Darling, I am your mother.

Reflections on empathy, being a mom, my mom, and Mother Earth

There are lots of reasons why my heart is full right now. And reasons why it aches. Some of these reasons are the same. As seems to be my trend right now, I’m having trouble putting this all together even when I know there’s a there-there. So welcome to another weekly installment of Becca’s internal monologue that I often process on the outside with lots of spoken words — and now as I write out loud.

I’m thinking about empathy. My mom. About being a mother. About Mother Earth. About fierce, unconditional love. And reciprocal caretaking.

Fertility

I have friends who have known since they were in elementary school they wanted to be moms. I have other friends who, sometime in their late 20’s and early 30’s became obsessed with the idea. And still others – of all ages – with equally strong convictions about NOT having kids.

Generally, I would characterize my attitude (and Eric’s too, thankfully!) to be oriented toward having kid(s) but not hellbent on it. Around 35, we “pulled the goalie,” claiming an ‘if-it-happens-it-happens’ attitude.

It didn’t happen.

There’s nothing like infertility in a Type A human to change lackadaisical conception orientations into crystal clear convictions.

I have a condition called Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). It means I have lots of eggs – way more than most peeps – and some wonky hormones. And, it also meant I was not ovulating, which is a bit of a show stopper when trying to have a baby.

Here’s how it works. (Don’t worry, I’m not about to get super scientific here; I am a scientist, but I’m a better storyteller)(Also, feel free to skip down to the “Geriatric” header if you don’t want the deets here).

Most women have 5 or 6 eggs on each of their ovaries. Each month, those eggs meet up and decide which one (I almost wrote who…but then I felt like I was getting into a ‘when does life start’ ethical question and that’s not the point here) will grow. One steps up, saying, “I’ll do it!” The volunteer then grows bigger and when the time is right, travels down the fallopian tube to the uterus to be fertilized…or not.

With PCOS, I have more like 20 to 30 eggs – aka “cysts” on each ovary (hence polycystic). The previously described egg meeting to determine which will grow and ovulate devolves into a consensus-based-decision-making debacle reminiscent of the days I lived in a hippie cooperative house trying to decide if we would stock Skippy or organic peanut butter in our pantry (deciding on organic only to have those in the Skippy camp buy a half-dozen cases of Skippy anyhow, filling the kitchen to the point we couldn’t walk into it without excavating some processed peanut butter). Anyhow, in the great cyst consensus chaos, eventually all my eggs just threw up their hands and said – “Fine! None of us will go!”

I wasn’t ovulating.

Moving on…

Through a very sexy combination of oral progesterone, about a dozen vaginal ultrasounds, a pair of trigger injections followed by…wait-for-it…“timed intercourse” (which means it happened at a specific time, not that it was an endurance test), we eventually got pregnant.

Geriatric

I carried Clara in what medical professionals (who should know better) then called a “geriatric” pregnancy, age 37 when Clara arrived on land. (By the time Nora was born when I was 39, the terminology had been “softened” to “Advanced Maternal Age.” Whether or not this is better I’ll let you decide). I’m not sharing this information because I think it’s particularly exceptional – it’s not – but rather to defensively offer some context for what I’m about to say.

I unsuccessfully took a 3-month maternity leave – 6-weeks paid through our school district’s “sick leave bank,” the balance paid by us. I’m sure my European friends’ jaws just dropped – aghast at the paltry time and monetary support for new parents in the U.S. – and we were very fortunate among U.S. parents as far as leave policies go. As a reference point, my cousin who just had a baby had zero days of paid leave – and she’s a medical professional!  

For me, 3 months was too long. I dabbled in work when Clara was days old and started back working (not full time, but still) when Clara was just a few weeks. In spite of a literal village of support in our small Colorado mountain town complete with a weeks’-long meal train, offers to hold Clara while I took a shower or did something else, a super involved partner who also took time off, a couple of weeks of live-in Super Grandma care, hand-me-downs for days, and about a gazillion other meaningful offerings, I was lonely and adrift.

Yes, Clara was there. I loved her company even though I am not a “baby person” (don’t judge). I loved seeing her tiny developmental moments – a smile not caused by a toot, the first time she looked at me and seemed to actually see me, her little fingers wrapped around mine.

I watched Pixar’s Inside Out sobbing in hormonal-nursing-struggle-sleep-deprived-new-mom overwhelm. I felt desperate to make sure Clara would grow with a rich blend of core memories – being able to access joy and sadness and all the other emotions that make life, life. And beautiful. And complex. (Fortunately Clara already draws from quite the range – asking about street children in her feverish slumber at 4 and a half, telling me in a tender bedtime moment that “we should thank the Earth the most” at age 5).

I talked with Clara from the beginning. And, I missed talking with other adults. So, in addition to lots of walk-and-talks with friends and invite-forcing everyone to “Come in!” if they dropped by our home, I returned to work to fill my people need. I attended a few professional development (PD) sessions. I facilitated a couple more.

When she was less than a month old, I took Clara to her first workshop – one on diversity, equity, and inclusion. She slept contentedly in my Nesting Days “4^th trimester” carrier pressed against my skin, her heart beating next to mine.

