Morse 1 More than “Mom”: A Memoir on Early Motherhood with a Critical Introduction by Michelle Nicole Morse A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah April 24th 2017 Approved ______________________________ Dr. Judy Elsley Committee Chair ______________________________ Dr. Siân Griffiths Committee Member ______________________________ Dr. Karen Marguerite Moloney Committee Member Morse 2 Table of Contents Learning How to Write About Motherhood Meaningfully...……………………..................................p.3-24 Song by Reba McEntire “Is There Life Out There?”………………………….………………………………………..p.25-26: More than “Mom”: A Memoir on Early Motherhood……………………………………..p.27-61 Introduction: My Breaking Point----------------------------------------27-31 1. The Influence of a Mother---------------------------------------------32-37 2. Expecting Paradise—Living the Reality-----------------------------38-42 3. Confronting Imperfection----------------------------------------------43-46 4. On Being a “Good” Mom—Whatever that Means--------------47-51 5. Guilt: The Curse that Keeps on Giving------------------------------52-53 6. Learning to Climb Mountains with Kids on My Back-----------54-61 Morse 3 Learning How to Write About Motherhood Meaningfully By Michelle Morse Introduction: Memoir, or autobiographical writing, is a slippery genre that has many forms, and no one seems to know exactly how to tell a person to reconstruct events from their life and how to shape those fragments into meaning that is accessible for readers. So I set out to the local book store, perused the internet, and begged other non-fiction writers for tips on reading materials that would relate to my project. The books that I selected reflect a mere sampling of what is available on the subject of autobiographical writing. I chose the following books because I felt that they would in some way or another help me with issues that come up with any writer who writes autobiography, such as, how to shape my memoir, how to use the right combination of scene, summary, and musing, how to approach ethical issues that occur when writing about close friends and family, how to write about motherhood, and so on. In the essay that follows, I will give a brief annotation of each text and detail how each piece influenced my approach to this memoir. Additionally, I will comment on how these texts overlap and how some failed to address certain issues. I will start with the mentor pieces first and then address the more technical texts. Morse 4 Clark Valentine, Lisa. Real Moms: Making It Up As We Go. Deseret Book, 2015. In the first book I will discuss, the author, Lisa Valentine Clark, expounds on a litany of issues that mothers face. For example, she discusses what it means to be a mom, why moms feel like they have to do everything, moms comparing themselves to other moms, what it means for moms to “enjoy” their kids, how being a mom is a balancing act of schedules, time, and attention, why moms make communities stronger, the lessons moms learn from raising their kids, phases of motherhood, the standards of motherhood that moms live by, and how at some point, moms will need to let go of their children and have something to do for themselves. The author did a great job covering a lot of the same issues that I deal with as a mother. She incorporates humor throughout and the entire text reeks of positivity. I underlined, circled, and starred many lines and whole paragraphs throughout the book with annotations like, “This is me.” Clearly, I can relate to a lot of what she said. There are a couple of quotes that resonated more with me than others in this book. The first is, Motherhood defies analogy and categorization because as prepared as we think we are, as motivated, well-intentioned, and dedicated, we never seem to be the kind of mother we set out to be. Motherhood changes us. It has us constantly adjusting for the unexpected. And it has a way of revealing the best and worst in us, which is a beautiful, humiliating way of life. Living on the edge. (58) In my own memoir, I too emphasize the fact that nothing could have changed me more than motherhood has and continues to do. I also argue that motherhood affords me a life-wringing experience in ways that nothing else could. It is, “living on the edge,” as she says, but it just doesn’t seem like it in the day-to-day realities of motherhood. Morse 5 Another, more humorous, but illustrating the need for recognition as a mother, at least for me, says, “Some of us suffer from disorders like ‘recovering perfectionist,’ or ‘recovering-overachiever- without-a-blue-ribbon-but-trying-to-figure-out-how-to-get-a-blue-ribbon-for-achievements- no-one-knows-how-to-quantify’” (9). This is one the primary reasons motherhood is so hard for me. There are no benchmarks for success or ways to tangibly measure progress or impact in motherhood. Those things come with hindsight, the passing of time, and when it’s too late to change how things played out. I liked this quote because it confirmed that I’m not the only one who feels like I need a pat on the back or a gold star for my daily efforts as a mom. It also made clear that I should be “recovering” from the plague of perfection and not still striving for it because hasn’t motherhood taught me by now that perfection doesn’t exist? Aside from the things in this book that gave my own experiences with motherhood validation, I noticed the negative issues were lightly skimmed. No specific examples were provided from her own experiences as a mother to illustrate the negative aspects of motherhood. It was sort of a bad-things- happen-in-motherhood-but-let’s-not-get-into-it-and-sugar-coat-with-generalizations, such as, “don’t judge other moms because it’s not helpful” (29). I think I would have liked her to acknowledge more fully that the struggles of motherhood can’t always be shooed away with a more positive attitude or a change in parenting style. I would have liked for her to illustrate more clearly, using examples from her own life, how she works through issues like not feeling good enough, or not having time to do what she wants to do. Her doing this would have been helpful to me in writing about my own struggles with motherhood. Instead, after reading this, I felt as though those hard things are something to be “overcome,” which isn’t true because many of the challenges of motherhood cannot be tucked away in some secret little black box as if they never happened. Morse 6 Overall this text was highly relatable, a “feel-good” kind of read about motherhood, but not exceptionally helpful in knowing how to talk about the unseemly parts of motherhood. I did learn a bit on how to shape experiences with motherhood based on her choices for shaping this memoir. She used creative title headings that illustrated the general idea of each chapter, she had commentary in the margins titled “Side Rant,” that allowed her to say what she had left out in the chapter, and each chapter had a clear focus or aspect of motherhood. It was very well-organized and clear throughout, which gave me a mental image of what I would like my memoir to look like as a finished product. Morse 7 Flynn, DeAnne. The Mother’s Mite: Why Even Our Smallest Efforts Matter. Deseret Book, 2011. This book was perhaps the least helpful text for reference on how to write about motherhood. It is actually more like an anthology of brief stories of “small things” that moms, in what I presume to be the LDS culture, have done for their kids. Each of the stories features a different mother whose story is told by the narrator. Some of these stories are told by the children of these mother’s, which serves to illustrate that even a mother’s smallest efforts make a big and lasting impact on her children. There are recipes included in this text, which isn’t surprising in an LDS book on motherhood, and there are also quotes from children, mothers, the bible, and even Abraham Lincoln at the end of each chapter. Like the previous book discussed, this book also features interior commentary within each chapter in little boxes titled, “The Offering,” which give definitions of what I suppose are “motherly” qualities, such