Crazy, Busy, Guilty

They tell me that they love their job and they love their kids and they’re just not sure how to get these two things to co-exist. I tell them, essentially, that it’s OK: nobody does. It’s all a work in progress. The juggle is real for all of us.

Things would get better, I kept telling myself. It’s not always going to be like this. I didn’t quite believe it but I couldn’t afford to contemplate the alternative.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that she’d given birth to Charlie with nary more than a sneeze, after which bluebirds flew down to sit on her shoulder.

evolution has this one all wrong – how is it possible that we have to follow something as exhausting and physically taxing as pregnancy with something as exhausting and physically taxing as caring for a newborn?

We tell ourselves that we should seek to be one of these mothers, these mothers who think of nothing but their children, day in and day out. Whose worlds revolve entirely around their kids, to the exclusion of everything else. We tell ourselves that is what motherhood really is. But it isn’t.