Maternal Transitions: An Unmooring

Maternal Transitions: An Unmooring 

by Joyce Webster, LCSW

My body, my brain and my heart are not my own today.

My body is going through the motions but it feels weak, nauseous, on edge.

My brain is swirling, stuck in sludge, not functioning the way it should.

My heart is full, but also cracking wide open with every breath.

I am unmoored.

People tell me it’s normal, I should be grateful, it’s all a part of life.

So why do I feel so lost, so at sea?

Because I am a mother. And over and over again motherhood makes us expand and contract, hold close and let go, be a port in the storm - even while we feel like we are floating alone.

The first time it happened I was postpartum. Instead of feeling joy, I felt ungrounded and alone. I wept. I longed. I was no longer myself. 

Then came the first day of preschool, the first bike ride through the neighborhood alone. First, after first, after first. I was unmoored by these but luckily, never as lost as during postpartum.

Until today. College drop off. My body, my brain and my heart are once again not my own. I am undone, I am at sea. It feels akin to those early postpartum days, something not felt in 18 years.

But much like during postpartum, I can see lights on the horizon. It is the light of other mothers. The ones who have come before me. The ones who understand the visceral pain of letting go and the ones who have survived these same transitions. They remind me that I am not alone and that these sensations are actually a universal maternal experience.

So I will find an anchorage near them and we will ride out this storm together.