Mojo Mom at a Crossroads

I have thought a lot about how to tell you that my life has gone through major upheavals this year, putting me at a true crossroads, professionally, personally, and spiritually. Over Thanksgiving weekend, I thought about how this post will be necessarily imperfect, and about how I both wanted to write it and desperately did not want to write it. But you deserve an update, so it is time to let you know what has been going on with me.

My life started to change last spring when my father got sick and I was in the middle of a caregiving crisis with him. As the only child of divorced parents, a lot of responsibility fell on my shoulders. At that point I had just launched the new book Courageous Parents, Confident Kids–I literally sent in the book to publish on the afternoon of March 26, and that evening he showed signs of being ill. That crisis snowballed through the spring and early summer, and I slowed down the blog to try to take a little bit of time off to catch my breath, hoping that things would get back to normal in the fall.

Which was not to be. Because as hard as my Dad’s crisis was, it turned out I hadn’t seen anything yet. When I finally got a very brief breather in late July after downsizing his house and moving Dad, I went on a much anticipated two-week vacation with my Mom’s side of the family. We had a wonderful ten days together to start out–most of the time it was just me, my Mom, and her three sisters and their husbands, as the larger crowd hadn’t arrived yet, including my husband and daughter. Then just as the whole crowd arrived and “Family Week” got underway, my Mom got very ill, very suddenly. She walked three miles in the woods one day and was in the emergency room the next. We thought she had experienced a stroke, but it turned out that she had brain tumors that had seemingly materialized out of the blue. She had coexisted with cancer for many years with successful treatments and close monitoring, but now new aggressive metastases had developed. What was really surprising was that she could have had this crisis develop to such a serious point with few if any symptoms. In a way I think that points to her strength and resilience.

So the next seven weeks turned into a journey that I hope I will never forget, but I you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t share it in detail here. In brief, after several days in the ICU, where she stabilized really well, we were able to travel back home to North Carolina, and care for her at our home for three weeks. We tried the best treatments available at UNC, but then ultimately had to accept the reality that this time, there would be no cure. Mom went on hospice care which allowed her to have a peaceful and pain-free final month, and she died her own home at the end of September, after time surrounded by family.

The past two months have been surreal and so painful. Over the years I had grappled with Mom’s illnesses. Even though she was an incredible trouper and bounced back many times from adversity, we had enough medical challenges to make me think about her vulnerability. The best way I can describe how I felt about her is that we were so close that it felt like her very existence was a precondition for my happiness. We spent a lot of time together, living in the same town for the past 10 years. So I talked to her and saw her almost every day. Even if I didn’t see her on a given day, I knew she was nearby. Our lives were interwoven together in ways that I was aware of but that were almost impossible to totally appreciate until she was gone–though I did my best to remember not to ever take her for granted. She was Mojo Grannie and she helped me be Mojo Mom, as I acknowledged back in 2005 when I wrote “Mojo Grannie is the glue that holds everything together.” I knew that her support was part of what made my career possible, reaching out to connect with other mothers, even when my daughter was very young.

Now it almost feels like I am starting a new life–not one that I am ready to embrace yet. It still feels wrong to go on with out her. But I can see rays of light and I know there is a path forward even if I can only see two feet ahead of me right now. I fully appreciate that I am incredibly fortunate to have had 42 years of excellent mothering. I still needed my Mom, a lot, but I at the end I was able to tell her in all honesty that she had taught us what we needed to know to keep going. And I have to remind myself that I will never be a motherless daughter because of her care and the deep bond we have shared.

But professionally as well as personally, I really am at a crossroads. I see motherhood differently now that my daughter is growing up into the middle school years. That feels different in ways that I will write about more another time. The short answer is that my identity is not based on being a mother in the way that it once was. People have always told me that middle schoolers still need their parents as much as younger kids, sometimes even more so, but it does feel like a different kind of “needing” as tweens really start to develop their own lives.

The good news is, I have adjusted to the ways that motherhood is evolving in my life, and I have explored different aspects of being Amy, including the important facet of being Mojo Mom.

I stand my the advice I have given as Mojo Mom, and I and have even come to appreciate some of it even more, especially the idea that you have to take care of yourself and do whatever it takes to make some time for your own interests, whether that is a paid career or other pursuits. In fact I’d say you have to build your priorities from the ground up around that. Not because it’s more important than your children, but because you’ll most likely have to fight to keep that time and space. Not necessarily fight against the people in your life, but fight other demands from taking over every available moment–because when “something has to give,” it’s all too often coming out of the time of a caregiving woman’s own best-laid plans. If you don’t have groundwork and a support network in place before a crisis hits, you can really go over the edge into deep trouble. I realize that I am particularly fortunate to be a self-employed author because I was able to take time off and come back. Many jobs would not have been as forgiving, which would have deepened the crisis–and also calls out for sane family-leave policies that support all family caregivers.

My experience has shown me that being a new mother is very challenging, but life can throw curveballs that are harder than being a new Mom. I say that with all due respect because I know the early weeks and months are HARD and I don’t mean to minimize that. But it should get more manageable over time. You need to make it a priority to make it manageable, because there is no guarantee that other crises won’t come down the road to pile on top of what you are already juggling.

I wish I could say that more eloquently, and maybe I will over time. But for now that’s the unfiltered truth, and my new starting point.

Thank you for your support, for caring, for commenting and gently prodding me to keep blogging! It helps more than you can know. Thanks for hanging in there with me. Pretty soon I hope to be able to share some news with you about what happens next.