I have found the past few days challenging. Bean, I think, is teething (I know, it’s ongoing). She has a third tooth breaking through on top, and I think a feel a fourth just under the gum. She’s quickly tired and more fussy, and exceptionally clingy with me. Part of the challenge is the emotional drain, especially since her ego and will are strengthening; as I’ve said before, I can see the toddler in her. I can see how the clash of wills will arise. The other part of the challenge is that she’s getting physically bigger, stronger, and heavier. My arms have been getting stronger, but they do feel the strain. So does my back.<\/p>\n
Then there’s the other hazard of motherhood: the chink in the armor that exposes the heart. On NPR this morning I heard a snippet from Story Corps<\/a>. It was a mother recalling the time<\/a> when her 10-year old son, who went to watch a sunset from a street corner, was killed by a reckless driver. As she described what she did and felt as she became aware that her son was the focus of the accident scene, and as she described how surprised she was that she survived the loss (because she felt the grief so terribly), and as she described the kind of kid he was, my heart broke and tears poured out. I was sitting on the floor with Bean playing and there was no guard, no warning. I scooped her up and hugged her.<\/p>\n Forget the concept of the “chink in the armor”; there is no armor at all. I just manage, most of the time, to ignore this fact by redirecting my thoughts whenever I’m tempted to think about what it would feel like if something bad happened to Bean or if I lost her. Motherhood is a practice of denial — denial of the ego, of the temptation to torture oneself with terrible fantasies. But first you must be in the vulnerable place of exposure. I wasn’t able to conceive this until I arrived at motherhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have found the past few days challenging. Bean, I think, is teething (I know, it’s ongoing). She has a third tooth breaking through on top, and I think a feel a fourth just under the gum. She’s quickly tired and more fussy, and exceptionally clingy with me. Part of the challenge is the emotional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,34,16,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","category-motherhood","category-nature","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2349"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13747,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions\/13747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}