The Lonely Side of Mothering
By Chris Hammond
I have been told many times that the best years of my life
are when I was a stay-at-home-mom. The
comment came from an older woman who looked at me with envy while I struggled
to change a diaper in a restroom with another child tugging on my pants. Or the comment came from a friend who was
driving to work after just having dropped off her child at daycare while I’m at
home picking up sticky Cheerios off the sofa.
Or the comment came from my husband who wished he could stay at home
instead of going to work every day while I’m wishing desperately for adult
conversation about anything other than the kids. For me, some of the loneliest years of my
life came when I “got to” stay home with my kids.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not being ungrateful for the
opportunity to be at home and watch my kids take their first step, play on the
playground, pick on their siblings, or have one of their countless accidents
that resulted in numerous trips to the emergency room. I’m extremely grateful for these moments and
will treasure them for the rest of my life.
These moments are priceless and I’m looking forward to the days when I
can share them at my child’s graduation, their wedding, or with my grandkids.
Admit the loneliness. I am grateful but I was also extremely
lonely. Many days would go by when my
only real adult interaction was yelling at the commentator on the TV over some
stupid political decision. Many more
days would go by when I would stop and enjoy a bathroom break without
interruption let alone a hot bath or a pedicure. Still more days would go by when I would
sleep for an entire night without being awaken by a frightened child, a hungry
child or a sick child. Worse yet, no one
seemed to understand my loneliness. Not
the older woman in the restroom, not my friend going to work, or my
husband.
Explain the
loneliness. I don’t blame the older
woman, my friend or even my husband for not understanding my loneliness because
I never communicated it to them. I just
listened to their comments and instead of interjecting my feelings about the
matter, I stuffed it. On occasion I
would try to talk to them about it but it usually was mixed in with frustration
and anger because I waited too long.
There are many ways to explain hard topics to another person and I never
took the effort to even try because I was too focused on keeping up the image
that everything was wonderful.
Embrace the
loneliness. Looking back over many
years, I can now see that there will always be periods in my life of
loneliness. This does not define me as a
person; I am not depressed, socially awkward, or have a dislike for
people. Rather the opposite is true in
every way however I will still get lonely.
The only conclusion I can draw is that loneliness is on the full
spectrum of emotions and I was created to experience all of the emotions, not
just some of them. How can joy be felt
with suffering, how can peace be understood without strife, and how can communion
be embraced without loneliness.
As our children grew, things got much easier. The parents of my kids became my friends and
they helped to bring back sanity and normalcy to a seemingly crazy life. And now looking back on those years, I can
honestly say they were some of the best years of my life but often with the
best come some of the worst.
