Beautifully Broken

Motherhood breaks you open. It exposes your heart and soul, your values, your past, and your strengths and weaknesses, thankfully, to no one else but yourself. In my experience, it happens gradually when you first have a newborn and as your child gets older, you start seeing parts of yourself that you’ve never seen before. Your heart bursts open when you have a baby, allowing yourself to love this little human even while you’re just getting to know them and while you’re learning so much about this new role you’re in. As they grow a few years older, you start making decisions on how you want to parent this little person taking into account so many factors like you and your partner’s values, your own upbringing, even societal expectations. You figure out what you want to change and what you want to carry forward in how you were raised. When you enter the toddler years, you start seeing ugly traits of yourself that you didn’t even know existed as your patience is tested day after day (turns out I sometimes have my own temper tantrums). You also see beautiful parts of yourself with your teaching abilities, creativity, patience, and kindness. Motherhood forces you to examine yourself in ways you never would have otherwise.

When you see your toddler mimicking your actions that you do on a daily basis, you want to stop dead in your tracks and re-evaluate everything. I cringe when I see her looking at herself in the mirror, not knowing what she’s thinking. She mimics moves I didn’t even know I made, and I’ve realized how loudly actions can speak more than words. She reminds us constantly of what we say and how we say it by repeating our words back to us and to other people in conversation. I shudder when she’s bossing around a toy during imaginary play and telling it to “Be quiet! or Hurry up! or No! Don’t do that!” She’s holding a big mirror and I’m looking right at it- exposing the good, bad, and everything in between.

Motherhood breaks you open in the best ways. You find the strength and love to get up in the night to calm a scared child and feed the baby right after. You find the capacity to sing Wheels on the Bus over and over on the way home to make the ride a little bit easier after a long day. You find the patience to read book after book when your child keeps bringing them over. You find the time to drop whatever you’re doing and play because you know they need the attention. You find the strength to get up in the morning after many sleepless nights when all you would like to do is curl up in bed and sleep for a week straight. Your love is patient, kind, and endless. You miss them after being apart for just a few hours. You’re proud of them for doing the smallest things. Their smiles and laughter can bring you enough joy to turn a hard day around.

Motherhood breaks you open. It shows you the raw parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. It makes you look at parts of yourself that you never really wanted to see. It forces you to become a better person. It makes you want to improve parts of yourself so you can be the best example for your kids. It makes you want to do everything you can so your kids become great people. It gives you an endless capacity of unconditional love so you can keep showing up everyday for your family the best you can. It shows you how much strength you have. Motherhood breaks you open in ways that are messy, real, and scary. But it also breaks you open in ways that are full of love, happiness, gratitude, strength, generosity, patience, and grace. What a blessing.