lodtunduh

motherhood, truthfully

Honestly, sometimes I struggle with being a mother. Sometimes it feels like I'm being sent out to war in the morning when I hear him wake. I don't have the unlimited and abounding love I hear people speak of in reference to their children. I never expected to be a mother that would make her child/children her absolute everything and vanish inside a cocoon of obsession, forgetting about anything else I ever thought had substance or importance (and I'm also grateful for that), but I also never expected to be torn so strongly between the beauty and difficulty this new chapter holds in my life. Don't get me wrong. I love my son. So much so that I can barely believe he is real sometimes. I run my finger along a perfect curl or under an innocent tear and my mind boggles that he emerged from me. That we are bound and that I'm the lucky person able to call him my own. Some days he will say something that makes me laugh and it will be the best moment in my already great day by far. I would never not want to be his mother.
But I'm having a hard week. The other day I was talking about setting off to Bolivia alone with him on my back for a few weeks, but I can hardly manage a 5 hour flight without almost losing my sanity. For someone that always relished a little isolation, my own company and time to just be and think, I'm struggling to find that patience and warmth that looks like it comes so easy to many.

 a moving portrait of Alexandra Harrison

music 'phoebetria' by Schnitzelhammer