Fly Little Birds

Motherhood has to be one of the most complex, nuanced issues on the face of the earth. I find myself grappling with all sides of it most days and my multifaceted brain gets tangled in the highway of thought. I have my own experience of motherhood and that is all I can really speak from. Because we all start from the Mother. None of us would be here without Her. I am a mother of four, three of which are adults now and one teenager. And I am estranged from them, mostly. Two of them wish not to be in my life, and two I hear from on occasion. It’s hard to know where to start to explain the story of how I am living a life apart from the ones I brought into this world, cared for single handedly even with partners present, and fought alone in the war that was motherhood. With all the information I have now, as the world discovers undiagnosed autism and neurodivergence in the world of women, trauma awareness and other issues of access such as poverty, I can see through a clear enough lens. I can hear my own trauma and experience with my own mother, and I can hear the pain of my children from the ways in which I wasn’t able to show up. It’s been a long journey that I am still on to forgive myself for doing the best I could with the tools I had.

The bigger issue, is that we villify mothers first. The dad can take off, become absent for years, and be welcomed back like some prodigal son returning to his throne with no real proof that he’s changed at all. But if the mother, who is the one picking up the slack, performing the roles of both parents, doing the dirty work day in and day out, especially with disabilities and no support; if she makes one wrong move, she’s out. I think as a society, we are just now putting the pieces together that this is a much bigger issue when it comes to women’s roles and setting on the impossible task of keeping all the plates spinning. And yet, many of us have done brilliant jobs if you can look at it through a lens of something other than the misshapen structure that is forced down our throats in this woke age.

I loved and love my children with every fiber of my being. I always said it was never my intention to have children in the first place. But once I had them, I never regretted the love that bloomed in me. The love that rearranged my atoms. It changed me to my core. It opened my heart and it broke my heart. It then grew my heart and soul in ways I never thought was possible. I sacrificed much to care for them in their younger years and poured myself into their learning and development. I did the very autistic thing of making them my special interest. But that is hard to sustain with trauma in the home, trauma in the brain structure and a different operating system that cannot fit the ideal of motherhood that seems to fill books and magazines these days. We battled through a lot: drug addictions in the lives of two of them in their teen years, a divorce from their abusive father, learning disabilities they struggled with, and of course the poverty. Not a conclusive list. They are all also neurodivergent in some way and none of us knew it for a long time.

If there was one thing I wanted to instill into my children, the one thing I’d wish I’d had, it was a safe space, a sanctuary to be who they really are. And I protected that goal like a fierce bear, even though to be an onlooker, it just seemed I couldn't sustain my own marriages. In truth, I may have chosen unwisely, the best I could in those times, but realized when it was going to do more damage to continue. I also wanted to show them that they have the freedom to walk away from anything or anyone that didn’t feel safe. Including me. Regardless of the circumstance that two of them felt they needed to do just that, I can say I accomplished my goal. All four are wildly brilliant and independent and unique beings. And insanely gifted humans. They always were and I feel proud for nurturing those seeds. They’re gonna have their own issues to work through but you can’t support someone who doesn’t want you around. Because I realized I also deserve to feel safe to be who I am. And the more I’ve learned about myself and my autism especially, I’ve realized I was never going to measure up to some ideal. There were obviously emotional needs that they had that I was not going to be able to fill. And I don’t think even a Mother can be everything for their children.

I did what I could with the tools I had. Earning an income, building a stable home environment and managing four lives who were dependent on me was very challenging and took everything I had. I had hoped my partners along the way would bring us together as a family. And was vilified for it in the end. I found myself falling through the cracks after a life threatening illness and surgery, got covid and had to quit my main source of income after my body just stopped working. I sold the house, packed up my teenager and dog and drove across the country to start over. I lost one connection from that decision and another from the last marriage that destroyed everything I had built. It was a risk and as of right now, has not panned out. After two months, I found myself homeless, sent my teenager back to live with his grandparents from my first marriage and began a journey back to myself.

He is happy and doing well and I am happy for that. I do not know what my fate will be as being unhoused is very unstable and I’m left hoping my own work will eventually support me as it has in the past. But I am not the same. It is a heavy burden to lose the ones that I had felt were my life. My little pack. My pod. There is so much pain to sift through as we approach Mother’s Day. I took my job very seriously and sometimes outside influences can sabotage everything you built. Even if it's the choices you had and none of them were good options, I had to let go in order to keep going. To survive. Having lived the experience, I find a lot more grace for my own mother, even though we do not talk. And I don’t wish to. Nuanced.

Holding so many facets takes a lot of processing. But it’s the only way through if we’re going to progress and heal as humans. Maybe no one will ever see the work we do as mothers and we are certainly never compensated for it. But in the end, I know my heart and they are always going to be a part of me. I love them no matter what they do. I love them in a way that says: your life journey is yours, even if it doesn’t include me. And I will love you from here. They will always have a part of me in them no matter what too. And that is a golden thread that can never be broken. Healing doesn’t guarantee reconciliation, but it is a magic that ripples out into every cell of connection between us.

I hope you fly, my little birds. And I hope I do too. Thank you for teaching me so much.