, Cecilia deserves so much more than simply being kept alive. Every minute that passes after May 21 is one more minute that I was given to be with Cecilia that I wasn’t given to be with Lizzy. I must make each of those minutes count.

I have been a mother for four years, but I have never raised a child past the age of two. I feel I am teetering on the precipice of becoming a mother for the first time on the day Cecilia ages past Lizzy. I feel dizzy looking down at the chasm yawning before me. I’m choked by vertigo and strangled by a hyperactive amygdala.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

I sense the only path forward is to take it one minute at a time, similar to how I had to break up the days after Lizzy died. Coping with more than a minute or an hour at a time was too much, so I dealt only with the next minute and then the next minute, until finally I could swallow time in longer stretches.

For months, I have been watching Cecilia carefully balance her weight on teetering feet, moving her chubby legs awkwardly and adorably one at a time until, a week before her birthday, she finally began to walk. It has been an achingly long and grueling process for both of us, and she has fallen down more times than I can count. But every time she falls, she redistributes her weight, stands up, and tries again. Now, she can walk into my arms with her face breaking into a smile like sunrise cresting the ocean.

I am choosing this moment to stop obsessing about how I feel unworthy of teaching Cecilia. Instead, I choose to let her teach me. I choose to listen, to be present with her, to help where I can, and to let her shape me into the mother she needs. And somehow, I sense that the more of myself I can leave behind in this process, the more of myself I have a chance of actually becoming.