My First Advice Column. And What Do I Do With All This Mom Rage?!

Republished because of an accidental deletion!

I’m republishing this because an unfinished version got published yesterday?! And then deleted!! No clue how! Sorry!!

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Hello again!

As I mentioned last week,

I’m starting a motherhood advice column!

But that’s not the right word for it — “advice”

Advice is too prescriptive, and never-would-I-ever claim to know any better than you.

What I’m doing is asking for your parenting questions, your predicaments, your existential wonderings, the sticking points you’re bringing to the group chat or privately ruminating on when you get a rare moment alone.

I am (of course) full of my own unanswered questions about parenthood. That’s why this genre of writing appeals to me. I want to puzzle over the endless, shapeshifting quandaries of raising kids and living life.

I won’t have perfect answers, I’ll just share my thoughts as I make meaning of the very hard and very heartening parts of being a caretaker.

Thank you for being here.

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Question 1 :

I am a mother to one 16-month old daughter. My husband is a hands on father. I muse often about the differences in the change I’ve experienced versus the change he has experienced as we became parents. I feel transformed at a cellular level and it does not seem he has experienced that level of change. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile. My interests have changed so much while my husband’s have largely stayed the same. There are several things that make me feel isolated in motherhood but this is a big one.

Further, we both work full time. This inevitably emphasizes the inequity in our roles. There is not a minute that I am not working, caring for a child, or housekeeping unless I carve out time for myself, which I’ve been better and better at doing guilt-free. I experienced a lot of postpartum rage fueled in large part by the difference in standards/inequities of women and men and how unsupported mothers are.

So I guess my question is... How do you truly accept the vastly different experience of being a mother versus a father? How do I accept and come to peace with the fact that I will almost always be doing more? I don’t want to outsource childcare more than I have to and not working/reducing my work hours is not currently an option.

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When I had my third child I had a different kind of anxiety than I’d had with my first two. If my husband was a few minutes late on his way home from work, my mind would go to the worst case scenario. If I called and he didn’t answer because he was on a work call, the catastrophizing snowballed. And if I checked his location and it was static, not a car in motion, a whole 5 o’clock news story started to take shape in my head. I’d begin plotting my life as a single mom to three young children.

When I took this to my therapist she nodded at me. You are a mom to a new baby, you are mother who has experienced loss, you are in the “in between space,” she told me. My therapist is a Jungian analyst. In Jungian psychology this “in between space” is often called a threshold. It’s described as a “‘no more and not yet’ place, viewed not as an end, but as a symbolic, psychic, or transitional state where the conscious mind yields to the unconscious.”

Susan, my therapist, told me that in these early months of my baby’s life, I was living with a heightened awareness of the thin veil between life and death. Sorry to go dark here, but she shared this to normalize my experience. Of course I was more alert to the fragility of all things, the illusion of stability, the presence of risk and danger. Of course I was tapped in differently as I adjusted to having my baby here, in the corporeal world. I was still floating between “no more and not yet,” holding a baby I wasn’t sure I’d get to have after several pregnancy losses. As she put it, the transition from (my baby being) not here to here had opened up a new plane of awareness, one that was uncomfortable to occupy, but psychologically appropriate. Factually this interplay between life and death had always been true. It just lived dormant in my unconscious. Now it was right there for me to contend with, interrupting the mundane moments of life, waiting to be integrated into my changing worldview.

This perspective helped me decide if the anxiety was something I could cope with as I moved through this transition or if I needed to put further supports in place.

I say this because I suspect you too are straddling two realities. You too are experiencing the discomfort of this transitional space. And just like Susan told me, I want to tell you, this is all normal. You are a new mom with a very young child, and you must be gentle with yourself as you find your footing. I don’t say that patronizingly. I hope it doesn’t sound that way. New moms are full of inherent and inherited wisdom, skill, and knowledge. Not to mention the constant on-the-job learning. It’s amazing how quickly we become experts in schedules, regressions, and milestones. I say it, rather, to highlight that you (and your family unit) are not meant to have it sorted yet. You’re meant to be muddling through these sticky parts just as you are. The identity upheaval, the shifting dynamic in your marriage, the endless demands of work, baby, home. It’s all in flux. You’re in the midst of liminality, swimming in new water.

The rage (like my anxiety) may be the outward representation of watching the architecture of your external and interior world take new shape. It might be a kind of resistance to the the wild discomfort of living “in between” who you were and who you are becoming.

