motherhood is not about you

I know, I know, what a horrible thing to say. To many modern ears, such a statement is just absolutely horrifyingly — wrong.

We do not like words like obligation, or duty, they sound oppressive, stuffy things our grandmothers keep in the drawers in the bedroom upstairs nobody ever uses. Somewhere, somehow along the way we have all collectively decided that life is simply just about doing whatever the hell we want.

What do I want? What do I need? What makes me happy? What fulfills me?

And to no surprise this new ideology we now worship has of course, and only logically, seeped into all our thoughts and ideas surrounding motherhood.

Our children steal our identities, pregnancy is a body horror, motherhood ruins our careers, children cost way too much, take too much work, need far too much, and get way too much in the way of our lives. This has been going on for so long that we have not even noticed how absolutely insane some of the thinking around motherhood has become. The funny thing about ideas, is that they very often do not stay contained where you last put them, they have a way of seeping into the soil, a way of taking root, a way of growing, a way of blooming into something far bigger, far greater, and far more evil than we ever thought.

This week is finally when we have taken a good hard look at the horrifying thing that has been growing under our soil, under our very feet, and this is exactly what we are talking about today.