Motherhood and enjoying the present moment

For a first time in my life I feel like I’m enjoying being a mother and my relationship with my son.

I was too naive and maybe somewhat young when I became a mother. We’ve only been together with my partner for an year when I got pregnant. But we said yes to it, yes to all this family-making, children-raising thing.

And it was good for a while. But soon it became clear that this isn’t what I thought it would be. It soon became clear that instead of building a family, there was a wall being built between me and everything around me.

And I closed down and shut away, and retrieved more and more into myself.

Until it became unbearable.

But my son was demanding and I just couldn’t take it. I just wanted to be by myself (in those first days after the death of my sister). There was too much going on in my inner world, I needed the time to grieve (many) a loss.

I couldn’t be present for my son. I needed to hibernate and process what was going on internally.

But he would take none of that. To the point that I got resentful. I couldn’t blame my son though (what kind of mother would I be?) so I had to find someone else for my projections. That was just everybody and everything .

Nobody seemed to understand what I was going through.

But most of all, I started blaming myself for not being able to enjoy my son, my family, and life altogether. Until very recently.

Now for a first time in my life, I’m gaining some balance and neutrality.

My only concern is my well-being and that of my son.

I feel I can finally relax and enjoy being a mother, enjoy spending time with my son. I feel calmness, I feel allowance.

In the early days of my depression, my coping mechanism would be to divert to something else, anything but being present and focused with my son, anywhere else but not where I was or what I was already doing.

I couldn’t enjoy a single moment of being a mother. And that would create such an internal conflict in me.

Now I cherish our moments together. I’m looking forward to see him in the afternoon when I pick him up from kindergarten. I am present with him.

At last I’ve arrived.