Member-only story
Motherhood in three sentences
How to let go of the anxiety of parenting and live in the moment
I was trying to get two toddlers into one of those shopping carts with the single seat at the grocery store. So you have to put one of them in the seat and one in the basket leaving zero space for your food. If you have played this particular game of Tetris you know what I mean. While I struggled to get the two kids arranged, a woman came up and studied me seriously.
You get a lot of unsolicited advice when you are a new parent. Aren’t you still breastfeeding? That child is too old for a pacifier. He isn’t potty trained yet? I just looked at her and thought, here it comes.
Looking at my toddlers she said “This part is physically exhausting. Then you hit the teenage years and it becomes emotionally exhausting. Then they go off to college and it becomes financially exhausting.” And then she walked away as I just stood there, staring mouth open.
Cue the panic attack. I had no idea how I was going to make it through my trip to the grocery store, let alone get these kids to college. The all consuming nature of motherhood would never, ever end. That was her point. A perfect stranger walked up to me and said, guess what? It never gets easier. You are looking at 20 more years of pain. But standing there with my kids trying to climb out of the cart, I took a…
