Saturday is about ME!

Happy Saturday!!

I love me some Saturday. The kids sleep until 6am then dog pile in the bed and demand food while shoving their cold, damp feet on my face and back their sharp little toenails digging in the soft flesh behind my knees...what I'm telling you is that Saturdays are ALL about me! Me doing laundry, dishes, not showering, cooking and planning the FUN (as I write, Kevin is making breakfast!). So today's post is all about ME, my journey :)

When we were going through the adoption classes we met a great social worker. She is an adoptee who was taking care of her mother who was dealing with dementia and her father had passed. She had found her birthmother, who helped out with her mother and she got to have a relationship with her brothers....she was amazing, she was open and raw. She needed a cape. I fell in LOVE with her, her strength and honesty.

Then it happened...

During one of our meetings while we were talking she mentioned that therapy might be a good idea. This statement, to be totally honest, made me cry right then and there and I realized, damn...I need to get me some therapy! Anyone who knows me knows it went down this easy. I was going through a situation that was the most emotional journey I have ever undertook, I had no idea how it would end up, I didn't know if I was that woman, that woman I like to think I am.

I was in a doubt spiral.

During this time I had friends who got pregnant and I was truly happy for them, our journeys were and are different. Well, they were afraid to tell me, yeah that helped! It excluded me from my tribe, from my group that had always been close and shared all aspects of our lives. I was shunned, exiled to the island of "infertility". Pregnant friends, it seemed to me, avoided me, like I had a something they could catch. Needless to say, this sucked asssssss. I never defined myself as someone who couldn't be a mother, I was going about it differently.

The first 3 times I met with the therapist I cried. Not the little pretty tv cry, the ugly raw snot in your mouth, red faced, gasp for air sob...and it felt GREAT!! Where else on the face of the earth can you sit in a comfy chair with a full box of tissues and sob with no one judging you and asking, "are you ok", "how can I help" or "snap out of it!!!". It was cathartic. It was healing. It was just what I needed and to this day I am so grateful to this therapist for letting it happen. It also helped that she looked like Mrs. Claus in a flowered blouse and grey Rockport sneakers.

Then we talked.

It was great to come to reality that I wanted to be a mother. Carrying a child was just the most traditional way. Isn't it how everyone does it? I came to terms with my shame, yes people, shame of not carrying a child. People make you feel less of a woman...less of a person. You are told from a young age that the uterus is for holding a baby...that is it's purpose and every woman worth her grain of salt can do this. If you don't, you are less than. And dammit I'm not! No woman is. I had this feeling that I had let people down that I failed, failed at being a woman. If you have never gone through this you may think I am being overly dramatic. Well, I'm not. The social "norms" around becoming a mother are cruel, they judge, they are set there to make you feel small. Baby, we are only as small as we allow ourselves to be. I am not a victim of anything and refuse to stand by and let "them" make me feel like one.

My journey to motherhood was and is different, not less, not wrong just different.

I make choices with a clear mind, I stand tall with my family and take pride in my children's accomplishment. My children have a family that includes adoptive and biological persons, this to me is a true gift. To know so many people LOVE my children and want what is best for them, I might bust out crying...

But, what it comes down to is that it isn't about me...it is about the 5 damped feet heathens demanding bacon at 6am...they have made me a mother and I wouldn't change that for fucking anything!