Two Separate Families
Dear Books,
My twins were born 8 weeks premature, and they are doing great but are in the NICU and can't come home. My 12 year old isn't allowed in the NICU and cannot meet them until they come home. The challenge I'm having is feeling like I am obligated to two separate families: my 12 year old who has been an only child and needs attention and love, and the two babies in the NICU. When I'm with one over the other I feel guilty, and emotionally am having difficulty balancing the obligations and taking care of myself.
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Dear Mama,
I am sending love to you and those sweet babies in the ICU. You say they are doing great, and I am grateful to hear it, but they are still tiny babies in a hospital, and that is just a hard thing, period.
I want to name that because I can feel in your letter how strong you feel like you must be. How there for everyone you feel like you must be. It’s the core of your question, really: how can you be everything for everyone, plus yourself?
Here’s the answer that might make you want to yell into your pillow, Mama: you can’t be. There is no good way to do what you’re asking of yourself.
Your whole letter is like that moment in the Barbie movie when America Ferrera tells Margot Robbie about all the ways it is absolutely impossible to be a woman. You’re embodying that moment. You’re trying to be all the things for everyone, while keeping all the balls in the air. Plus—and I’m just guessing here—trying to keep your teeth brushed and lose that baby weight. And it’s just. Not. Doable.
For the next little bit here, there’s a giant-diaper-sized chance that your life is just going to be ridiculously messy and imperfect. That sucks. But also I think there is some freedom in that.
Because what if you just acknowledged that maybe there is no Right Way to do all of this? What if you gave yourself the grace to just do it the best way you can? What if you just gave it your best shot and trusted that you might all, against all odds, be absolutely enough?
That’s why I’m recommending to you Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott. Because if there’s anyone who understands how golden goodness can shine through the cracks of imperfection, it’s Anne.
She can speak to you about how there is no Right Way to do the mothering/loving/surviving/caring/healing/meeting expectations thing you are trying to do right now.
“We almost never really know what is true,” Anne tells us, “except that sometimes we’re all really lonely, and hollow, and stripped down to our most naked human selves. It’s the worst thing on earth, this truth about how little we know. I hate it and resent it. And yet it is where new life arises from.”
Anne reminds us that it's okay to not see the whole path clearly. It’s okay to grope blindly. It’s okay to fuck it up. It’s okay to let other people help you when you are at your end. That’s where the new life is, Mama.
Anne’s anecdotes are like quick snacks. They go down easy. And the book is short enough that you can read it in between feedings or naps or breakdowns on the bathroom floor (Anne has had a few of those too, and she gets it).
I hope that Anne’s prose will give you the freedom to do this one step at a time, the best way you know how. Because that’s more than enough.
Much love,
Lara
P.S. Dear Mama, I am adding a postscript to this letter because I had the great fortune of hearing Ann Lamott speak recently. She mentioned another of her books, Operating Instructions, which chronicles the first year of her newborn son’s life. I haven’t read this book, but the way Anne talked about it, it made me think of you immediately. I wonder if you want to shove this to the top of your reading pile? It seems to me like it will have the same healing, helpful magic of my original recommendation, Almost Everything, but will be even more applicable to your situation. Love again, Lara
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