Motherhood is one of the hardest jobs to do; having a life depend on your every waking move is scarier than can be expressed. My insecurities in the beginning years of my journey was sometimes the most debilitating experience ever. How I got through is a miracle in it of itself. I was a dysfunctional functioning mother to say the least. The following entry is a flashback of my early years of motherhood. Can you relate to me?

Pain ripped through my body as I carefully undressed to finally take a shower. I ached all over as I felt like my insides were going to fall to the ground and my legs were barely working. My body was working hard to recover from my intense delivery with my son.  It caused rips in my body and the recovery had a new set of agony for me. I became sleep deprived, emotionally spent and postpartum depression began to settle in. Depression was the last thing I needed with everything else I was going through.

I turned on the shower and felt sadness flood over me, for what reason, I don’t know. Hearing the water running, seeing the steam, and being by myself gave me such an over exaggerated feeling of loneliness. I stepped into the hot steaming shower and a new familiar sound came; it was Joey, my baby son, crying…again. Sam has it, I said to myself. He has to have it. He’s the father, right? He has to be able to sooth his own son for 10 minutes. I started crying along with Joey when Sam knocked on the bathroom door letting me know that he was crying. Why would he have to tell me that? Anyone who was in a one-mile radius could hear that he was crying.

Where is this child’s parents? That is all I kept wondering as it went into a week of me being a mom of this very clingy newborn. I know that statistic’s claim that a newborn can’t form bonds with a parent until later on, but Joey did not know that. Oh my goodness, he wouldn’t stop crying if I was not holding him or at least somewhere near him. I couldn’t take a shower, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom without him crying. He found comfort in my voice, my touch and he knew the difference, you couldn’t fool him, and he was not satisfied till he got what he wanted, me. It was slowly settling in that I was not babysitting someone else’s child. He depended on me for everything and even though someone else had what he needed; he did not want it from them.

My mom was coming over to help me and there was a sense of relief in my heart. That relief turned to annoyance as her time being with me was to educate me on how to physically take care of Joey. She had her whole lesson plan on educating me on how to change his diapers—yet I had been doing it for a week. She had plans on teaching me how to swaddle him even though he clearly was sweating through the blankets and how to properly nurse him. Under what moon and stars did she think I did not know how to do these things…nursing was new—I’ll give her that. I was forced to care for my newborn brother when I was at the age of seven years old.

My mother and father were immigrants to America from Jamaica West Indies. My father joined my mother when I was five years old and it was a struggle to find work and a place to live. My mom landed a job as a nanny in the richest part of Manhattan, so after giving birth to my younger brother, she had to get back to work as soon as possible. Her long tiresome day started at 5, maybe 4 in the morning to get ready, which also included making my lunch and having my brother’s baby bag ready for the day. After getting ready, instead of leaving him with my father to take care of, she placed my younger brother in the bed with me for me to watch over until my father woke up. My responsibilities continued when I got home after school, where I changed a good amount of diapers, fed and soothed my newborn brother. I was not the best at it. Sometimes the diaper was crooked, sometimes his bib was soaked because I didn’t realize the bottle was leaking and yes there was a time when I dropped him on the floor—he was a pretty big baby.

I learned the hard way how to do all the things she wanted to teach me now, and my anger was adding to all the other emotions that came along with having a crying newborn. I wanted her to hug me, to hold me and just help me to know that even though I felt inferior, she believed in me. I wanted her to tell me what she was feeling when she had my older brother. Did she feel this insecure? Did she have the answers? How did she get through? I really needed her support, not an instructor.

What I got instead was , “Hold his head”, “You need to feed him, he’s hungry”, “I think he has colic”, “You didn’t change his diaper right”, “Let me show you how to bath him”, “You can’t do it like that…” blah blah blah…

“AHHHHHHH!!!”, I finally screamed. “I don’t need you!” Did I really say that to her? Where did that come from? But how dare her tell me how to be a mother when she wasn’t there to show me? How could she talk to me about how to take care of a newborn when I helped raise one when I was 7 years old? She didn’t give birth to my son; she gave birth to my brother. Even though I knew that in her heart of hearts she was trying to be there for me in the way she thought she needed to be, I needed her there the way I needed her to be. She tried to take on a place in my life—now that she was a grandmother—but this new role just mirrored my own dysfunction. It mirrored what I did not have and what I wish happened differently. I spent so much time focusing on my father’s abuse that I never attended to my hidden resentment towards my mom. For the first time, in my anger, I realized my mother caused wounds in me that were left unattended.

“You’re telling me how to change a diaper when I was forced to learn at a young age. I don’t need you like that.” I hang my head in shame as I wondered how I could have told my mother that I didn’t need her. I looked over and saw Joey sleeping and the thought of this little guy saying he didn’t need me gave me a painful reality that he would not stay this small forever.

“I’m sorry Stacy. I just wanted to help. Being a mother is what I know. You don’t know what it’s like when your children don’t need you anymore. You don’t know what it’s like when I don’t have that anymore.” My heart hurt for her. I was starting a journey that she was finished with. She made mistakes. I’m going to make mistakes. How arrogant I was.

I looked at Joey and completely humbled, I said, “I do need you mom…but not the way you think I do. Your job is not over but it just looks different. You may not have done things perfect as a mother, but you now have the chance to be a wonderful grandmother.”

Nineteen years later I write this with pure remorse for my arrogance and unforgiveness. I made mistakes, big ones. I would like to say that I got it right, but I am actually writing this with puffy moist eyes because I got it wrong during this 19-year trip. I can say with confidence that even though I made a lot of mistakes, I would have made bigger ones if my mom did not love her grandchildren the way she did. If I could talk to myself during this time, I would tell myself that my mother will be the single most important person in my life. There will be things that I will be able to do effortlessly but the most important things that needed to be accomplished would take my mother partnering with me in prayer and perseverance. The power of a praying grandmother supersedes the tired, skewed, tunnel vision that comes along with being a new mom. But a grandmother who has walked the road you’ve walked can pray you through the traps, pitfalls and dark moments that you can’t see.

Little did I, and all of America, know that the most darkest moment was about happen in our country. How was I going to get through this scary moment as a dysfunctional functional mother?