Motherhood is one of the hardest jobs to do.  Having a young life dependent on your every waking move is scarier than any other responsibility.  My insecurities during the early years of my journey as a mother, were sometimes the most debilitating experiences ever.  After all I had been through as a child, how could I now be a mother?  How I made it through is a miracle in it of itself.  I was a dysfunctional functioning mother to say the least.  The following entry is a look into my early years of motherhood.  Can you relate to me?   

How does someone successfully begin the journey of motherhood after they were severely sexually and physically abused as a child?  There was no way I could, love, protect and emotionally connect to a new life like this.  Who was my example of motherhood that I could successfully aim for?  My mother, though loving, was not around much because she worked all the time.  She was the bread winner of the home and was unable to prevent or help rescue me from my most painful moments growing up.  During the worst parts of my childhood she was gone, and in some cases for days, because of her job as a live in nanny.  She was unable to grasp that she was my everything and that with her around I felt safe.  I didn’t know what to do to protect my child?

I felt vulnerable, exposed and unsafe more moments, during my childhood years, than any other time in my life.  I was only three years old when my mother made the decision to move from Jamaica to America.  When a three year old leaves, not only her home, but her family (my brother and father), as well as her country, it makes her feel uneasy, uncertain and scared.  Everything was new and my mom was the one constant I had, until she began her new job.  We connected with family members in America and I stayed with them while my mother worked to start a new life here in our new home…without me.  Her new apartment could not accommodate me, so I was now left with nothing familiar to anchor me to this new life of change.

She would come to visit me as often as she could, but now 5 years of age and the victim of severe sexual abuse at the hands of one of my family members—unknown to my mother—I was suffering with extreme separation anxiety and much more.  I fought with my aunt and cousins on purpose in hopes that my mother would take me with her when her visits needed to come to an end.  I screamed as if I was being tortured, well because I was.  She was both the breath in my lungs and the next breath I would take at the same time.

In pure desperation I would block the door, hold on to the doorknob and when it was time to hug her good-bye, I had no plans on releasing my grip; they had to peal me off of her.  If she only knew what I was going to face that night and the days to come.  I know for certain if she knew what was really going on, she would have brought me with her.  I was left to face my abuser in secret and the overwhelming feelings of being abandoned.

Nineteen years ago, as I hunched over, I bore my back to the anesthesiologist—so I could take my epidural before I went into labor—I thought to myself, “you’ll never be a good mother”,  “You’ll never protect him”, “He will be just as broken as you are”,  “How stupid were you?  You think this is a game?”, “You are about to ruin a life the same way your parents ruined yours.”  The needle went into my back between contractions and I felt the cold medicine go through the different parts of spine.  Within a matter of minutes my body went numb but my mind was not—my protruding stomach was a reminder that life as I knew it was over.  I was just setting myself up to fail like others around me.

I have to be honest during the 9 months of pregnancy, it hadn’t hit me that a human was going to come out of me.  I was going to duplicate myself?  UGGHH…what was I thinking?  I was going to force this child to face this cruel world as I had.  All this time I talked about the movement in my stomach and labeled it a baby, but it was just my growing fear and anxiety that was becoming more visible to everyone around me, so I thought.  When I looked at my belly in the mirror, all I saw was the insecurity inn me that I could no longer hide.

A few tears rolled down my eyes as my husband and I settled ourselves into the hospital for my 18^th hour of labor.   I finally felt the effects of the drugs and was numb as I slept as long as I could.  After waking up on and off for another 18 hours I noticing that the pain was no longer going away and apparently it was time. It was time to be a mother and it was not going to be easy.  There was no turning back.  There was no changing my mind.  I was going to either make the mistakes of my parents or go in the very opposite direction.

It was time!!!  It has been said that a woman’s life is hanging on a thread when giving birth.  They were not exaggerating.  I was on my back trying to bare the pain of my body being ripped apart from the inside out.  I was rushed to the delivery room and as the labor pains were tearing me apart, I pushed through my fears, pain, and brokenness and eventually laid my eyes on the human who would change my life forever.  The nurses were tending to him and it hit me, with him now here I was given the title of mother and no one could take it away.  But as tears distorted my vision, I was able to look across the room as his arms were flaring and his small voice was being heard for the first time.  I was experiencing separation anxiety for the first time but in the reverse.  I wanted him near me, I wanted him with me, he needed me.

Real fear hit me two days later where I gained a new definition of “helpless”.  I was being wheeled out of the hospital with my baby in my arms as the sun shone on my face.  The world seemed bigger and more dangerous than I remembered.  Panic filled my chest as I realized that I needed to put him in this cold car seat; I needed to sit next to him in the backseat.  As my husband got on the road, cars were speeding by, not caring about what I was feeling or about how precious our cargo was.  Joseph, that’s what we named him, started crying and the anxiety within me rose even higher.  He was oblivious to this new world, the sounds and all he saw.

When our rinky dink car finally made it to the driveway, I scooped him up quickly just to silence the desperation in his poor soul and my own breaking heart; I could not explain how insecure, scared, and unqualified I felt in those few moments.  I know, I know, every mother feels that way when it’s their first child, but I was embarking on one of the most important roles of my life with no idea of what to do.  God help me.

Nineteen years later, I look back at myself and understand my fears but I question my doubt.  I knew the Lord and saw how He delivered me from my past so why did I doubt Him in this?  If I could talk to myself, I would say, “You, alone, will never be enough for him.  As long as you just keep relying on who you are and what you have to offer, you will fail him every time.  Put him in God’s hands, trust Him with yours son as you trusted Him with you.  Let God show you how he parents his children.  He’s never abandoned them, none of his children have ever been in need, begging for bread.  He is going to show you exactly how to function even in your own dysfunction.”   

Unfortunately I did not have my older self to tell me all this.  I carried all kinds of fear and doubt with me in the days that followed, believing that I would fail as a mom.  This is only the beginning, so come back again as we go further into my journey as a dysfunctional functional mom.