as: trust, nurturing, thoughtfulness, etc. Although the book did not provide me any real insight into how to talk about my experiences with motherhood, it did make me feel good about my own efforts as a mother, which I assume is the purpose of this book: to encourage mothers and reaffirm that everything we do for our kids, especially the unmentioned or unnoticed things, make a lasting impact. So I suppose one could say this book did its job if that was the aim of the author. Morse 8 Erdrich, Loise. The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood. Harper Perennial, 1995. This book, as a mentor text, informed much of my writing in my memoir. Erdrich’s prose is poetic, full of imagery, and her use of metaphor to describe the challenges of motherhood was especially engaging. She spends a good amount of time discussing the challenges of motherhood, of losing herself in motherhood, and reclaiming herself and her right to do more than just “live.” She learns a lot about being a mother just by observing nature, hence the title. She watches a Blue Jay, one afternoon while she is writing, dance intricately to avoid being eaten by a hawk. The hawk, perplexed by the dance, eventually flies away and the Blue Jay lives to see another day. She notes that motherhood is much the same way. As mothers, we don’t cower in fear, but we dance in the face of adversity until we aren’t afraid anymore, until we become confident we can handle any unexpected challenge without letting it destroy us. Erdrich says, “Mothering is a subtle art whose rhythm we collect and learn, as much from one another as by instinct. Taking shape, we shape each other, with subtle pressures and sudden knocks. The challenges shape us, approvals refine, the wear and tear of small abrasions transform” (161). Her insight into motherhood is astounding. As I read this, I found myself jealous of her ability to see outside of herself, to see all that the role of “mother” encompasses. She does state in the beginning of the book that, “This book is a set of thoughts from one self to the other” (5). So I was somewhat comforted and hopeful that perhaps I too may have such insight into my role as a mom once I am able to look back on these early years of motherhood. The most poignant metaphor that has stayed with me since I read this last summer, is her metaphor of motherhood as a fence line, or at least that is how I interpreted it. Erdrich spent a lot of time outdoors in the mountains that surrounded her home. One day while hiking with her infant daughter strapped to her, she discovers a fence line with no trespassing signs. She returns Morse 9 to this fence line over the course of several weeks. She states, “From the moment I begin to see the fence as permeable, it is no longer a fence. I return time after time—partly to see if I can spot anyone on the other side, partly because I know I must trespass” (180). Reading this, I felt clarity spring into my heart, and I knew that for me, motherhood was this fence line she was talking about, and I knew the moment in my own experience with motherhood where I too discovered this fence line is permeable, which I discuss in the memoir. There is a freedom attained with this discovery, which she iterates perfectly, “So WHAT is wild? What is wilderness? What are dreams but an internal wilderness and what is desire but a wilderness of the soul?” We are the ones who ultimately decide whether or not to approach what we perceive as “wilderness.” We are the ones who decide what is available to us, just waiting to be discovered and experienced. When I became I mom, I convinced myself that my days of exploring these areas of “wilderness” in my life were over, but upon my discovery of the fence line that could be crossed, I realized the possibilities were still wide open to me. I had been the one holding myself back— not some rule book on what moms can and cannot do. I love this book for putting into words what I could not at the time as a younger mother. I relate with much of Erdrich’s own experiences as a mother and found myself a little less self-critical after reading this. My favorite insight Erdrich shares, which I will share here because it is what my new perspective on motherhood is about, is, “. . . the baby on my back grows. She’s bigger, surely heavier, so heavy I don’t think that I can move—except I do move. Maybe this is some strange and painful test of motherhood, or just brute macha” (198). I love that she talks about her newfound strength as a mother and recognizes how strong she is as a woman and as a person. This is something I have discovered in myself, a discovery that did not come easily, and Morse 10 something about the way she verbalizes this moment of self-actualization gave credence to my own fight to do the same. This book was the most helpful to me in terms of looking for ways to talk about the challenges of motherhood artfully and without coming across as whiny. I attempted to model her way of using nature as a metaphor for motherhood in a couple of places in my own memoir in talking about the Blue Mountains, the mountains of my childhood and what I learned about life and motherhood from them. I appreciate her skill with prose and found the reading of this book to be much more meaningful and thought-provoking because of it. She tackled tough issues without sugar-coating and didn’t try to generalize any of her experiences. I respect her honesty and tried to be honest in the re-telling of my own experiences in the memoir. The only downfall of this memoir is that it is not particularly organized. There are no chapter breaks, only small breaks mid-page throughout the book with italicized headings that indicate another subject is going to be addressed. Sometimes she spends so much time in scene, that as a reader, I lost focus and could not grasp the point she was trying to make for that section. Maybe she intended readers to come to their own conclusions and felt it best to not come right out and say what she meant by sharing that bit about her run-in with a wild boar or with a bobcat, for example. I am guilty of doing the same, getting lost in the storytelling, and losing focus of the meaning I intended for readers to grasp. This book also included some recipes, which I found surprising in a memoir, but is indicative of the nature of the freedom from form in this book. Overall, this was a great read on motherhood, on a much deeper and more “real” level than the previous two mentor texts. Morse 11 Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives: Reading Autobiography. University of Minnesota Press, 2010. This book is dedicated to defining autobiography and all of its minutia as if being examined under a microscope. It begins by dedicating 21 pages to the definition of autobiography and what sets it apart from other genres. It covers autobiographical subjects, acts, the history of autobiography, the time period in which autobiography became popular, the criticism available on this genre, and a “tool kit” of strategies for reading autobiography, which I found pretentious. Who needs a guide telling them how to interpret autobiographical writing? Can’t we all relate to others’ experiences on a human level, without the need for a scientific approach to doing so? In the appendix of this book, the authors, clearly ambitious, also include a list of 60 “genres” within life narratives and group and classroom projects to get others jump-started on autobiographical writing. This is a highly dense reading, but it provided meaningful insight into a craft that knows no bounds and seems to be ever-changing, undefinable, even. While writing my memoir, I have become frustrated with feeling as though I have to say it “all,” that I’m subconsciously leaving things out, that I won’t be able to make sense of my own experiences. This book discusses this very issue, which elicited from me a huge sigh of relief, because this is a genre that is not supposed to be easy. It’s not supposed to be a genre that can encompass a whole person’s life and end with a pretty bow on top. The authors state that, Readers often conceive of autobiographical narrators as telling unified