Two days ago I turned 40. Yesterday, my baby girl, Alice June, turned seven.
(Yes, a day apart. I went into labor with her on my 33rd birthday.)
Historically around our birthdays I’ve written lists of things I’ve learned. It’s something I like to do: think about how I’ve grown, things I’ve changed my mind on, how my perspectives have expanded. There’s this post I wrote when she turned one. There’s this post I wrote one year in my thirties. There’s this one from my birthday last year. And can’t forget this one, which I wrote just a few months after she was born. (Fascinating to look back at my consciousness as a brand-spankin’-new mother.)
I thought about doing this again, because it comes so easily to me (and motherhood and growing older continue to teach me so much). But I decided on something different for this post.
Both of these birthdays—40 and 7—are milestones in general, but there’s something about this birthday of mine and this birthday of Alice’s, something specific about my life circumstances, that has seemed especially worthy of reflection. I’ve felt a strong pull in recent weeks to go inward. I haven’t been as social. I haven’t been posting or chatting on Instagram as much as I normally do. I didn’t plan it, but I think it was a God nudge: you’re in the midst of a special moment. Be present with it. Reflect.
So I’ve done just that.
We were on a family walk in our neighborhood last week, and Alice reached out to hold my hand. She’s usually biking, so I haven’t held her hand for a while. I looked at her and realized, in a moment: this is not a little one holding my hand anymore. It’s… a kid. A 48” tall (waterslides!), gap-toothed, soon-to-be-first-grader.
It’s not like I didn’t know that, intellectually. But sometimes things just hit in a full-body kind of knowing. Here she is. Right here.
She’s really not little anymore.
With regard to child development, the first seven years are formative like none other. There’s a saying that goes something like, “Give me the child until he is 7 and I’ll give you the man.” This isn’t something I needed to read in a book (although I did)—I can observe with my own eyes and intuition that Alice has the basics of her personality and interpretation of the world pretty much hard-wired in. This doesn’t at all mean there’s nothing else that can greatly influence her; it just means that a deep foundation has already been established.
A writer friend of mine, also a mother of young children, said to me recently: “I just wanna stare at my kids.” Me too, sis. As I looked down at Alice holding my hand on our walk, I was flooded, of course, with sheer awe at who she is and at how life in the first few years unfolds so quickly. I felt immense, immeasurable gratitude for her and for all the moments that led to this moment. My firstborn, my big girl.
(I’m not crying; you’re crying.)
What a gift. Yet there was something else there too in that moment. As I looked at her, mere days from turning 7, I also felt something about… me. About my mothering—my life, really—in these last seven years.
Because the truth is that as she’s grown, I have too.
There’s another saying: “When a baby is born, so is a mother.” It’s an ancient truth—a woman who bears her first child is going from maiden to mother. There’s a movement to call attention to this shift, with the use of the word “matrescence” (a great TED talk here if you haven’t seen it), and I’m totally here for it. Our culture doesn’t honor this very real identity shift as it should.
But this growth that’s come with motherhood hasn’t been easy. The truth is that these last seven years—being home with her and then two other babies full-time—has been hard. In many ways, I’ve been pushed to my absolute limits and humbled in every way a person can be. Parenting will do that. Parenting as your full-time gig will really do that. From the outside it’s maybe seemed like I’m not doing a lot since I left my career. But I’ve done and learned so much. And as my mother-in-law says, I gave it my all.
And I’m freakin’ proud of it.
I’m proud of going from someone accustomed to accolades and external achievements to someone doing unglamorous, relentless work that largely goes unappreciated or doesn’t have results I can easily point to. I put many of my natural skills and strengths on the shelf and painstakingly acquired new ones, like cooking and keeping a home and learning about health and child development and prioritizing when overwhelmed. I spent so many hours meeting the physical and emotional needs of small people. I’m proud of every effort I’ve put in to create a healthy, well-run home and a strong, intentional family.