For our opener, we were to list as many of our identities as we could in a few minutes. Female, cis-gender, White. Educator, outdoors-person, athlete, activist. Nature lover.

I don’t remember my whole list, but you get the idea.

I paired up with the high school principal to share our identities.

The first on his list?

Dad.

I gazed at Clara’s little sleeping face nuzzled into my chest. I lifted my hand to hold her closer. I looked at my list. My stomach flipped and I absently discussed my list with a gaping maw where such a primal identity should have been. My ears got hot.

I pointed to Clara and forced a laugh.

And, I obviously identify as a mom.

But I’m not sure I did…yet.

In my defense, I had lived for 37 years without this identity. But still.

Empathy

I’ve learned there’s nothing quite like being a mom to understand what it means to be a mom.

I look back at the ways I supported new moms who came into this tribe before me – bringing a meal, a present, offering to help with a few things around the house – and I now know that empathy just wasn’t there. I didn’t understand. Couldn’t.

After Clara arrived, I set out on a low-key apology tour. I told my mom-friends “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you more when you were a new mom. I had no idea how you must have been feeling. What you were feeling…”

“You couldn’t have,” they each replied in turn.

“I know. But still,” I responded.

And they looked at me, knowing knowing.

My mom

Nowhere and with no one do/did I regret this empathy gap more than with my own mother. Even though it’s so obvious that most kids (at least lucky ones who are not given outsized responsibilities to care for younger siblings or sick parents) have no idea what it’s like to be a parent and, in fact, are basically biologically programmed to be self-centered, I wish I had known.

Now I do, though.

This summer, after our childcare plan fell through, we pivoted on our Kenya-Colorado pilgrimage, retreating to Wisconsin for most of the month of June so my mom could help with childcare. And my mom confidently assumed Super Grandma mode. Clara and Nora loved it. They love her. She deserves every bit of their adoration.

On top of this multigenerational joy, another darker dimension unfolded – a honey-you-can’t-feel-this-over-the-phone side effect made graver still because I’m now a mom and my capacity for empathy with my own mother grows each day. I had a chance to see up-close-and-personal something that gets lost in communication when I live on another continent.

I watched my mom also care for my amazing dad – who has suffered two strokes in the past 6 years and is almost always a different person than the one she married – tending more toward irrational Eeyore (but thankfully not always!) and less toward many of the adjectives previously used to describe him: diplomatic, funny, caring, generous. His lucidity now belies depression and a lost identity (something with which I also have deep empathy from when I left my previous job — but that’s a story for another time).

I realized that my mom has been in the “sandwich generation” for almost 4 decades – a caretaker for her own mom and dad (early onset Alzheimer’s; cancer) while also taking care of my brother and me — and now taking care of my kids (and me in derivative form) and my dad too. (*For those who are caretakers of littles or bigs or both, do yourself a favor and read Sari Botton’s interview on

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

).

My mom-empathy applied to my own parents meant I spent most of June in a delicate emotional dance trying to navigate a healthier outcome for my parents in a fraught fire swamp of aging and loyalty and nuance and love and heartache and no-win-but-hopefully-everything-can-be-at-least-ok scenarios. This particular story is not over, so I don’t have any bows I can tie here.

In contrast, I think the underlying empathy story does have a thread I can follow straight back to nature-based learning if you stick with me a little longer.

Darling, I am your mother

One of my best friends from adolescence, who remains a dear friend today, loaned us some children’s books when we were back in Wisconsin so our girls would have a better selection.

One of the books was Wild Honey from the Moon by Kenneth Kraegel.

In it, the protagonist, Mother Shrew, consults a parenting book about her sick son Hugo and learns the cure is one teaspoon of wild honey from the moon.

Without pause, she sets out on a “mother’s mission” to the moon.

She gently tells little Hugo she must go on a “quick trip.”

“But where are you going?” his sleepy voice squeaked.

“To the moon,” she replied. “A quick trip.”

“But you can’t fly,” he whispered as his drowsy eyes fell shut.

“Darling, I am your mother,” she said.  

Fierce, unconditional love; reciprocal caretaking

Wild-honey-from-the-moon mothering is what I experienced this summer when my mom cared for me, and Nora, and Clara, and my dad. And it’s what I tried to give back when I became daughter-mom on a mission to a far away moon without a clear path, my empathy pushing me to care for my mom (and dad, too) in a reciprocal love stemmed from my recently minted mother empathy. And gratitude.

Which makes me think of our mother — Earth — and why I feel so, so strongly about the need for all humans to grow emotional connections with more-than-human nature. It’s why I see apple-a-day nature-based learning as existential — one (low-cost, attainable, immediate, proven) way we can foster a sense of empathy, gratitude, and reciprocity toward more-than-human nature among all kids everywhere.

Environmental educator and author David Sobel said (says),

If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it.

This is right.

Deep emotional bonds with Mother Earth form the path to fierce wild-honey-from-the-moon unconditional love, gratitude, and reciprocal caretaking for our planet.

❤️, Becca