stories of their lives, as creating or discovering coherent selves. But both the unified story and the coherent self are myths of identity. For there is no coherent ‘self’ that predates stories about identity, about ‘who’ one is. Nor is there a unified, stable, immutable self that can remember everything that has happened in the past. We Morse 12 are always fragmented in time, taking a particular or provisional perspective on the moving target of our pasts (61). I love this explanation of what autobiography is because it zeros in on the struggle to pull meaning from our histories and how to reconcile our past selves with our present selves. Somehow, having this issue put clearly into words, endorsed my own effort to recount my life in a cohesive manner. My takeaway from this book is that autobiography is a complex, multi-layered genre that has no clear answers about how it should be done and all it should encompass. If anything, my experience with this text validated my own struggle with writing about motherhood. I did not approach my memoir with technical precision, for example, I was not aware of which “narrative I” I was using as I wrote, which is something the authors spend 40 pages discussing in this book. Truthfully, this book was a bit too scientific for me, but I know there are people who appreciate knowing about the nuts and bolts of something as complex as autobiographical writing. Morse 13 Murray, Don. Crafting in Essay, Story, Poem a Life. Boynton/Cook, 1996. This book fits the bill for a “how-to write about your life” sort of book, full of methods and strategies for writing autobiographically. Murray begins the book with all the reasons that he writes, twelve precisely, and I found this helpful for my own writing because it caused me to question the reasons that I decided to undertake writing a memoir. His reasons for writing are not that different from my own. The four reasons that I felt most strongly coincided with my own are in his words: 1. I write to say I am. 2. I write to discover who I am. 3. I write what I’m most afraid of. 4. I write to share (2-6). I would like to share the phrase that I found the most meaningful from this particular section of the book. Murray states, “When I write, I create myself . . . I learned that writing reveals—always . . . The fear of exposure by writing is a rational fear. But in the act of exposure, writers discover themselves . . . in the process of writing I have learned who I am” (2-3). I didn’t realize that in writing about my own life experiences, that I am certainly creating a version of myself that I wish to be accepted by a certain audience. I have the power to recreate who I am on paper, which could possibly translate into a re-creation of my own self-perception. I think having the ability to step back from life and evaluate and organize events into categories of meaning definitely gives writers the power to come closer to seeing who they are and then make adjustments to step closer to who they want to be or to back away from who they fear becoming. Writing about my experiences in motherhood has allowed me a bit of a bird’s eye view on my life and has helped me reach conclusions about myself and the direction my life is taking and make the necessary course corrections to not only be a better mom, but to work towards becoming the best version of myself. Morse 14 I also learned that writing about my fear of my right to life being taken away by my role as mother allowed these deep, what I felt to be shameful, thoughts to become real. Once the words are on the paper, it’s real, and although writing about these fears induced anxiety and worry that people would think less of me, it allowed to confront those fears, to dissect them and see them for what they really are: a collection of insecurities I’d allowed to cage me in. Without having written about this, I’m not sure that I would have been able to come to this conclusion about my fears. I don’t know that I would have been able to see those fears as myth instead of fact. Another helpful bit of advice I absorbed from this book comes from Chapter 2 which is dedicated to giving ourselves permission to write, establishing a consistent writing habit, and cultivating a writer’s attitude. What I found most helpful from this chapter is not only learning about Murray’s own writing process, but having his reaffirm that everyone has a story to tell, no matter how “ordinary.” He says that our job as writers is to pay attention to everyday experiences and then to, “focus on revealing, as simply and clearly as possible . . . as you write what you do not expect to write, you will discover who you are, what your world is like, and what your life means” (12-13). I still wrestle with the fear that after all this work that I’ve put into this memoir on motherhood that nobody will want to read it. There’s nothing truly exceptional or traumatic that’s happened in my life and my experience with motherhood to warrant what I feel would be a good “story.” I like being reminded that nothing is too ordinary to write about—that I can find meaning in the average existence if I am willing to spend the time writing to discover that meaning and then apply to my perspective on life. On this train of thought, writing about the ordinary to discover meaning, Murray’s chapter on writing personal essays was also informative. He says, “The essay looks at narrative Morse 15 experience critically—empathetically but evaluative—putting experience in a larger context, trying on patterns of meaning hidden within the experience . . . the essay takes a broad experience and narrows it down so that it can be examined, or takes a narrow experience and discovers the broader issues that lie within it” (57). This is exactly what I have been doing by choosing to write about one aspect of my life, motherhood. I have written about one role in my life and looked for all the meaning that lies within it in an attempt to understand this role and myself better. I found Murray’s book to be more accessible than Smith and Watson’s “nuts and bolts” explanation of life writing. Murray seemed to get to the heart of non-fiction writing without dissecting it just to label and categorize its different components. Reading this book helped me discover the reasons why I write about things like motherhood and gave me the confidence to continue onward when I felt no real meaning could be found by doing so or that no one would be able to relate to what I’ve written. Reading this gave me the assurance that everybody has something meaningful to say. Morse 16 Karr, Mary. The Art of Memoir. Harper Perennial, 2015. I saved this book for last because it was by far the most insightful on the beast of memoir and how to approach the issues that come with life writing. As a teacher of life writing, Karr appears to know what’s what about every facet of writing memoir, but she is also the first one to admit that she’s still learning to wrap her arm around the genre. The book is segmented into 24 chapters that range in topic from the importance of voice, lying/exaggerating, vivid writing, writing about loved ones, dealing with inconsistencies in memory, the structure of memoir, how to organize facts and data, why memoirs fail, and she even begins the book attempting to persuade those thinking about attempting the genre to reconsider writing anything except memoir because of the nature of its difficulty. Instead of attempting to discuss every meaningful tidbit from this book, I will talk about a few issues I encountered while writing my memoir and how this book informed my approach to those challenges. The most prominent issue I had to deal with while writing my memoir was figuring out how to structure everything I’d been writing over the course of a year. I had a lot of great pieces and fragments that were good on their own, but how was I supposed to string them together to create cohesive meaning? Dr. Elsley certainly set to work helping me to link everything together, “like pearls on a necklace,” and having Karr iterate the same point made this a do or die issue for me. Karr shares her own method for shaping her own memoirs, “In terms of