The Ones Who Came Before

I sat on the brown suede couch, body sunk deep in the well loved cushions. I needed a friend. Potty training was not going well. So much pee, so much poop, so much mess. He wasn’t getting it. I was exhausted and frustrated by the endless unproductive bathroom trips that resulted in a pee puddle on the floor 5 minutes later. I was also trying to juggle a 6 month old baby who wouldn’t sleep at night and somehow also keep up with the piles of smelly, urine soaked clothes. I was miserable and defeated. She gave me helpful advice, but most of all, she encouraged me. She rallied my spirits to try just a bit longer before throwing in the wet towel. She promised that I would eventually have a potty trained child and my sanity as well. Her experience became my hope, and she the lighthouse that I followed ashore. At the time, potty training a two year old was the hardest thing I’d had to do as a parent. I needed someone who had walked the road before to give me tips and tricks, and more importantly the encouragement and the perspective to know that I could do it. He would potty train, eventually, we would survive this.

Good news folks, we survived. The toddler became a potty training champion now kindergartener and that non-sleeping baby is the best sleeper in my house. God bless his little heart. Two more kids have joined our ranks and a glance back through my blog will tell you that potty training looks like a cakewalk compared to some of the battles I’ve faced in my parenting journey. And still, I need that friend, and others to keep guiding me back to shore. I need the other special needs moms to talk me through how they balance all of the appointments and mental load we carry, I need the parents who’ve had a school aged child to explain to me how to navigate this new world of friendships and public school, and I need the moms of large families to lament with me on what it’s like to “have my hands full” in this season of my life. If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes one to raise a mother.

Motherhood can be isolating. It can feel like your entire world revolves around nap times, school schedules, meals, and practices. Everything that is your children and nothing that is you. We need the moms that came before us. The moms and grandmothers who have walked these paths that are well worn to others and brand new to us. We need the stories told through tears of laughter of your toddler letting himself outside and climbing on the roof of your van while you were in the shower. We need to hear about the time your child’s teacher called to tell you something your child did that was so embarrassing you thought your blushed cheeks would never fade. We need to hear how you survived daily fights with your preteen over wearing a jacket when it’s freezing. We need to know that these teenagers living in our homes are capable of learning to drive a motor vehicle safely despite the fact that they can’t even keep their laundry clean. We need to hear how you navigated the transition to college of your dearly loved child and to know that an empty nest can be a beautiful thing. And you, sweet mothers in the trenches of grief, we need to hear how God is sustaining you through the loss of your child, and we’d like to hear about them too. We need to hear your story, however God has written it. Because one day, your story might be ours. We will find ourselves in the current hardest struggle of our parenting journey and we need to know that we’ll survive. We need you to hold our hand through it, and after we’ve survived, we can hold the hand of the next mom.