Yes, I'm Still Here.

I know you were wondering.

It's been a while.  A long while.  A lot of sleepless nights and endless days and so many bodily fluids later and I suppose I can't really speak for you but I'm positive that I have been wondering whether or not I really am still here.  Not the physical me - not my hair and ears and eyes and skin and feet and extra soft spots that are everlasting gifts from my beautiful babies - but the invisible and defining pieces of me that make up my me-ness.  The things that live deep inside me and make tears of joy well up in my eyes.  The things that make my heart race and my skin crawl and my eyes open wide and my stomach churn.  Do I know what those things are anymore?  Will I ever have any answer to the question, "How are you?" that doesn't involve the words surviving, alive, tired, or uhhhhh well, I'm here.

That last one has been my default answer for a while now, I suppose because existing seems like a minor miracle at times when raising small people.  But buried underneath that seemingly benign statement of existential fact, I'm realizing, is a desperate plea and so many burning questions and a whole giant pile of shame.  Am I really still here?  Have I been completely swallowed whole by motherhood?  Have I become nothing more than a stereotype stay-at-home mom who lives in sweatpants and has nothing to talk about besides her children?  Am I contributing anything of value to the world around me?  Do I even know what I think and believe anymore?  Why does this all feel so hard?  Do you see me?  Do I still have value without my career?  What brings me joy?  How do I take care of myself and my children at the same time?  Will I always feel like I'm basically failing at everything?  Why on earth do babies not sleep at night?  Why do humans even need teeth?  Why are toddlers such assholes?  How do I raise emotionally intelligent, compassionate, kind, brave children when I can barely muster the energy to figure out what to eat for breakfast?  And perhaps even more importantly, am I still an emotionally intelligent, compassionate, kind, brave person?  Am I still here?

Once upon a time it felt like my whole life was significant.  Maybe that sounds kind of self-indulgent, probably because it is, but that's how it felt.  My job was to come alongside those who were broken and hurting and marginalized and be with them - to love them, to help provide them with tools, hopefully to open their eyes to strength and resilience and beauty inside themselves that they didn't know they had.  It was work that broke my heart and was never ever "finished" and often consumed every waking moment both on and off the clock, and for a large portion of my life it was work that made me feel so incredibly alive.  I'm good at being with people.  I know how to listen well and see potential in even the most giant messes and ask questions and dive into the complexity of human existence.  And at the end of the day I could sit back and reflect and see that, even on the most discouraging of days, I was doing something that mattered.  Every once in a while someone would even thank me or write me a letter telling me how I had impacted their life.  My last day at my most recent job was on a Wednesday, and right before I left and handed in my work phone I received this text message:

Did I actually save this client's life?  Hardly.  She did all the work, I maybe just helped make her aware of some of her options for getting the help she needed.  Nevertheless, one doesn't receive a message containing those words and not internalize a certain degree of value from them.  It's hard not to feel like you're doing the "right" thing with your life when someone expresses that you've impacted their life in such a significantly positive way.

Anyways, I received that message on Wednesday and on the following Monday, just five days later, my son was born.  His birth broke my body and my heart wide open in a whole different kind of way than I ever could have imagined.  And suddenly every waking (and non-waking, really) moment of my existed began to revolve around him.  In the beginning it's all so tangible - is he eating?  Sleeping?  Sheltered?  Am I interacting with him?  Does he know that he's loved?  Do I read to him and sing to him and smile at him and snuggle him?  It was exhausting and crazy, but fresh and new and I had all of the hormones on earth to help me embrace this new role as mama.  

