Transitions
This past week, I had the great pleasure of reuniting with mothers from one of our earliest Sugar Hill Moms Groups over wine at Settepani, the second-oldest restaurant on Lenox Ave. in Harlem. SHMOM Alumna Szilvia Molnar was our reason for getting together. After leaving the city a few years back, she was in town for work. Earlier this year, Szilvia's book The Nursery, which so honestly and poetically depicts the realness of postpartum depression, was published. In her New York Times book review, writer Claire Dederer said, “Our narrator seems to approach motherhood as a fight, a fight for which she is as ill-prepared for as any young soldier who finds himself at the front.”
Baby Nico and I with some of the 2018 SHMOMS
More pictures of this cohort. This Halloween photo was the best!
Here we are at Settepani from left to right, back to front, clockwise: Szilvia, Claire, Ramya, me, and Emma
Szilvia’s book captures the jolted realization every mother feels the moment their baby arrives earthside: “Oh snap, I’m it. The buck stops with me. Everything just got really real and there are no take-backs.”
Our conversation on the evening of our reunion got me thinking about the evolution we experience when we become mothers. I was 30 when I became a mother. My mother was 31 when she had me. My first child was planned; I was not. Yet, our experiences as first time mothers and working women were very similar. The instantaneous heaviness of being over your head loomed...looms.
Book cover for The Nursery
Book cover for My Brilliant Friend
Today, I found myself being short with everyone in my house, the cat included. Everyone needed something from me—attention, answers, permission—and all I wanted to do was finish the things on my to-do list.
Being a mother who loves her children, her career, and herself is hard. There are constant demands on all parts of these identities, and they are not always congruent.
Elena Greco, the protagonist from the book turned television series My Brilliant Friend, comes to mind. Here you have a woman who falls into the trope of heteronormative societal expectations marrying a respectable man and having two kids at the precipice of becoming a notable author all the while navigating her desire for her childhood crush, Nino.
Szilvia, Emma, Claire, and I closing out the evening with a selfie
Elena Greco and I are not at all the same, but what she, my mother, the narrator of Szilvia Molnar’s book The Nursery, and possibly you have in common is that we are women in transition…Women whose desires have changed because of our need to nurture and provide in and out of our homes. Women who may require more (read: time, care, solitude) than we once did before having kids. Women who are finding a new way of being because being the end of the line for the buck never gets easier. And, women who have found and fully embraced a new way of being because of the children that have entered our lives.
This week, I’m here to say that transition is good. Being fluid is human. Being open to your feelings and honoring them is needed. Seasons change and that’s okay.
Petrushka
Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach
P.S. The next SHMOM Group starts on October 17th! Join us or tell a friend.
P.P.S. If you're an an Expecting Mom, join the newest addition to our maternal health efforts designed and facilitated by SHMOM Alumn Molly Rosner. Registrants get 25% off a future New Moms Group series.