All My Babies’ Mamas
Mother’s Day is coming up this weekend and all I can think about is all of the women in my life who have helped me “mom.” The beautiful, strong, intelligent women in my village that do all the things for my children and who be all the things for my children that I can’t be. I think of all the women that have been vital to my survival and as I look through our photo albums I realize I hardly have any pictures of any of them. J has had literally dozens and dozens of moms that have come in and out of his life. Mothers I will never be able to forget or repay for all of the ways they’ve been J’s and my solid ground and lifeline.
Looking back at my early motherhood pictures I think of three things: Oh how so very, very young and naïve I was. Oh how tired I was. (I still am, but just in different ways). Oh, how this young mama had no idea what a rough go at motherhood she would have.
Motherhood hasn’t been anything close to what I thought it would be. Not one bit. I know that I had unrealistic expectations to begin with. I still have daydreams of what I think motherhood should be, what I’d like it to be. You would think that after 13 years I’d be cured of that. You think autism would have definitely cured me.
I know motherhood puts you on a different planet but I’ve felt like mothering autism puts you on a planet three times removed from everyone else, and you’re just stuck out there by yourself. Even though J has grown in so many ways, I will never have that motherhood experience I thought I’d have with him—the one I really want sometimes with him. The one where we interact with peers and parents and the world in the same way everybody else seems to. To not have to go to war everyday with his stubbornness, his anxiety, his obsessions.
I wrote about this once in a Creative Nonfiction workshop years ago. I had written an essay about J, how hard it was, and how I longed just to have a “normal” family experience. Definitely something without autism. I had a lot of positive feedback on the essay but I had one comment from a fellow writer that really stuck out to me: “what do you think normal even looks like anyways?”
I hated the comment at first. I thought he was marginalizing my experience and essay at first. Obviously my life was far from normal, and I had done a pretty darn good job of showing that in the essay. But then, I went home and thought about it and realized exactly what he was saying. To me, normal meant “little or no problems.” But he was right. There is no such thing as “normal.” We all have some variation of the one, two, three times removed picture of what we think “normal” should look like. My fellow writer was reminding me that we are all living like that.
Even though my normal wasn’t/isn’t what I thought it would be, want it to be, I was wrong on one thing. I may feel lonely sometimes, but I’m never alone. That’s where the co-mothers come in—to help me navigate my version of “normal.” I’ve had them since the beginning. My own mother was there to field all of my early mom questions (about feeding, diapers, laundering baby stains, sleep schedules (or lack thereof)). Once J started deviating from “normal development,” I had supportive friends and developmental therapists who would field my questions and teach me how to work with J to encourage his growth. I had speech therapists come into our life and occupational therapists and special education teachers in J’s preschool years and we became one big Team J to get him ready for kindergarten. I had wonderful public school “regular classroom teachers” that were willing to work with J’s difficulties (especially behavioral ones) inside the classroom and. I had even more incredible special education teachers and really amazing paras come into J’s life throughout elementary school who helped us transition to middle school. We have great co-moms in middle school too. I’ve had peer moms and coach moms and all other types of moms there for J (and W) too. So many moms—really that’s not a bad version of normal at all! Because even without autism I wouldn’t be able to be a good mom on my own. Without autism I’d still need co-mothers to help me figure this whole motherhood thing out—whatever version of “normal” that would look like.
I’ve decided there’s not one woman on the planet who can raise a child without the help of other women. Whether you have a kid on the spectrum or not, no mama can do it alone. So thank you to all the moms in my life—the moms who helped shaped me, my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, my teachers—and thank you to all the moms who co-mom with me. I’d never survive without out you, and neither would my kids.
Happy Mother’s Day to you all!
