Daily Truth May 8, 2022
We need to change the narrative of motherhood.
I spent my first Mother’s Day at my daughter’s grave. I remember the day vividly, as if it was yesterday, not twenty years ago. We lived in Texas at the time. We were in our late twenties, my husband working gruesome hours as a fellow in Interventional Radiology and I was building a career in the financial industry, for some unknown reason. That morning when we woke, we found ourselves at a loss for what to do with the day. It was my first time being a mother, but I didn’t have a child to celebrate with. It felt odd to celebrate in the typical fashion. Brunch, a few mimosas and a few chores around the house being taken care of for me wasn’t going to cut it. The thought of going to a restaurant filled with moms in bright, spring colors, happily spending time with the little humans they either created or were raising would be much too painful. Inevitably, a server would wish me happy mother’s day, unknowingly causing a rush of panic and tears, as I searched my mind for how I would answer the next question, “how many kids do you have?” My answer wasn’t as simple as throwing out a number. My answer meant unleashing an awkward exchange. Sometimes I had the energy to tell people that yes, I am a mom but my daughter had died. Other times, I just stayed home. Saying none wasn’t an option. It was a denial of my daughter and I wasn’t willing to disrespect her that way.
We laid in bed that morning, deciding how much energy we had to engage with the world on a day like today. It felt wrong to deny this was my first Mother’s Day as a mom. But, it also felt overwhelming to expose ourselves to the traditions of the day. I wanted to be close to my daughter. She died on April 17th, so by the time Mother’s Day rolled around, only a few weeks had passed. The dirt on her gravesite wasn’t settled yet and her absence was crushing. The only way I felt close to her was to go to the cemetery. So we opted to bring the quiet celebration there.
We packed up brunch items, and headed to Morton’s Cemetery. An old civil war cemetery with graves dating back to the early 1800’s. We laid out a blanket, shed many, many tears and found some peace in the astoundingly beautiful setting. There was always something comforting about her being buried there. As if she was somehow taken care of by those elders, who have been there for nearly two centuries.
Stories like mine make you stop and think about what it really means to be a mother. The narrative around motherhood is shifting, and not in a positive direction.
There was a time when motherhood was portrayed as the sole purpose of a woman’s life. Becoming a mother was the end game. Being a mother consisted of blissful oogling over fussy infants, pushing your child on a swing, helping with school projects and setting up husbands and children for life outside the home. If you didn’t get this sort of reward from being a mother, you best not say it out loud. Any woman wanting anything beyond caring for her children was viewed as selfish. Thank goodness that story of motherhood was dismantled. (As someone who wanted to poke my own eyes out if I had to spend more than a hour at a park, I am in full support of having a life outside of parenting.)
As women started to pursue careers and interests beyond the sole duty of parenting, they were able to show their children that their lives had meaning beyond their role as a parent. They had the right to chase their own dreams and be defined by accomplishments outside of raising a family. This was undoubtedly progress for women. I would go so far as to say this was progress for all of humanity. When individuals are free to express themselves in ways beyond societal dictated roles, everybody benefits. When we are working towards what is most fulfilling, we become better people and in turn, lend ourselves to creating a better world.
But, pursuing our own interests led to a harsh reality. Having a career and giving adequate time, attention and care to children proved to be extremely difficult. As a full-time writer, CEO of Copow Foods, podcaster, entrepreneur currently working on two new ventures, a wife and a mom of a teenager, I can speak definitively on how difficult this is to juggle. So began the era of women claiming that raising kids was the hardest job on earth. Which it is quite difficult, but there was a saga being portrayed as if the current generation was the only group of women ever to have raised children. Women now needed support groups, online chat rooms and countless books on how to raise a child. While support and sharing the duties within a family are a must, women were behaving as if motherhood was a journey comparable to Sacagawea’s trek to explore the American West.
I believe this attempt at "having it all” was the start of the narrative that being a mom is just “too much work.”
If women said out loud that they were struggling to make all of this happen, they were labeled as weak. If they made the radical choice to ditch their career in favor of full-time parenting, they were no longer part of the “empowered women” team. They were now women without a purpose. In a pursuit to chase dreams and careers, kids got kicked to the wayside. Instead of facing the fact that having a career is a lot of work, we pushed the blame onto kids. Kids became a burden and we told young women that if they wanted to be fulfilled, they better not have children. We went from the false narrative that having kids was all a woman needed to be happy, to the equally fictitious story that kids need only fit into your life, if and when it is optimal for you.