Fast forward to yesterday.  I literally almost broke down in tears because I had to feed my children breakfast.  Again.  There are TWO of them now, and we didn't get out of the house because naps and teeth and potty training and putting on a bra all seemed so impossible.  I'm not being melodramatic, it's just that there are days in this season of life when it seems like one more ______ (tantrum, sleepless night, pumping session, load of laundry, conversation about why you shouldn't walk around with your hand in your butt crack) will bring about the actual death of your soul.  Ok, so maybe I am being melodramatic.  But in all my years of working with people battling addiction and homelessness and chronic incarceration and mental illness, I have never been as baffled and at a complete loss as I am with my almost 3-year-old who apparently did not actually want the oatmeal he asked me for approximately four minutes ago.  Sometimes I have the presence of mind to stop and breathe and remind myself that his brain is not yet completely formed and that this too shall pass, but sometimes I just absolutely cannot even.  And sometimes I find myself feeling woefully incompetent for the task of helping this still-forming brain learn and grow and push through these larger-than-life emotions.

Somewhere between the birth of my son and the present day I feel like I've gotten lost.  It's not something that has happened suddenly or consciously, but it has just felt like a slow and steady eating away at my sanity and what for so many years of my adult life defined me.  Not just my job, but my passions.  Hobbies.  The things I spent my waking moments on when I had the freedom to choose what kinds of things I wanted to pursue.  Once upon a time I made a "Thirty Before Thirty" list and spent an entire YEAR chasing after goals both big and small and simple and grandiose.  Now I have a hard time deciding if I should watch a TV show or just scroll through Instagram at the end of the day while I listen to the incessant droning of my breast pump.  I haven't had my hair cut or been to the dentist in about a year because that requires making a phone call and finding someone to watch my children.  Who is this person?  It's embarrassing to even type these words because it feels so pathetic.  Is parenting really this hard, or am I just awful at it?  What happened to the passionate, determined, strong, risk-taking woman who took charge and ran hard after things?

Here's the thing.  It's not my station in life that I'm mourning, I don't think.  I'm not wishing to be young and single again, because that came with its own heartaches and loneliness and feelings of inadequacy.  I'm just wondering how, in the midst of the most emotionally and mentally challenging task of my life, I can find some glimpses of my core self.  Not necessarily the flashy stuff or the wild overseas adventures or the crazy job or any of those things.  Just the me that felt alive in the midst of those things.  The personality that thrived dressing up in crazy costumes in front of hundreds of people and making them laugh.  The friend that spent hours being present and listening and really knew how to invest and process and be with you when you needed someone.  The human being who craved justice in the world and did something about it, however small.  I just want to know that those things are still in there, and this seems like maybe a good place to start.     

I was nursing my almost 11-month-old baby girl this morning and as she so often does, she started to explore my face with her hand.  For some reason today, instead of pulling away from the tiny finger jabbing into my eye socket I just closed my eyes and let her find me.  She poked my eyelids a few times, and then ran her pointer finger gently back and forth across my eyelashes.  She hooked her thumb around my lip and prodded around my teeth and my gums.  And when I opened my eyes, I looked down at her profoundly beautiful face and felt so seen.  I felt my responsibility to care for myself the way I want her to care for herself someday.  To know myself the way she wants to know me and the way I long for her to know herself.  And perhaps most importantly, to be here.  Not the way I've been using the word lately, as an emblem of surrender and defeat and survival, but to be right here present with this baby and with my family and with the world as my truest and rawest self.

This is not a season of feeling polished or professional or accomplished.  Not for me anyways.  I guess some people just have this stuff in their wheelhouse and their whole selves come alive when they become parents.  For me it is a conscious act of love and sacrifice and surrender that is so insanely hard.  I wouldn't trade it for anything, really.  The love I feel for my children and my husband is profound.  But that absolutely does not make it easy.  Not for a second.  Maybe for some, but not for me.  It makes it weighty and complex and something that requires all of my self, which I think is why it has felt particularly hard lately.  Because I desperately need to dig in and rediscover my core.  I need Jesus and community and I need to write and run and be in the woods and talk to grown-ups.  I also probably need lots of wine and chocolate.

I'm not quite sure what this space will become, but I'm also not really sure what I'm becoming.  So I'm going to hold both with an open hand.

Thanks for being with me, right here.