facing my greatest fears. motherhood. redefined.

i am back on the writing train.  enjoy-all my thanks always.


Fear. I fear many a thing. Like tight places or being in a crowd and not being able to move or being trapped.  A no exit of my own making, my own reality, no longer a play I read in honors English over a decade ago. I used to fear tanker trucks and would avoid them at the fear I might blow up at gas stations.  On the road.  But never did I. Blow up. I still get warm when I cross a bridge.  The no exit and the no return part makes my heart pitter patter and deep breathing my only refuge. Classic- my abnormal psych professor said of someone who had been abandoned.   Somehow comfort missing from the equation in this knowledge.  I fear loss. And being left. And being alone.  And not finding the right person.  To call my home. 

I used to fear I'd become like my mother- not in the typical fashion into a nag or choreograph into her. More like I might one day be crazy like her. Certifiable.  One day be an addict like her. But crazy isn't always inherited and addiction can live and breathe in your body and not ever be yours. I feared I wouldn't break the cycle. The cycle of loss.  The cycle of abandonment   The cycle of  my mother losing her mother tragically at 13 and me losing my mother starting at 8 and more permanently at 18.  My greatest fear is I would be a mother and I would leave.  

One of my goals written across this fearful and hopeful heart was to break this cycle and be a mother. But I haven't been a mother.  Not yet.  I haven't found that love of my life to make babies with.  But this isn't about birthing babies or the tanker trucks or bridges of my life I  have crossed.  It is about much more.  I am surprised.  Surprising myself is I don't have to birth a child to love a child part of me just the same. The gift of helping to raise children is more than the greatness of it.  It is the realization that my greatest fear that I'd be a mother a mother who would leave won't happen- won't happen to me. It is a choice.  And I choose in a way -I always have. In the raising of my brother and my choice of profession and my work of always being around the children.  

Time lines thrown away.  Clocks forgotten.  I may not have that luxury of the regular textbook mothering-but as I look around I can't help but be certain I will be called mom one day.  A mom who stays-a mother who doesn't play out the perfect fantasy of undoing of her own childhood to better her own.   Mothering isn't what I thought it would be. A child looking at you to feel safe and loved and seen and to truly bask in the beauty of childhood.  I am already doing that.  My fears.  My fears aren't permanent.  I can mother and mother in a way-in a way that works for me. And stop being scared that I will leave. Leave.