basic book shape, I’ve used the same approach in all three of mine: I start with a flash forward that show’s what’s at stake emotionally for me over the course of a book, then tell the story in straightforward, linear time” (147). I attempted the same approach, except I used a flash back instead of a flash forward. I used the contemplating-suicide-scene to illustrate exactly what was at stake for me and to provide context for the rest of the memoir. Morse 17 Karr says that, “you have to start out setting emotional stakes—why the enterprise is a passionate one for you, what’s at risk—early on” (147). Essentially, she is saying that we are giving our readers a reason to keep reading past the first page, first paragraph even. Knowing where my memoir was headed did not happen in the beginning for me. I wrote out everything that spoke to my heart in terms of motherhood, and then set to reorganizing everything in a way that revealed what was at stake for me: finding out if I could still be me and be a good mom. After re-configuring and giving shape to what I’d written, with a lot of help from Dr. Elsley, I began to see consistencies, as well as inconsistencies, in themes appear, and it became clear which scene needed to come first, what needed to be omitted, what needed to be fleshed out some more, and the overall direction the memoir should take. Another issue that I struggled with was figuring out how to write about my mom without being offensive. I certainly did not want to write something that would damage my relationship with her. I did write the ugly things that I remember from my childhood in terms of her mood swings, short temper, and lack of communication when we needed it most. Those things all had a lasting impact on me that perhaps influenced some of my own insecurities as a mom. I wrote them out, and while writing these things into reality, my stomach filled with dread, churning at the image of her reading what I had written and cutting me off for good. She cuts me off from time to time, but never longer than a week or two. Putting her misdeeds as a mother into the public square would not go over well with her, as I’m sure it wouldn’t with most people. In the chapter titled, “Dealing with Beloveds (On and Off the Page), Karr discusses how she dealt with this same issue with her own mother. She had an interesting comment on male writers being able to air their mothers’ dirty laundry in a book and it being a justifiable thing. She quotes Jerry Stahl as saying, “If you had to live it, you get to write it,” (111) but is that a true Morse 18 statement? That’s what I had to decide, whether or not to tell the truth about my childhood experiences with my mother or to leave it out. I had to decide if damaging my relationship with my mom was worth it. I decided it was not, so I stuck to the good things I learned from her and hinted at her alter-ego just enough to give readers a broader sense of her character without demonizing her. Karr states, “For a woman to kick her mother’s ass is unseemly” (111). I had to envision my mom and sisters and even my grandma reading the finished memoir and this mental image helped me to be more tactful about the things I chose to include about my mom. Karr made phone calls to her mom and sister as she wrote Liar’s Club just to “take their pulses” on what she was writing (114). She also passed around her manuscript to her mother and other family members before publishing to give them a chance to voice their concerns before it went to the press. She states that it was a bittersweet moment for her to hear her mother say, “I was such an asshole,” as she read Karr’s memoir that talked about the uglier moments of her mother (118). On the one hand she felt guilty for making her mom feel bad, but on the other, it was healing for her to hear her mother admit the wrong doing from her childhood in that simple phrase (118). I called my sister several times to consult with her on what I could get away with writing about my mom. My sister favored writing the truth, all of it, but as I said before, writing all of it left me feeling sick, so I kept the lesson’s learned and tucked those more painful and vulnerable pieces about my mom away for another time. Karr gives a list of eleven suggestions for helping to deal family and friends that writers choose to write about. I will touch briefly on a couple of Karr’s suggestions that were most beneficial to me. The first is to not speak with authority on people’s motives and intentions. Karr states that she speculates on this things, but let’s readers know that that’s all it is—speculation Morse 19 (120). This piece of advice relinquished me from the task of psychoanalyzing my own mother in a vain attempt to know why she did the things she did. It doesn’t matter why, but a bit of open and honest speculation doesn’t look bad, at least in my perspective, if it looks like one person trying to understand another person. Karr also touches on point of view and my responsibility as a writer to acknowledge, in some way or form, that my perspectives on life aren’t necessarily correct and that there may be other perspectives that differ from mine—so basically, don’t attempt to be a voice of authority when there is room for error or differences of opinion (121). I did make the effort to try to acknowledge that, hey, I’m only one mother of many and what I have to say is certainly not true for everyone, and maybe only for myself. I wanted my memoir to come across as a piece that illustrates my experiences with motherhood and what I learned from them without becoming didactic and appearing to persuade readers to believe one thing or another about motherhood. I tried not to make generalizations or to speak for other mothers, though I realize that sometimes this can happen without my noticing it. I think Dr. Elsley sorted out the majority of these types of statements in the memoir that were saying more than I could possibly know. Lastly, another primary issue that I wrestled with as I wrote this memoir was voice. I felt two conflicting voices fighting for white space on the page—each one trying to overpower the other. I had the “LDS mom voice” that wanted to make generalizations about motherhood, morphing my struggles into a more “positive” light with phrases like, “but it’s worth it,” and “this is the most important work I will ever do,” and “someday there will be time to do what I want to do.” My other voice, the voice that wants to tell it like it is, screamed inside me as I wrote, demanding that I tell the truth, demanding that that part of who I am, the part with dreams and ambitions, the pre-kids Michelle, be heard too. I labored to know how to talk about the Morse 20 challenges I face as a mother without turning it into a “poor-me” bid for pity from readers. I also didn’t want to make it seem as though everything I struggle with as a person and a mother is easily resolved—like I only need to learn a particular lesson once and then life is good again. That kind of writing doesn’t seem honest and honesty, acknowledging that everything isn’t perfect, that all is not sunny and bright for me most days, is what I aimed for while writing my memoir. In the chapter titled, “Personal Run-Ins with Fake Voices” Karr relates her personal experience with trying not to allow herself to sugarcoat her life experiences, “I hid from readers on pages that sugarcoated any emotional truths about us all, part of an overall effort to sanitize our past and remold myself into somebody smarter, faster, funnier than harsh reality had afforded me to become” (129). She is referencing writing about her experiences growing up with her family, but the part about feeling the need to “sanitize” her experiences was a point of relevance to me. There was that need in myself, through what I have dubbed, the “LDS mom voice,” to not only make my experiences appear more “positive,” but to make myself look smarter for having figured out how to “master” certain areas of motherhood, which, is that even possible? I had to find a balance that allowed room for honesty without adding unnecessary fluff and flogging myself repeatedly. I had to allow room for