We Know it Takes A Village

"I’m going to eat and write and eat and write. An empty house, a house alone."

What does a mom like more than an empty house?

Until it’s empty for good.

We have kids and it seems our lives will forever be filled with the chaos of babies and toddlers. The giggles and messes, potty training, and tantrums. We long for the day we can just have a little more freedom, a little more sanity. A break from the constant neediness.

We mindlessly walk the aisles at Target or wherever for a break from the voices and hearing the word mommy, until we walk around a corner and see a family with their children and think, “how cute, I miss my kids at home already.”

Or some of us are single moms never quite catching a break.

We need our village. We know it takes a village, but where is ours?

We can feel so alone on this parenting journey. We know there is no parenting manual or road map. We have heard all of this before, but the nights awake with sick kids and arguments with our partners while tired and stressed. The finances, the relentless cooking and cleaning. The worrying.

I found joy in so many firsts with my kids, watching them experience new things and their excitement was so contagious, we give them all we have and then we wonder why mommies must joke about Wine o'clock. I personally stopped drinking before my kids were born so this was not on my agenda, but yes, I get it. This shit is hard.

Our children start to grow. We cry as we send them off to preschool and Kindergarten. They join their little sports teams and their little jerseys hang off of them. They look so cute in their knee pads and cleats.

They still need us and I believe they always will, but as they grow it seems they need us less and less.

It’s heartbreaking really.

I longed for the freedom that I finally feel like I have and then miss them little and wish I would have taken advantage of each little moment.

Isn’t that what everyone rolls their eyes to? People always say, “Enjoy it, it goes so fast they will be grown in the blink of an eye.”

It feels true.

No guilt trips. Seriously I hate guilt trips, but we want the time to speed up sometimes so we can get out of a certain stage and get on with our lives. So we can travel and have our personal time and freedom back, but then they grow and we call ourselves empty nesters and sleep with their baby blankets (Just me?)

I love my kids and did as much as I could to be present with them, but now they are older and need me less. I can be naggy and the teen years are hard. It comes abruptly and it’s hard to let go.

It’s hard to know what they are doing with their friends and to think about them driving vehicles alone. You truly hope you did enough so that they are equipped for this life. We can’t hold them forever and it’s hard, honestly.

Every stage has its positives and negatives. Every stage has challenges. We gear up for the challenges just to have them evolve and change.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

It’s a love so deep, I had never felt anything like it before. It’s literally like wearing your heart outside of your chest.

They are an extension of us, but truly their own people, little and then big and adult-like.

I see how people say that even when our kids are grown they are our little babies.

We nurtured them and helped them grow and grow they did.

Now I sit here alone, relishing my freedom, but missing my babies.