Don’t get me wrong, your rage is not just borne in the metaphysical realm. Like so many of us, it’s rooted in the boring mundane facts of co-parenting, too. That’s real and we’ll dig into that later.

First, I want you to know that you’re right. Your husband hasn’t changed at the rate and to the extent that you have. That to be a mother and a father are “vastly different experiences,” as you put it. Equity is an important principle in parenting, but that doesn’t mean making motherhood and fatherhood interchangeable. I think we can honor the uniqueness of each without sacrificing our feminist values.

The truth is, you carried a baby for 10 months. You felt yourself changing week-over-week. Your body, heart, mind, and spirit gradually evolved to ready you for the arrival of new life. And then you delivered a baby into the world. And because I know you (hey!), I also know that you breastfed that baby for over a year of its life. And regardless of the breastfeeding, there is still no chance you’d emerge unchanged from such an EPIC physiological feat, one that is often downplayed because — despite being completely, mindblowing-ly extraordinary — it’s also the most ordinary, foundational fact of life.

And if you’re at all like me, you may have fallen out of touch with the former (it’s extraordinary!) and into the doldrums of the latter (it’s ordinary). I forget that first bit about once a week. I have to regularly remind myself, and I want to remind you. You’ve been thrust into a new realm of existence. It takes time to integrate the intensity of that. More time than you think. You’re grieving your maidenhood all while adjusting to the incredible (in both the good and bad sense of the word) demands of motherhood. This is all part of it.

And there’s no way that someone who was witness to it all, even in the most intimate way (as your husband and life partner) could be changed in the way that you are.

When I brought this question to a friend (she also nodded along, like yep. I get it.) she addedthat all the things that make motherhood different from fatherhood, are at the root of the unique mother-child relationship. When you start to feel angry that you had to carry the baby and deliver the baby and feed the baby from your body (it really can feel so unfair! They could never!), that the baby wants you when she falls or when she’s tired, remember that this mother-child connection is only yours. You are more changed, yes, and you are the one who has access to this uncanny life experience, that unlocks a whole new plane of awareness, love, and connection. Not to undermine the father-child bond. That’s also unique and special, but in your family unit only you get this version of parenthood: to be her mom.

That doesn’t mean your husband hasn’t changed at all and isn’t - like you - still in the midst of change. There’s a chance, like many men (sorry to generalize!), that he’s not conditioned to reflect and communicate his lived experiences like you are. But I suspect he isn’t who he was before baby either, even if it’s not in the same ways and to the same degree as you. Maybe his interests haven’t changed, but I bet he’s not pursuing them unencumbered. He might be doing a kind of mental calculus you’re familiar with. How will this interfere with my baby’s schedule? Will my wife need me home at that time? Will this take away from my family time as a full-time working parent? It may be small compared to what you’ve experienced (ahem, sacrificing your entire physical being) but it represents more than superficial external change. It’s a kind of psychological and identity shift that overlaps with your own. You may be cutting yourself off from an an opportunity to connect here, in this shared change. And beyond connection, my hope is he’ll offer you the reverence (wow, you’re incredible!) you may not be offering yourself and some reprieve! More on that later.

But, be warned, there is no doubt you’ll still find plenty of that disparity that makes you “feel isolated in motherhood.” And here is where I want to tell you that I am right there with you, and also, you may be barking up the wrong tree. Your husband, a father, can’t know the fullness of your experience as a mom - the awe, the awesome, the awful. Lovingly, you need other moms for that.

One the miraculous gifts of motherhood is entry into a club of mothers who truly get it. In A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk, she writes “the experience of motherhood loses nearly everything in its translation to the outside world.” Find people with whom no translation is required.

I’m not talking about following more moms on Instagram. I’m not talking about listening to mom podcasts. I’m talking about doing pizza in the park every Wednesday with a group of moms from your baby’s school or playgroup, your church or synagogue, or community center. I’m talking about bringing the dads so they can hold the babies or follow around the toddlers while you vent on a picnic bench and watch from afar. I know you are beyond busy and this can feel like another thing to coordinate, but it will be worth it. I promise. Just send a text and let your husband take on the parts that feel daunting. Let him order pizza. Let him pack the diaper bag. Tell him you need this to feel less alone as a mom. I bet — and I hope — he’ll say “Great, I’m happy to help!”

Don’t expect community to happen overnight, or over one pizza in the park. But make this an ongoing and imperfect effort. It’s the best thing I’ve done for myself as a mom. It’s changed my capacity. It’s made parenting more fun. When I start to feel crazy or lonely or like it’s all too much (often), I need to spend some time with other moms who get it.