confidence in my newly- discovered truths about motherhood without it coming across as “now I have it all figured out.” I think Karr says it best, “Every time I picked up a pen, this grinding, unnamed fear overcame me—later identified as fear that my real self would spill out . . . without the grit and grime of where I’d grown up—I’d been playing with one hand tied back” (130, 141). While writing this memoir, I knew I had to risk coming across as a “complainer” or “murmurer” and someone not “grateful” in every circumstance, and to stop hiding who I really Morse 21 am behind LDS jargon because, like Karr, I would only be telling only half the story of who I am, and that is a lie I am not able to live with. Conclusion: Each of these sources listed and discussed have greatly increased my understanding of how others perceive motherhood, how to write about my own experiences as a mom, how to properly shape and assign meaning to my experiences, and most of all, that there is value in the average, everyday stories of humanity. Morse 22 More than “Mom”: A Memoir on Early Motherhood by Michelle Nicole Morse Morse 23 Introduction: Breaking Point I’ve only ever really been scared of two things in life: one is dying early and the other is to die without having become the best version of me. Can’t really help the time that I die, but I can do something about my self-actualization. That’s what scares me. The power to fully realize my potential rests with me. I was on the road to what I believed to be the best version of me until motherhood came along and brought out a side of me I didn’t know. I soon learned that motherhood is a profession of sacrifice, one that requires the sacrifice of self for the collective good of a mother’s children. Sacrificing myself, my dreams and ambitions? I wasn’t ready for that. I hadn’t planned on that and I wanted out. When I became a mother, everything I thought I knew about myself and my dreams began to unravel. I had imagined myself as a career woman, in a leadership position or working my way towards that, living in a posh apartment, wearing designer clothing, and driving back home to visit my parents in a Mercedes Benz. It’s laughable, really, that this was the most I could dream up for myself back then in my young adult years. My life has not been on a trajectory to lead me towards financial success, a top-notch career, or a Mercedes, but I am learning that my original idea of “success” and realizing my full potential has nothing to do with my career choice or the accolades and money that may or may not come with it. Nothing, except motherhood, could have taught me this. I couldn’t see it then, but it’s becoming clearer now. Motherhood has revealed a person within me that I wasn’t even aware existed, a person with vast potential to become more than I planned for. One afternoon, several months after the birth of my daughter and second child, Haiven, I was forced to let go of the idea of who I thought I would become. I’d been a mom for a little over three years and in that moment as I stood in our dingy kitchen bathed in the white, Morse 24 indifferent light of the late afternoon, I finally came to understand that this was it. This was life. The universe was not standing in the wings waiting to bestow upon me a golden parachute of adventure and opportunity, of a life fulfilled simply because I lived, because I’d done everything right. I’d checked off all the boxes to ensure a happy, successful life, and here I stood, leaning against the cold beige tiles of my countertop, cheap steak knife in my hand and contemplating death’s release from it all and the effects it would have on my family. I believed motherhood was not my calling. I couldn’t imagine ever being more than “mom” again. Faint echoes of a conversation long past lingered at the forefront of my mind as I held the tip of the knife against my wrist, and I was there again in the dim lamp light of my mom’s bedroom sitting at my usual perch at the end of her bed. At fifteen years old, I had entered a phase of philosophizing on the nature of life and the possibilities for my future and expounded on my theories nightly from the end of her bed. That night, full of youthful hope for a future grander than the present I then occupied, I quietly, but firmly declared that, “I’m going to be somebody. I don’t know how or when, but people are going to know my name.” How strongly I believed this, how the idea of someday being a “somebody” carried me through a lonely adolescence and gave me hope for the future. Becoming somebody would negate my belief that I was nobody. Fast-forward a decade later and I was living the very life I swore I’d reach beyond. My fear of being a nobody was being realized in one acutely painful moment. I felt nothing except cold seeping into my bare feet on the yellowed linoleum floor. Oh I was somebody, somebody who couldn’t figure out how I ended up in the kitchen pressing the tip of a knife into her wrist, somebody who tangibly felt opportunity and progress rushing by me with every sleepless night and endless afternoon spent up to my elbows in laundry, goldfish crackers, bodily fluids, and to- Morse 25 do lists designed to keep me squarely and safely inside this box called “average existence” that I’d unwittingly boxed myself into with motherhood. Motherhood had brought out the worst in me. I had been weak all along, but didn’t know it until motherhood showed me what was left of me—revealing that darker side that I’d attempted to repress bit by bit with every angry outburst and exasperate sigh. I thought I was strong. I thought this motherhood gig would be easy compared to a “real” career. After having two children, it became quite clear that I had a long way to go in terms of figuring out how to be a “good” mom and be myself. I thought it would come naturally. It did not. What did come easily was a short temper, cussing, the urge to give up, frustration because I couldn’t figure out how to potty train my almost four-year-old son or how to play with my kids, to really connect with them. The list goes on. Good moms knew how to do these kinds of things. Good moms enjoyed doing these things and didn’t wish they were anywhere except at home with their kids. My daughter was born with a thick, brown tuft of long hair, soft as goose down. It was hair that most moms would kill for their daughters to have at such a young age and I had no idea how to fix it and do fancy little braids or hairstyles, still don’t actually. In my mind, knowing how to expertly coif my daughter’s hair was clearly a prerequisite to motherhood that I’d neglected to add to my repertoire of motherly qualities. All these little things piled up like bricks around me, while my own hands smeared the mortar and slapped the bricks down one by one, forming a wall between who I was as a mom and who I wanted to be. My expectations for my life had been zapped by the satellite of motherhood, turning my brilliant plan for escaping an “average” existence into a smoking memory of what could have been. Suddenly the constants of life were too formidable to face. Knowing the sun would rise again tomorrow, and the day after that, and that the world would keep spinning, that life would Morse 26 keep rushing and swooshing on and on around me and by me evoked the deepest feelings of despair. How could I go on, an empty husk, buffeted to and fro, bouncing along on the backs of my children as they race ahead in life and eventually and necessarily let what is left of me float to the ground to be crumpled and stamped out by a world that has no use for middle-aged women just starting to figure out who they are? I’d been told my entire life that motherhood would be the best “calling” I would ever have in my life, and that nothing else would ever bring me as much happiness. I would be fulfilled raising kids and nothing more. My kids and their needs would always trump mine. That desperate afternoon, I was trying to figure out why this role was supposed to be the best thing that has ever happened to me. My cowardice eventually won out that day. The steak knife went back in the draw, the hot tears were extinguished, and a new filing cabinet