It was a typical Monday morning. I was attempting to take a quick shower, while my 15 month old and almost three year old played on the floor of the bathroom. This never goes well and I’m not sure what makes me think it won’t end in disaster, but you can only use dry shampoo so many days in a row. I hear the thud and the scream following close behind, stick my head out and quickly assess that my son has shoved my daughter into the space between the toilet and the sink and she was in the process of trying to bite him as payback. (Where do they learn these things?) For a split second I consider closing the curtain and letting them go at it, but my conscience decides to jump out of the shower, separate them and muster up all of my patience to talk to them calmly instead of screaming words they don’t need to hear. I’m sure you can picture the scene and maybe you’ve even been in the same (cold and wet) situation. An hour later as we were on our way to preschool, and I was hoping to just make it through the day, I started to wonder if this survival mode would ever end.
When you’re nine months pregnant and very ready to give birth, everyone tells you to “just get through” those last days. When you have a newborn, everyone again says, “just get through” the sleepless nights and constant worry. When you have two very small children, again it’s “just get through” these tough years. But when do I stop “just getting through” my life? Because living that way is not exactly what I had planned.
I was talking with an empty nester the other day and she was telling me how the worry of a parent never goes away, it just changes. She now worries about her kids’ financial means, whether they’ll find their true love, among other things. It seems to be the same with survival mode as a parent. Every stage of raising children has its difficulties and no matter how hard we try, we will always be trying to make it work. Whether it’s changing constant diapers and making bottles or running the kids to soccer and dance, survival mode is synonymous with parenthood.
But I don’t want to just survive, I want to thrive as a parent, a wife, a daughter, a friend. I want, as we all do, to live a life filled with meaning, passion and love. Is this possible when most days I can’t think straight due to exhaustion and I consider it a successful day if both kids brush their teeth? I believe the issue lies with my definition of the word “thrive.” It may, in fact, look differently than I had planned.
In this stage of my life, thriving may not include being able to volunteer my time in the community. It may not include a standing get together with my friends, childfree. I may not be able to have an organized, clean house all of the time and I may have to get used to the permanent dark circles under my eyes. If I want to thrive, I have to focus on the moments. When I look at the big picture, all I see is not enough time, not enough money, sleepless nights and a growing to-do list. But if I look at this survival mode a little differently, if I look at those moments when we are doing more than surviving, my perspective changes.
The five minutes my son spent reading to his baby sister. The hour after bedtime that my husband and I had to just talk. The bits of time I have to sit down and write and reflect on this journey, and hopefully reach someone else who feels the same. And even the chaos. Even that moment in the bathroom when I almost lost it. Survival mode is motherhood, but it is also life. And whether we’ve accomplished our entire to-do list today, or simply have clean teeth – we are thriving.
