It was one of my lowest moments as a single mom.
“IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! YOU HAVE TO BE NICE TO ME!!!” I scream at my 3-year-old. Her whining for another episode of Bluey shredded my last nerve, and now I’ve lost it.
Cheeks wet with tears and hot with shame, I take shaky deep breaths trying to calm myself enough to apologize for yelling at her. She’s crying, terrified of my rage, and I reach out to gather her into my arms. It’s the morning of my 44th birthday, and she has been alternating between whining and responding to everything I say with a petulant “no!” since she woke me up at 6:45 a.m. That was after waking me up once before at 3:45 a.m. with a wet bed; her babysitter from the night before had forgotten to put on her Pull-Ups.
It’s not that I don’t recognize how ridiculous it is to yell at a 3-year-old for being a 3-year-old just because it’s my birthday and she’s the only one here. She doesn’t know what this means, really. To her, birthdays are parties with pizza and cupcakes. I’ve already explained to her that we’re doing none of that, so in her mind, today is just an ordinary day. I went out to celebrate last night with friends, and we’ll have dinner together with other friends tomorrow, so I didn’t feel the need to plan something for today. Until I woke up and had to ask my toddler to sing “Happy Birthday” to me.
I seldom feel sorry for myself for being a single mother. I chose this for myself when I got sick of waiting for the “right” man to come along. I knew I wanted to be a mom, so I became one, and honestly, I relish the independence and control over decision-making. But in this moment, I feel the sharp pang of the absence of another grown-up; someone who could help my daughter prepare for this day by building excitement, teaching her that on people’s birthdays we make them feel special. Someone to help her make a macaroni card and an inedible breakfast in bed, to take her shopping for a present I’ll never use but will also never throw away because it’s from her. I don’t know why I expected her to know anything about this without anyone else here to teach her, but at this moment I resent the fact that I am the only one who can teach her if I want these particular needs fulfilled.
Just yesterday, I met one of my closest friends Celeste for an early birthday lunch at Lox & Schmear, the local queer-owned bagel place in her neighborhood of Toronto. Telling her about the birthday incident over our bagels stacked with cream cheese, lox, capers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and sprouts, we launched into a whole discussion on motherhood and identity. I walked in feeling profoundly “meh”—a semi-permanent state given the extra fiery dumpster the world has become lately—but being with Celeste softened my mood. She’s a sister at this point after almost two decades of close friendship beginning at our yoga teacher training in our 20s, and she had a head start on me when it came to having babies. Even though she’s married, and has more naturally-occurring serotonin, she gets the dark humor of depression combined with perimenopause and the madness that is motherhood like almost no one else I know.
“I guess, at this point in my life, I’m fine not mattering. It’s not about me,” she said. Since childhood, Celeste has been subsuming her own needs, tiptoeing as she had to around volatile parents. Even though this perspective was born as a coping mechanism, it strikes me now as at least somewhat healthy, though most people in the mental health world might disagree. Chasity Holcomb, a therapist and coach for working moms I follow online, has created a whole business out of helping women recreate their identities after having kids. She started her podcast Momfully You, as she puts it, “to help with the self-sacrificing culture that many mothers fall prey to. This idea that you must absolutely sacrifice your life in order to mother well.” But Celeste doesn’t put her needs second because she thinks it makes her a better mom; it’s just easier than fighting for priority.
“My acupuncturist has tried to talk to me about submitting to this period of my life, just giving myself over to the project of being a mother,” I tell her.
“And how did that go?” she asks, eyebrow raised. She knows me well enough to know, not well. Before having my daughter, my calendar was full, and I loved it: Friday dinners with friends, pop-up choir on Tuesdays, near-daily workout routines, travel for work, self-development courses on weekends… I’ve never been one to hunker down and focus on one thing.
When I cried to my acupuncturist—the elderly Chinese woman who has seen me through chronic hives, infertility, pregnancy, postpartum depression, and now the beginnings of perimenopause—about how I never have time for myself, she tried to talk me into surrendering to being a mom first and foremost in these first few years. If I accepted that this is the way it is, I’d be happier, she said. I sobbed.
Even though I could see the wisdom of giving up the fight for even a small scrap of my own identity, of saving myself the energy it takes to try to prioritize my own needs amongst the sea of responsibilities that is my life, the idea of surrendering myself, my self, was inconceivable. She was inviting me to stop swimming upstream and let myself be carried by the current for a while. I felt like if I did that, I’d drown, or at the very least, forget how to swim. We argued, I cried more. “Get on the table,” she said, pointing kindly but sternly. “Let it out. Cry harder.” I cried through the insertion of the needles, my tears subsiding only minutes later as their effect took hold and my deep breaths took over.
This fight for one’s own needs and sense of self outside the bounds of motherhood is nothing new, nor particular to me or even single motherhood in general. For some mothers, including Celeste, it’s not an issue. Don’t have time for much outside of managing a household of tiny humans? Only talk to your friends in 30-second increments at the playground if you can miraculously align schedules? Too exhausted to go out past sundown, or unwilling to pay someone just to have a few hours alone? It is what it is. They’ll only be this small for so long, and besides, this small life is beautiful in its own way.
I sometimes catch myself judging these women for letting their entire selves be consumed by their roles as mothers. But is it really better to keep up the fight if it takes up so much energy? There is no answer, only different shades of the age-old question: Can you both be a mother and have your own life?
We spend the rest of my birthday like we would any Saturday: ballet lessons, lunch, quiet time, a playdate at the Science Center, dinner, and bedtime. The nap I get during quiet time and the blessed reprieve while my daughter plays independently are my only breaks from my terrible, no good, very bad mood. Over text, I’ve told my parents and brother about the day and asked their support to help my daughter on my next birthday. Maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to have my needs met without it being a fight; maybe I just have to ask. My life will never look the way it did in my 30s—pre-pandemic, pre-baby—again, and maybe that’s OK. This is an evolution, not a death.
By bedtime, I am still crying. Something inside me—literally inside, as in a potent hormonal and chemical soup of depression and perimenopausal swings—has unleashed a stream of tears that will only be stopped by sleep. My cheeks are wet as I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug, The Very Busy Spider, for the hundredth time. I ask my daughter for a hug. She does not understand what’s happening to me, why I’ve been crying and cranky all day, but a hug is something she knows how to give. And it’s enough.
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