added in the deep folds of the soft grey matter of my brain to store the disappointment of the realities of motherhood, and save them for a day when I was ready to feel the weight of them, ready to face what had become of me, and a future I hadn’t planned on. Everything I’d ever done in my life up until the point I became a mother seemed to be a form of escapism for me. I wouldn’t have to face or know who I really am if I piled up enough achievements to bury my identity and save the tough questions for myself when I finally felt secure enough to do so. My achievements would outweigh any character or personality flaws that I might discover about myself. Always having that next goal on the horizon allowed me to continue to tread along the surface of averagedom without submerging myself fully in it and disappearing. I lived for the next big thing—the thing that I fancied would set me apart from the rest, inoculate me from becoming just another housewife who never dreamed of anything more than what was in front of her. I couldn’t turn into her. I learned quickly there was no outrunning Morse 27 the pain, frustration, and disappointments of motherhood. Each mistake brought me closer to my reflection in the mirror, closer to the realization that I was going to have to face my future as a mother and more importantly, face who I really am sans worldy achievements. Motherhood, without benchmarks for success, checks for milestones reached, and celebrations for goals accomplished set out to teach me that these things, these accomplishments, were not what made me me—these achievements were not what made me worth loving. I suppose you could say this was my wake-up call: finding out that I am worth loving at my barest and most vulnerable state. It is the wake-up call that has saved my life. As hard as motherhood has been, I couldn’t have learned this about myself without the unconditional love of my children. My children continually confound me and I find myself experiencing life on deeper, more meaningful planes that demand everything I can give and more. I’m beginning to see now that motherhood has more to offer me for a life-wringing experience than any opportunity a successful career ever could. I know that someday, when I am withered and too tired to chase after kids or grandkids anymore, that no one can ever accuse me of not getting the most out of life and becoming the best version of me—motherhood is seeing to that. I am learning that I am more as a person because of my role as a mom and that it is paramount that I continue learning to accept that I can be a “good” mom and myself without one compromising the other. Morse 28 1. The Influence of a Mother Perhaps the most influential person who taught me what it means to be a “good” mom and still be myself, is of course, my own mother. It was my mom who taught me how to ride a motorcycle and drive a stick-shift and how to spin donuts on a fresh coat of snow in a hospital parking lot. The summer before I turned 16, my mom made it her mission to teach me how to drive a stick-shift. The car that I learned in and would adopt as “my car,” was a 1990 something red, two-door, Chevy Cavalier. Before I knew how to drive it, I would sneak out into the driveway and climb in the driver’s seat, imagining how cool I would look pulling into the parking lot at the school with my sunglasses on and music up loud. I would stick the keys into the ignition and turn them forward just enough to fire up the radio. I would sit there, J-Lo’s “I’m Still Jenny from the Block” blaring out the speakers, dreaming of the places this car would take me, of the status it would buy me. Surely I would be considered a “popular” kid driving this car instead of my dad’s 1980 something Ford truck, with patches of rust growing like barnacles around the wheelwells and on all the hinges. The most pivotal moment of my learning how to drive that car came late that summer in 2002 when I attempted to make a U-turn and park in front of the Shake Shack, the only burger and shake place in town. It was jam-packed with my high school peers, all waiting in line for a grease and sugar induced food coma. I quickly learned that the Cavalier did not turn on a dime when I felt my front right tire crash into the sidewalk, which drew the attention of all those waiting inside the Shake Shack. My mom sat in the shotgun seat, laughing, while I sat in the driver seat sweating bullets and praying someone would just read me my last rights and throw me in a hole somewhere to rot in shame forever. Morse 29 “Put it in reverse and back up!” my mom managed to blurt between fits of giggling. I always thought she sounded like Wilma from the Flinstones when she laughed. I jammed in the clutch with my left foot and jerked on the gear shift with my right hand, grinding my way to reverse. Too much gas. We shot like a rocket in reverse into oncoming traffic, which had stopped at this point, waiting patiently or impatiently, I didn’t dare look, for me to hurry the hell up and park. I slammed on the brakes throwing both me and my mom’s heads back. She exploded into another fit of giggling. I looked up, mortified and cheeks flaming-hot to see my peers filing out of the Shake Shack and congregating on the sidewalk out front to get a better look at the spectacle I was making of myself. I could tell by their body language that they were laughing. “You drive mom! I can’t do this!” “You can do it! Shift it into first and give it a little gas as you let out the clutch,” my mom said, as she attempted to adopt a more sober tone but completely failed. I shoved the gear shift into first and didn’t give it enough gas. We lurched like some monstrous, drunken rhinoceros up alongside the curb out front, the same curb lined with people shouting, “You can do it! You can do it! You can do it!” The Cavalier lurched and bucked once more before shuddering to a stop alongside the curb. An explosion of cheers and clapping erupted from the crowd on the sidewalk. They were as relieved as I was that I finally managed to tame the Cavalier. “I knew you could do it!” my mom said, playfully knocking my arm. That was what it was like growing up with my mom. She isn’t your typical run-of-the-mill mom. We grew up in the back of an assortment of vans listening to Monster Ballads that featured “artists” like Meatloaf and Def Leppard, and if she got tired of that, she tortured us with Morse 30 music from The Carpenters. We were not allowed to touch her hair, which she puffed and fluffed to perfection every day except on Saturdays. For her, big hair is better hair. When I was a teenager, still learning how to do my hair, she used say that my hair was too flat and stick her fingers into my it, massaging my scalp with her long fingernails, attempting to coerce it into looking more lively, but leaving my hair looking as if a field mouse had gotten loose in it, and would declare, “There, that’s better!” as if she was doing me a favor in an era where sleek, smooth hair prevailed with the invention of the hair straightener. She told me that one time, a male co-worker at the hospital had said, “Dude!!!! You’ve got metal hair! Nice!” She had asked for clarification on that “metal” bit and was told her hair resembled that of the rock bands from the 80s. She feigned offense in the retelling of this moment, but she couldn’t hide the smug look in her eyes. She was always saying people had better hair in the 80s. When I was eight years old, I used to put on at least two or three pairs of her socks to make my feet bigger, and I would hobble around in her high heels counting down the days until I could fit into her clothes too. As I grew into adolescence, she started asking me for approval of her outfit choices for Sunday church or a night out with my step-dad, asking, “Does this look alright? Does the belt look stupid? Do the shoes go with this?” I remember feeling a sense of honor that she considered my input valuable to her. My mom was the law in our house. She used to say jokingly, “Don’t piss me off,” and we’d laugh knowing it was one of those only half-way kidding comments. My younger siblings and I could usually gauge the shades of my mom’s