Speaking of fun. I went to a concert last week. The logistics of getting there were a nightmare. My husband’s work schedule is unpredictable. He said he might be home in time, but he also might not? I’d need to hire a babysitter just in case, but if he was free, we’d then need to cancel on her last minute. The concert was in Austin and I’m a tired mom so driving home afterward felt ill advised. Instead I’d stay the night at my brother’s house and leave at 5am the next morning to get home by 7am for the morning shift and school drop off. Usually I’d feel frustrated by these logistical obstacles and give up, but for some reason this time I made it work. And it was SO worth it. Driving at golden hour. Alone. On a long stretch of highway. To a venue I used to bike to on summer nights in my twenties. Jumping around like a toddler when they played my favorite song. Gleeful.

I love a sparsely attended concert on a Tuesday night. I love weaving between strangers to get a closer look. I love dancing with my friend, a new mom to a baby boy, in her faded black overalls with a mop of curly hair cascading down her back. Between songs we filled tiny plastic cups with water from a bright orange cooler. I asked her about life as a new mom. She said, being here made her feel almost high. And we laughed at the contrast between her days with a two month old and this. She said, newborn life is so sweet and precious, but it’s not fun. It gets more fun, I told her. But not like this. Fun in a more high-stakes, but gratifying way.

I write a lot about how dramatically changed I felt after the birth of my first child, and I still feel that way, but I’m also amazed at the joy of tapping back into a version of me that’s 7, and 13, and 23. They all still live in there and I don’t visit them enough. So, yep you’ve been “transformed on a cellular level” and you are still you. Don’t forget to visit the parts of you that aren’t a working mom to a 16 month old on occasion. It’ll be annoying to coordinate, so annoying it may trigger rage, and it will also be worth the hassle.

Okay, I guess we should get to the practical stuff now. “Do I accept that I will almost always be doing more?” No, I don’t think so. I think a division of labor that feels good to you and your husband is achievable. A reframe that helped me (it’s very much a work in progress over here, too) is naming the difference between equity and equality. Equality would mean precisely divvying up all the work of caretaking and cohabitating. This approach hasn’t worked for us and leaves me with that same rage-y feeling you describe. So much of of caretaking and home management is invisible and impossible to account for, let alone divide up like chips in a pot. When we try this in our partnership, we end up getting into tit-for-tat territory and we both feel more like opponents than teammates.

Equity - in this context - would mean each partner makes different but equally meaningful contributions. This ebbs and flows in different seasons and across time. You may have a busier season at work, in which case your partner will take on more in the domestic sphere, and visa versa. If you feel you’re doing more work most of the time, you can and should shuffle things around. And, look for ways to lighten the load for both of you (can you outsource cleaning more if you don’t want to outsource childcare? But, also you have full permission to bring on more childcare if that’s what you need!). Just don’t treat this as an arbitrary project of allocating tasks. Approach it as a collaborative effort toward more peace and shared purpose — to create a happy and functional family unit. If you approach your husband with that framing, he’s more likely to see your requests as a chance to support you, your child, and his family than a personal indictments of his failings. In my partnership, we get much farther this way. Think of this as an opportunity to let him help you! Like you said, the lack of support for mother’s is infuriating. Yes, it is! (I could write whole essay on how our culture is not set up for our thriving. There is so much structural and cultural change that needs to occur.) And, we have to be willing to ask and accept help, too. Even when it’s imperfect. Even when it’s not exactly how we would do it. Spend some time considering what you’re really willing to let go of, to hand off to your husband, paid support, or family and friends? Can you accept that when your husband gets your child ready for school, she will be wearing a floral top with a different patterned bottom? Really though. Where can let go without relinquishing the stuff that really matter to you? If you want your husband to pack the lunches (hello, it’s me), you’ll need to be okay with him packing a weird assortment of dates, and loose granola (he also writes them a sweet note and draws a picture. See, his way is not my way, but it has its own merits!) Mostly, I think it’s important to remember that there is no arrival at perfect equity. That doesn’t mean you just accept doing it all yourself and live in a state of constant overwhelm. It means you have to regularly communicate about a division of responsibility that works for your family. You try, you learn, things change, you adjust. You will continually fall out of balance, so expect to continually reconvene and recalibrate.

Love ya,

Stephanie

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Btw: Really thank you so much for reading! If you like these weekly newsletters, I have three asks!

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4) How do you cope with mom rage? We need your input!