I’m proud of making it through years of feeling lonely and misunderstood. For going from someone interesting and in-the-know to someone no longer very relevant, from someone always in the action to someone always missing out due to needs and naptimes. For being alone a lot—both literally and in bigger, more existential ways. For people assuming I’m not educated or very talented or ambitious. Experiencing the status drop and ego hit and disconnection with others that comes with not doing paid work out in the world—and coming out okay on the other side—feels like no small feat.
I’m proud of the self-awareness I’ve developed through motherhood. There’s nothing like a sacred, small being watching your every move to motivate you to level up—motherhood has helped me live with increasing integrity in my day-to-day life like I don’t think anything else ever could have. Related to that, I’m proud of my efforts to heal in specific ways to stop generational pain from being passed on to my children. We were all cared for in our vulnerable years by wounded, imperfect people, and unless we become conscious about our own childhood and family-of-origin patterns, we will pass on what was passed on to us. I’m not under any illusion that I’m doing it perfectly, but I’m proud of the way I’ve let my children show me where I need healing so that I can close the loop on some generational issues.
There’s a grand narrative about SAHMs and privilege, and though it’s undoubtedly true on some level, it’s overall a harmful idea that doesn’t honor all the effort and intention and energy the work entails. Privilege, after all, is a word associated with ease, and being a modern at-home mother is—psychologically, physically, no matter what aspect you want to talk about—not easy. (Not to mention that many families intentionally make financial/material sacrifices to be able to have a parent at home.) Like Neha Ruch at Mother Untitled says, the privilege is in the ability to choose, not in the role of SAHM itself.
These years of at-home parenting… oof. I’ve never done anything so hard in my life. And, I’ve never been so happy with anything I’ve done in my life. Our culture wants to call only mothers who work outside the home “working mothers,” but I’ve put in a ridiculous amount of work over the last seven years. Dang if I’m not gonna use this moment to celebrate myself!
There’s one last thing I’m proud about during these last seven years: trying to stay a whole woman even as I give myself over to the depths of motherhood. To find a middle ground between what feels like an extreme of self-sacrifice and very little self-sacrifice at all. I’m still wading through it philosophically, but practically, this has mostly looked like maintaining some sort of writing practice and publishing, even as I do the full-time workload of an at-home parent.
Whether it’s been on my blog or on Instagram or here on Substack or in my freelance writing, I’ve tried to have this one thing for myself. From the beginning, it’s felt important to me keep myself vibrant and joyful, to tend to myself even as I tend to others so much and so frequently. It hasn’t been an easy thing to navigate, and I’ve also had to be compassionate with myself—anyone who’s been reading for a while knows a book manuscript has been started and set aside more than once over the past several years! But here we are! I’ve been writing in one form or another the entirety of Alice’s life, and I’m proud of that.
A last, relevant note: there’s a very practical change on the horizon for me, which is that both of our big girls will be heading to school in a few short months! Suddenly, it seems the intense, relentless days of at-home parenthood are coming to a close. Of course, I’ll still have my almost-two-year-old at home and lots of parenting to do, but it will feel very different.
And so, I’d like to mark a moment in time.
My firstborn a kid now, not a little one.
Me, entering a new decade with different skills and accomplishments than my 30-year-old self might have imagined but honestly with more confidence than ever… AND some margin on the horizon.
I’ve heard the 40s can be really great for women, and I feel that’s definitely going to be true for me. I’m looking forward to what’s to come, and some time and space to figure it all out! (Unless we decide to homeschool or have another—then it’s back to the trenches! Lol.)
Cheers to a new decade, and I can’t wait to keep sharing here with you.
P.S. Regarding the box you see below: this is the whole written post, but the audio version (where I read the post out loud) is only accessible to paid subscribers. Subscribe to One Tired Mother at $5/month to get not only post audios but also podcast rants that are too spicy or vulnerable for all the Internet to hear.