moods by how much noise she made in the kitchen or how furiously she cleaned, especially on Sunday mornings. If we heard pots and pans being tossed about, cupboard doors slamming, and cuss words hissed under her breath, we knew Morse 31 to stay the hell out of her way. I usually resorted to cleaning something or herding my younger siblings, like rabbits in a fox den, out her sight until her sour moods passed. She was also the kind of mom to come home with a box full of baby ducklings mid-week in Spring and proudly announce, “I’ve bought one for each of you.” I was 15 years old when she came home that spring with five ducklings and nowhere to put them except in our garage under a heat lamp. I remember peering into the box, lined with straw and reeking of duck poop, and asking her, “What are we going to do with a bunch of ducks?” She ignored the sarcasm in my voice and responded, “I don’t know, but aren’t they fun?!” She still hasn’t lost her sense of spontaneity, which is something I thought I would never be able to be again after becoming a mother: spontaneous. When my mom was 17 years old, she became pregnant with me. She dropped out of high school and married my biological father, a kid himself. She left him one morning after watching his truck back down the drive and thunder away down the dusty dirt road. I was nearly two years old and she was pregnant with my younger brother. We were living in a dilapidated farmhouse full of mice and short on food. My father had just spent his paycheck on a new stereo system for his truck while the overdue notices piled up and our bellies remained empty. That was it for her. She knew that she wanted more for herself and for us. She believed we deserved better and so she packed what little we had into her green Ford Pinto and together we left her past behind. Since then, she has never stopped pursuing a better life for herself. I remember sitting there at our worn, dining room table, hunched over hundreds of holes in long rows of grey plastic, all waiting for spikes to be inserted into them. The inventor of road spikes that police use to catch run-away cars lives in Monticello and paid housewives, like my mom, to assemble them for law enforcement departments across the nation. After dinner and Morse 32 homework, my mom and I sat at the table assembling the spikes. The air in our small kitchen was pungent with the odor of rubber and steel. My 11-year-old fingers worked quickly and nimbly to push rubber washers down into the holes, one right after the other, until my mom said I didn’t have to do it anymore. She would follow behind with fingertips dusted in powder to prevent blisters and insert the sharp, stainless steel spikes. Once in a while, if she had a big order to fill, I’d help her put the spikes in too, working carefully to avoid gouging my fingers on the razor sharp edges. Before the spikes, I helped her clean the only elementary school in town, a smallish building with brown bricks and faded, peeling multi-colored posts along the length of the grimy windows out front. I would follow her into the custodial closet, a dark, musty cave lit by a single light bulb with a pull-string and reeking of disinfectant and orange air-freshener, the kind they only spray when some kid pukes in their classroom. She would pull out the cleaning cart and open the first classroom door, ordering my younger siblings to keep their hands off everything. Then she would turn to me, “Here, spray some of this and then use this to wipe off the desks.” I happily obliged because she had little tolerance for whining. She never complained about her work and I never stopped to think why she had all these odd jobs in the first place. I learned from these experiences with my mom that hard work was not something to be afraid of. I learned that I would never truly be “stuck” in my life circumstances so long as I continued looking for ways out. When I was about 14 years old, my mom decided to go back to school. In a couple of short years, she managed to graduate from Weber State University as a radiology technician and landed her first “real” job at the San Juan Hospital in Monticello, the only hospital at that time within a 60 mile radius. It must not have been easy for her to go back to school with all five of Morse 33 her children attending school and busy with extra-curricular activities; I can see that now that I have three children of my own and currently finishing a Master’s degree. Today, she is the clinic manager at the San Juan Hospital, something that she likely didn’t see herself doing as an 18 year old girl with one child and one on the way. I think back to these moments with my mom and realize that my mom was teaching me a valuable lesson about motherhood. I was learning that life did not stop for her just because she had kids. She had chosen to take us with her into her future instead of letting us, her kids, and her role as mother dictate how her future unraveled. My mom, working those odd jobs and going back to school, was more than simply an effort to supplement our income. She was trying to find a way to live beyond her role as mother, to live for herself. I think that we aspire to be what we admire in others. What I admired most about my mom was her determination to do what she wanted to do and not limit herself to childcare and household duties. Those things were not enough. She had a powerful and stubborn determination to see things through and to get the most out of her own life experience. I adopted the same attitude—that fighting spirit that doesn’t give up easily when every door seems to be closed. It’s one of the best things my mom could have given me because it’s helped me get through many hard things, but the virtues of that ambitious spirit came with fine print I neglected to read, until now. I’ve been slogging my way through this motherhood role when perhaps a struggle is not required. I began to recognize that nothing will change the fact that I’m a mom and I may as well learn to absorb my role as mother into my identity and make it work to my advantage like my own mom did. If she could climb mountains with kids on her back, then so can I. Morse 34 2: Expecting Paradise—Living the Reality Apart from my mom, the geography of my upbringing and LDS culture also contributed to my perception of what motherhood was “supposed” to be like for me. My expectations of motherhood were founded in the quiet little town of Monticello, UT, a town of about 2000 people nestled at the base of the Blue Mountains in San Juan County. Those mountains were my playground as a child. I foraged in that mountain for fort space, crawdads, four-wheeler trails, places of solitude, and myself. Those mountains are where as a child I solved the problems of my world and sorted out my future. Often, throughout my childhood and adolescence, I would look at that vast horsehead resting in the center of the mountain on Horsehead Peak, keeping silent watch over the frivolous lives of the people below, and be reminded that some things, like that horsehead, never change—some things remain constant throughout our lives. The cycle of life is the same everywhere. We are born, we live, we procreate, we die and it all begins again. My goal? It was to escape the monotony of the cycle, to rebel against what I believed to be a humdrum existence. My definition of an average existence? It was spending the majority of my life as a stay-at-home-mom doing laundry, cooking dinner, cleaning up dishes, and running everyone around to their own activities. It was staying home while the rest of the world rushed by eking out an existence that a stay-at-home-mom could only dream of as she pushed a lonely cart through the grocery store. Not until I was engrossed in the bewildering throes of motherhood, did it dawn on me that I was living the exact life I had revolted against. I was caught in the cycle and for most people that’s not an issue, but for me, I was mad as hell. How did hohum become my life? How did being trapped in the unforgiving current of parenthood equate to a life lived to the fullest? Motherhood set out to teach me, a kicking and screaming, unwilling pupil the virtues of