To My Children

On why your 56 year-old Mom is driving around the country and sleeping in her car.

I’m sure you've seen some changes in me over the past couple of years. Driving off alone for weeks at a time, gardening obsessively, the writing and YouTube channel, all of it. Like I'm running somewhere. I'm not running from anything and I want to explain it, so bear with me.

You've probably heard the line about how having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body for the rest of your life. People say it like it's a sweet thing. It's true, but what nobody tells you is that it can also hurt. That's what you're signing up for if you choose to have children of your own someday. It hurts because your love for them grows so much bigger than you are, and every step they take away from you steals your breath, but also is the exact thing you raised them to do.

When you were little, you were my whole world, and I was yours. We were part of each other. You were the biggest part of me and I was the biggest part of you, and for a long stretch of years, being your mom was most of who I was. That’s how it was supposed to be and I loved every minute of it.

That was never meant to last forever, and I wouldn't have wanted it to. Children are supposed to grow and pull away and build a life that doesn't run through their mother. It's even my job to nudge you out of the nest, because it isn't healthy for a child to need a parent that way for life... though that's not quite right either, because sometimes you do still need me, and I'm glad when you do.

What nobody tells you is what's waiting on the other side of all that growing. The house gets quiet, you're grown, and there's a space where our lives used to be wound together. The love didn't go anywhere. If anything it got deeper. It's just a different shape now, and I'm still learning it.

I thought I had myself figured out at twenty, and by thirty I was even more sure. At forty I'd have told you flat out that I knew exactly who I was. What I actually knew was who I was as your mom. The love was so big it swallowed me, and I let it, gladly, for thirty years. I didn't lose myself to neglect. I lost myself to devotion. There's a difference, but the end result is the same empty space.

I want to be clear about something. That's not a complaint about you, and it's not something you did wrong. It's just what happens when you pour yourself into someone else for that long. It happens to every decent mother. It was my choice every single time, and I'd make it again. But it left me with some catching up to do with myself, and that part is mine to handle, not yours.

I don't like saying I'm out here finding myself. I've never lost myself, not really. It's more that I never fully got acquainted with myself in the first place, not the way I got to know all of you. I started getting reacquainted gradually, without even meaning to, somewhere around the time you all hit your teenage years and started pulling away a little. But there are still parts of me that have been sitting quietly for decades, waiting for me to fully belong to myself again the way I used to belong to you.

So now I'm trying to get to know who else is in there. And here's the part I haven't said out loud to many people: it isn't always a peaceful kind of searching. It's closer to desperation sometimes. Because outside of being your mommy, being your whole world, I don't fully know who I am. If I don't go find those waiting parts and build something real out of them, I'm afraid of what's left. I'm afraid I'll just keep fading, a little at a time, until there's nothing left of me.

I don't want that. So this road tripping, my garden, this writing and video-making, all the things I keep disappearing into, might be less about any one destination and more about getting acquainted with those parts before they're gone for good. Getting away from the noise of everyday life is the only way I know how to do it. I can't hear those quiet parts of myself over the hum of the regular days. Out here, I can. This is me doing my own work. I'm not telling you any of this so you'll call more or worry about me. I'm telling you because I want you to understand me, and because I think it might help you someday if you have children of your own.

It isn't all grief. I'll be driving along and think about one of you in the middle of the afternoon, wonder what you're up to, hope you're alright. And then it hits me that you're probably not thinking about me at all. That's exactly how it should be. You're busy living the life I wanted for you, and that's a good thing, not something to feel bad about. It stings a little on my end anyway, and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. But that sting is mine to carry, not yours to fix.

If you choose to have children one day, I hope you'll remember this. They will always be your world. And the love will get so big it'll swallow you too, gladly, and someday you'll have some catching up to do with yourself on the other side of it, same as I'm doing now.

So that's why your mama seems a little crazy these days. I'm not falling apart. I'm just out here getting acquainted with the rest of myself.

I love you. Deeply, truly, and for good.