Recently one of my children had a birthday. I couldn’t help myself but buy a sappy card and gift and fuss over him and how wonderful my life has been since he’s been here. And then it hit me. Why am I so sentimental at these times? Is it just about this young human I am trying to raise…or is there more to the pangs of joy and sorrow that hit me like waves, lapping at me one after the other after the other? Is it really just that this little boy, now becoming a wonderful young man, has spent another year on this earth with me? Or is there something much greater stirring in my soul?
Well you know my motto…stay curious! So I did. I started thinking what is sad about this day for me. Because tears are always present in my happiness around my kids’ birthdays. And sometimes I think we blow too quickly past the tears of joy concept. We just think it’s all good. That only happiness should be present at such a joyous occasion. And yet there it is. Unmistakable tears that I am trying to gloss right over and tell myself mean only that I am excited at the prospect of another year on earth with this beautiful child. But that’s not it. Something more is there. And how many times have I stopped one of my clients in their tracks and held their “feet to the fire”, so to speak, so we could explore the true nature of a complicated and multi-faceted feeling that has presented itself and not allowed them to gloss over it? Honestly folks, its been so many times I can’t even count. I would never let an opportunity like that pass up without trying to help a client uncover buried and unprocessed emotions, so I am deciding not to pass up this opportunity for myself either.
So there are the obvious reasons an occasion like my child’s birthday may cause me to tear up. For starters this guy is another year older and another year closer to being an adult, out on his own in this really tough world. That’s not only sad to think about, because I love having him in my life as much as he is now, but also sad because I don’t know what this world is going to throw at him and don’t want to see him suffer at the hands of the realities this world will most certainly throw at him. There is something more to these tears of mine though. It’s not just the small little boy I miss seeing or the prospect of his losing this innocence. There is something that runs deeper that that. Something older than that. Something almost archetypal underneath this aspect of grief my child’s aging brings.
So what do I do? Well of course I keep staying curious. Only now I’m really curious. If this sadness is not drawn out of the obvious things that one may think about as their child ages, then it has to be something rather interesting don’t you think? Of who am I kidding? I think everything is pretty interesting. This one has really pulled my attention though. So I started to think about what are the ambiguous griefs here or the good griefs I am not recognizing. Certainly one of the good griefs is that as my child ages and starts to become his own person in this world, some doors are closed, while others are opened when I see the man he is becoming. I am starting to know what kind of person he is, the way that he thinks, the things that he’s interested in, etc. This is not the meaning behind my tears though. Yes there is a child he was not or a man he will not become because of choices he is making and has made, or maybe even ones I and his father made as his parents, but that’s not what these tears are about. Well…not really anyway.
So that got me thinking a little more and getting even more curious about whether this sadness is not for or about my son at all. Sure, it’s the celebration of his birth that has brought this complicated wash of feelings on for me, yet there seems to be something bigger driving them. I started to realize that it may be me I’m crying for and about. And not in the ways one would expect. I am sad that he isn’t little anymore, but truly I am more happy than I am sad. Really. I love seeing him grow and knowing him more as his older self. He is such an interesting human. And I really am happy to see all that unfold. Much more than I am sad that his little self may be gone. I have loved all the years, months and days, and truly get excited to think about the many more days, months, and years there may be to come.
So what is it about these tears of joy that seem to ring a familiar bell about myself? What kind of silt is at the bottom of this river of grief that is running underneath these feelings? And if it is a grief about me, what part of me is grieving or am I grieving for?
Then it hits me, as these things often do when I have been staying curious and mindful about them for a while. I am sad for the part of me who felt forced to make choices for her son that now looking back she may have made different decisions about. I am sad that this young mother in me doesn’t get to know how wonderful things will turn out even though she isn’t happy about the decisions she did make and the opportunities she didn’t get to have. I want her to know I forgive any indiscretions she thinks she may have made, because honestly there were no mistakes. Those were points of learning and she and the son that has come to be are all the better for them.
I am sad for the part of me that is that young mom, meeting her child for the first time and beginning to know herself in a way that she never had before. She will never experience the newness of motherhood again in that way. I am sad about that and yet so grateful this is something I get to miss, because so many of my friends, family, and other women I have known have not had the same “newness to motherhood” feeling I was afforded. Their experiences were different. While it is sad I cannot feel this “newness” for the first time again, I am so fortunate that this was part of my story.
And beneath these parts of me, I grieve for an even younger part of myself whose life was forever changed by decisions beyond her choosing that set me on a course to want to be a mother much more than I wanted to learn who I was and what I wanted in this world. You see, from a very young age I knew I would be a mother and that this was a calling chosen for me long before I was even old enough to know what all that entailed. It was a role destined TO me as much as I was destined FOR it. I chose part of how it came and under what circumstances it finally happened, but the truth is being a mom is something that had been chosen for me long before I was pregnant with and had my first child. And I feel sad for the little girl inside me who was rushed into that role so swiftly that she did not learn about who she was first. She was not rooted in herself when she became a mother, so her becoming a mother for the first time also thrust her into adulting when she had little tethering to what would constitute her adult self. I feel for this part of me. I think she thought that arriving in motherhood would be some kind of Garden of Eden that it was not. It left her searching for years for the other parts of herself that she had not solidified before starting her journey towards being a mother. I grieve for this little one too.
And yet, I believe whole heartedly that things happen as they are supposed to and these journeys I’ve made through my lifetime and my children’s lifetimes were meant to happen as they have. I wish I could go back and whisper into the ear of all the younger parts of myself and tell them, “Do everything exactly the way you are going to. Don’t change a thing. And don’t worry about making mistakes. You will. And guess what? They aren’t mistakes. They are the right decisions at the right time to help you be the person you will become. And I love the person that we become. So don’t change a thing!”
So maybe when you’re perusing Amazon.com looking for the right gift for the holidays or picking out a sappy card at Hallmark that you think really explains how you feel about that child, you’ll have a tear or two come to your eyes. Or maybe you don’t have kids and this context will come up some other way, when you realize you are at a juncture in your life that moving forward is mandatory and being who you once were can never happen again. My challenge to you…STAY CURIOUS! Don’t blow off those pangs of sorrow mixed with joy. Feel them. Think about them. Live them. And love them. You are exactly where you are supposed to be and your feelings are guides for exactly what you should be paying attention to. Stay curious and you might learn something about your journey that you never saw coming.