It’s Ok To Miss You
Grief is a necessary, central part of becoming a mother. No one talks about that in our prenatal appointments. It doesn’t get brought up as we bounce on yoga balls and talk birthing positions while quietly fearing we will tear wide open, or shit ourselves in front of strangers. Grief is nowhere to be found in the decorations for a baby shower. I wish that it was, that grief was invited to the party just as wholeheartedly as joy. I want a field guide to welcoming grief to be as important as your doctor’s appointments, as being coached to put the baby to sleep on their back.
I will never forget a stage during the 7th month of pregnancy when my daughter’s foot would get stuck in my ribcage… a whole ass human foot just lodged in there and I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it other than wait out the intense pain while trying to shove her into another position. The loss of control over my body in those moments made me feel so helpless, so scared, so annoyed. Growing, birthing, and then raising a human is marked with a continual parade of losses: our autonomy, independence, time, sense of control, ability to go to the bathroom alone, and a thousand other things large and small. Becoming a mother is a process marked by a lot of things, but loss is a central theme.
We have been socialized to see loss as something to avoid, fear, or deny rather than a necessary facet of evolution. In order to evolve, you have to change, a process that requires we leave things behind or shift our understanding. Grief is the acute pain we experience in response to loss, however, we have been socialized to believe that grief is a big, bad, scary emotion reserved only for funerals. And that pain is an awful thing we should never feel because we are supposed to be happy all the time, goddamnit.
We have been taught to judge our emotions, to decide whether they are good or bad, if they are acceptable. In the field of psychology, the term display rules refers to a set of socially constructed norms around what emotions are appropriate for specific contexts, and I have never experienced the pressure of display rules more intensely than I have since becoming a mom. Shocking I know, considering how much society supports women and never tells us to just be nice, to be agreeable, to prioritize the comfort of others over our realities, to fucking smile. The emotional landscape offered to pre and postpartum women is so limited, so policed, so devoid of the full range of experience. Joy, excitement, gratitude, and elation are pretty much it, and if you are feeling anything else kindly shut the fuck up.
I want you to see grief as something to invite into your evolution, a necessary facet of your emotional landscape in order for things to grow, to thrive. Grief is a big feeling, but it is not only connected to fear, to scarcity. It is a normal response to massive change, even if that change is something you actively sought out. Know that it is coming, know that you will mourn a lot of things as you raise this human. Know that taking the time to acknowledge these losses and their accompanying grief is actually the best way to make space for all the other things you feel. It is ok to want to sleep in, to want a day off, to not be touched 50,000 times a day, to hate some of it, to want your body to belong to only you. To have time to explore and nurture your own interior rather than constantly pouring all of yourself into others. You had a whole ass life before this small human showed up, and it is ok to miss it. You do not have to end every sentence with a quick justification of “but we are so in love,” or “I wouldn’t change it for the world.” It is ok to love your kids, and grapple with the person you are evolving into, while also grieving who you were and what you had.
Normalize grief. You are not alone in these losses. Our emotions want attention, and meeting them with compassionate awareness helps you acknowledge them. Sometimes, that is all our emotions need, a chance to be seen. You cannot manage emotions you are denying exist or are not allowed to feel, and if we continue to ignore or dismiss that grief is a central, normal part of the parenting experience we are denying ourselves access to our full humanity. We are keeping ourselves small by hiding from things we have been told are full of darkness, when in reality, acknowledging grief is how we let the light in.