We began telling young women that the only way to be powerful was by pursuing a career. To bulldoze their way into a male dominated world and take up every trait we claimed to find unappealing in our male counterparts. Women were entitled to have sex with whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Although they claimed to find this to be hurtful and piggish in men, for some unexplainable reason, women celebrated promiscuity as power. Like men, if sex resulted in pregnancy, women had the same rights as men to just walk away. Or so they were told. Walking away from a pregnancy isn’t possible, so abortion became the solution women sold to one another. Remember, kids are a burden and if they don’t fit into your “life plan,” no problem. Abort them, simple as that. Except, it isn’t as simple as that.
In women’s pursuit of equality, we brought about a lot of unintended consequences. Instead of equality, we led ourselves into a great deal of destructive behavior. Take drinking for instance (again, as someone recovered from alcohol use disorder, I have first hand knowledge to draw from). If women are in the workplace, they have just as much right to drink with coworkers as men do. But, just like our consequences of pregnancy aren’t as simple as men’s, it turns out neither is drinking. In the time period from 1997-2014 alcohol related deaths in women rose by 85%. Women also suffer more severe consequences than men as a result of alcohol misuse. Liver damage, heart disease and brain damage develop more quickly in women than they do men.
I’m afraid that in our attempt to empower ourselves, we lost connection to what makes us the most powerful species on earth. Our ability to create another human. Women’s power lies in our ability to create life. While men play an obvious role, women are the only vessel in which a new life can grow. But, instead of telling this story, we are encouraging women to step away from the beauty of motherhood. Step away from what makes you powerful, for something that makes you less powerful. This also assumes that power is what makes you happy, which is not true.
We are selling lies to young women. The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) completed a survey that shows over 50% of women are childless by the time they reach age 30. While there are certainly some women who will live a fulfilling life without children, it is preposterous to think half of all women will be content living their life without fulfilling the role of motherhood. They are being told a tale that their careers are more important than their natural desire to have a child. It is easy for them to disconnect from their maternal instinct when they hear nothing but war stories and complaints about how hard being a mom is. Of course they are shying away from motherhood when all they hear is how children are little more than one more thing to have to take care of, in an already demanding world.
I think it’s about time we start telling the whole story of motherhood. Yes, it is an overwhelming task to be responsible for another human. It is full of unknowns, trial and error and mistakes. Your heart will be torn out and you will feel out of control at times. You will feel exhausted some days and may even wonder why you chose to have children at all. They will push you to your limits and you will sacrifice part of yourself for their needs. But, you will also fill your life with something which nothing else can compare.
When asked how many children I have, I now confidently answer two. I am the mother of Kathryn Rachel Fatz, who I buried two decades ago. I am also the mother of Scarlett Zhi Kathryn Fatz, who was given life by a woman I will never know. I think I have earned the right to speak about what it means to be a mother.
My daughter had questions for me this week after all the news of the Roe v. Wade leak. It was a welcome opportunity for me to share with her what it means to be an empowered woman and what it means to be a mom. I told her I am empowered by the gift of giving life, that only women possess. The true power of being a woman is in creating a child, not killing a child. While the legal workings of abortion are where most people focus their attention, it would be much more beneficial if we focused on the humanity of the subject. Maybe if we told the whole story of motherhood, we wouldn’t have over 2300 abortions performed each day in this country. The legalities are complex but the humanity is not.
I talked about what true support of another woman means. Is it to encourage her to end the life of her child, or to help her raise it? My daughter’s birth mother is the only reason my daughter exists. Rather than putting a pink pussy hat on my head or storming the steps of the Supreme Court, I am living the ultimate act of support. I would not be a mother to a living child without another woman making the ultimate in selfless decisions. Scarlett’s birth mother, like me, gave birth to a child she would never raise. We owe a lot to one another. That is what support for another woman looks like.
We ended our talk with the most important part of what it means to be a mom. Helping your child be all that they can be. If you take the job seriously and fulfill your role carefully, you can create a relationship with your child like no other.
This is the true story of motherhood.
Beautiful & Loving Truth 🌹♥️🕊