Finding who you are outside of parenthood, yet still in your marriage, yet still an individual, and yet still not knowing who you are. is harder than it is to make sense of that statement.
We have been exploring something in couples counseling about desire and how it's hard to be desired when your proximity is so close. Add parents of 2 children under the age of 6 life is a lot. as we prepare to bring them both back to school, oh gosh I'm crying just writing this, it's a whole new season. The up all night the hospital stays, the being without each other all the time, is less frequent and being in the calm is more. For us, we know how to do marriage in the chaos. We know how did your marriage in the hospital. We know how to do marriage in the, oh my God how are we gonna get through this.
the calm........
This is where we struggle.
If you're new to this page you might not know that Ryan and I met in were moved in within 3 weeks. we loved each other so fiercely so So fast. In the words of TSwift have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years.
He was my 1st and the only date on match.com.I still remember sitting at my dining room table with my roommates, midnight after our 1st date. the words I'm done he is my one poured out of my mouth. And to be honest I'd given up the thought of there being a one. After years of heartbreak, self hate, and thinking I wasn't enough for myself, how is someone else gonna love me?
How was I gonna open up again and allow someone else to know me? to know all of my pain, all of my heart, all of my imperfections, and not only to love it but to cherish it.
I am not sure what it was that night. if it was the fact that we connected because of deaths of siblings, or if it was our grief and our sadness that found a common ground and each other.
In the next few weeks we moved in, we looked at engagement rings, we met each others family and friends. within the year we were engaged, the next month we were pregnant with our 1st daughter.
We married in September and had our first daughter in November. yall that labor was the most intense thing we had ever been through. I remember moments after her birth feeling this connection to my husband I had never imagined….that's a whole other post though! depression quickly followed after her birth with separation anxiety from my husband, and a baby with what doctors called "colic", I called it being pushed to the brink of insanity every single day…. it was rough.
the moment came where, I thought, we're done. I didn't I think we're a one and done family, yet I couldn't imagine doing that again. the strain that a newborn puts on your marriage are….. there are no words. I've always wanted 4 kids but have 1 child with colic, and as new parents, in a new marriage, who barely know each other, you'll rethink things.
little did we know as we were saying this statement I was already pregnant. That same weekend I sold all of our baby stuff and what didn't sell I donated to the city mission……. like all of it! I was serious we were done having babies!!! this was gonna be our time.
And then after my 29th birthday, I found out I was pregnant with our second daughter….. right before I was leaving for Mexico. The moment I found out I was pregnant with V, our lives changed fast. I was so sick all the time, I required surgery, I was in case of studies for zika. all of these things were going on, as hard as it all was, I was not prepared for what was to come. you can't prepare for that.
After 42 weeks I went in to be induced. already dilated. I had healing labor. I labored moving around. worked through it with our birth team. and as I delivered an en caul baby, my husband caught a baby that couldn't breathe, she was blue. she was floppy. the polarity of that situation still rocks me to my core. I was healing and he was breaking….. that shit rocks your marriage.
At that moment when she came out, I switched off my marriage and turned on fierce motherhood. There's a picture…. (scroll down a little bit that you can see of the moment that happened. Its a raw image of emotion you can describe well enough) I literally haven't even delivered the placenta yet and I'm staring across the Room at my child not breathing… seeing them trying to get her to come back it's the scariest you'll shit you will ever go through.
I didn't know how to do it both. I didn't know how to be a wife and to be a mom to 2 kids .1 that had a syndrome that we had no idea about. No one knew what it was and for that year I went into fierce motherhood. everything was about making sure Kensie was OK from all of the craziness she saw it, and making sure Varick stayed alive. all while trying to defend myself from being told I was crazy. that it was in my head.
wanna know the most f*cked up part?
I didn't realize until the past year how much trauma we had. I didn't even identify it as trauma. here's the thing when you're in it, you don't realize it's trauma, you think it's normal. It wasn't until Kensie's therapist suggested with go to marriage counseling to work through our trauma did I think of it in that way.
I common theme we talk about is how I want to be desired. how I now want to be more than just a mom to my kids, I want to be a wife to my husband. because for so long I only knew how to do the fierce mama warrior thing, we struggle with this. we are very blessed to have a very helping extended family, and about once a month we can usually snag an evening together. our therapist is having us explore how to just be with each other. how to be in the calm. how to be a husband and wife. standing in the calm with someone after only knowing storms is beyond uncomfortable.
Last Friday night that we had a night without our children. just sitting there the pressure to be extravagant, todo grand things, is heavy. because for so long this, our marriage, was put on the back burner.
gosh, guys, I love him so much. the trauma we went through together was so different. We felt things differently. we saw things differently. we dealt with things differently. so now trying to move forward through that, it's not easy.
Friday we sat on the couch for literally for an hour and tried to figure out something to do. both of us were scared to say that all we wanted to do was just sit with each other. was to get immersed in a show it together. to do something together, whether that's to talk, to play a game, to do something at home.
because being home is where we haven't had a marriage. my husband as much as he's an introvert, loves to go out to dinner, go listen to music out, and this homegirl she's an actual extrovert on the Internet…... but I love a night in, some clean pajamas, a clean house! O it makes my soul so happy!!!!!
something that night made me say what I wanted. instead of doing something that I didn't want to. I simply made the statement, I would just love to be home with you.
its funny...when it comes to parenthood you kind of make these choices. is it something I could do with the kids or not do with the kids? and sitting in a clean house together, in silence while talking, is not something you can do with the kids. but going out to eat or going to listen to loud music. yall my kids love that!
let me just tell you how magnificent it was, O and I should also say that he was totally on board for this but he didn't want to hurt my feelings by saying he just wanted to stay home either. we constantly are scared of hurting each other because we've been through so much. so often we stay silent about what we really want. so pushing past that fear and being open with each other is huge. this picture is our grand miraculous over the top date night comfy sweats a great show……(by the way have I watched Ballers it's amazing) and in bed at 9:00 p.m. with each other.
friends my message to you is to:
Have the strength to know what you need. Have the strength to speak up for what you need. have the strength to realize it's not always going to be what everyone else wants. but also know that it could be what that other person is thinking, yet they're too scared to talk about it.
have strength. have strength in the storm. and have strengthened the calm. know that you will get through this whether it's healing from the trauma Or just being OK in the aftermath.
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