living out an average life. I had to learn to swim with the current, Morse 35 discover my strengths, instead of wasting time and energy resisting the inevitable, resisting what can’t be changed about my role as “mother.” Motherhood was not even a role that I understood as I was growing up. What I did understand is that mom was there and she had been from the start. It never occurred to me that my mom had had a life pre-kids. It never crossed my mind that maybe being a mother wasn’t the only thing she lived for—that maybe she had other interests too. Mom was there to keep it all together, the subtle strength in the background that gave me and my siblings a sense of security and stability. I didn’t ever stop to ponder or strive to know how she did it, but I supposed that I would do the same for my kids when I grew up. As a junior in high school, I remember planning out my future at a mutual activity (a weekly activity planned for the youth in the LDS church by church leaders). We were Laurels in the Young Women’s Program at the church, which status we achieved by turning 16 years old. Each of us was given a big, silver can that would function as a time capsule. There were bridal magazines, Parent magazines, Better Homes and Gardens magazines, and travel magazines scattered across the floor of the L-shaped room we met in on Sundays and Wednesday nights for mutual. Our mission that night? We were tasked with planning out our future. We were each given a blank list and on those blank lines, we were to construct our perfect man. We tittered and blushed as we wrote, “handsome,” “strong,” “dark hair,” “dark skin,” “tall,” “green eyes,” and whatever else suited our individual fancies. Because we wanted to demonstrate our understanding of what real men ought to be, we also listed things like, “good person,” “works hard,” “a return missionary,” and so on. We also picked out our dresses from bridal magazines and cut out pictures of the dress we hoped to wear at our own weddings. We cut pictures of children out of the Parent magazines, however many girls and boys we imagined Morse 36 having, and then made a list of all the baby names we liked best for our future children. We perused Better Homes and Gardens, looking for our perfect home. We cut that out too and added it to our can along with our husbands and children. We found our perfect honeymoon destinations in the travel magazines and giggled when we thought about what people do on honeymoons. It took us maybe an hour, two tops, to plan out our lives. Pictures and lists all tucked safely into our cans, we sealed them up and patted ourselves on the backs for using such forethought in planning our lives out ahead of time. We were ready. Ready for the real world, for marriage, for motherhood, for whatever the world had to throw at us. There would be no surprises, or so I thought. When I became a mother for the first time, I realized that I had no idea about how in the hell this motherhood thing worked. I was desperate to know how women survived the monotony of everyday motherhood life and how this life as a mother would ever allow me to be me again. I had not even conceived how difficult and how time consuming motherhood would be. I didn’t know I wouldn’t have time for anything else. This I had not planned for. This feeling of being trapped, and held against my will by my role as “mom” had not even been on my radar. I thought that I deserved more, the exceptional existence, whatever that was. I grew up assuming motherhood would be hard work, but of course it was impossible to know the extent of how “hard” I would work as a mother until I became one. I didn’t imagine that with motherhood would come pain, fatigue as I’ve never felt it before, unstable moods and depression, magnified poor body image in the drooping, sagging folds and stretch marks on my stomach and thighs, and self-loathing on a whole new level because I realized my efforts would always fall short in some unpredictable way. In my naiveté, I had assumed, that yes it was going Morse 37 to be hard, but that it was going to be full of joy and happy moments every day because why would people choose to have kids if it wasn’t? After I had my first child, Taj, in 2008, I was stunned and felt betrayed, felt that I had been led with false promises of bliss and eternal happiness into the giant trap of parenthood from whence there is no return. In a blog post, perhaps written in the heat of the bewilderment and trauma following Taj’s birth, I composed a warning letter of sorts to others who were thinking about having kids, others with their first child on the way. I wanted to tell them everything that nobody else talked about: the “bad side” of motherhood. I successfully frightened a few readers and then felt guilty about ruining the golden aura of motherhood for all those who made motherhood their end goal. I wanted to hash out every last one of those bloody little details that women conveniently “forget” when they decide to have even more children. I once asked my mom, “Why did you keep having babies if it hurts so much?” Her response, “You forget and it’s worth it to go through all of that to hold a little baby in your arms.” “Yes, but then what? What happens next?” I’d wanted to ask her. I was intelligent enough as a young woman to understand that babies don’t stay little and pink and peaceful all the time and what do you do once the high of giving birth wears off? Nobody told me that you don’t go back to being yourself. That you don’t get back to the life you were living. That you don’t get to be you anymore. That you now exist as a dual identity, and you are not in control of your life anymore because now your life is ruled by a little tyrant wrapped in swaddling blankets who demands to be fed and changed on a tight schedule that leaves you no time for doing what you want to do anymore. I was especially upset that my mom hadn’t said anything about it. The lies! Morse 38 The deceit! It was all part of a wicked plot my parents had concocted in order to get a grandchild. I didn’t know motherhood meant I was going to lose myself. I had expected to live my life and to yes, have children, but I suppose that I had assumed they would conform to the plans that I had already laid out for my life. They were going to be the puzzle pieces that fit neatly into a masterpiece I had dreamed up for myself. They would exist as their own separate beings and I would feed them and shelter them and would look like a good little mom with perfect children in our family pictures, all of us smiling. Having children is what I was “born to do,” it was my “life calling,” and I never actually stopped to think about the price the role of motherhood would demand to be paid by me. This role wanted everything from me. I was not ready to give 100% of myself over to motherhood, but that is exactly what I had to do to find out that I could be a “good” mom and still retain who I was as a person. Morse 39 3. Confronting Imperfection For me, being a mom requires more effort. Each day I battle my brain, pushing back at the despair and mood swings that hang over my mind like an unpredictable storm cloud that blows in from nowhere and clouds my vision, tainting my perception of my everyday life, straining the happy moments, and leaving nothing but gray. How do I tell my kids that some days I don’t even feel like living anymore? I don’t tell them. I don’t tell anyone. Instead I keep getting out of bed in the morning, keep the routine of my family’s lives rolling forward, one mighty, heavy step at a time, and pray for that next brief moment of sunshine again. I’ve become pretty good at faking contentedness and happiness, so good that during the brief moments of freedom from my depression, I’m surprised at how foreign “happy” feels to me. Most days I forget myself and focus on everyone else’s needs because I can’t figure out what I need to be, or do, or change about myself to be happy. I usually resort to turning in on myself and blaming myself for the state of mind the depression won’t let me see past. This way of thinking usually results in my feeling extremely inadequate as a mother because I feel my children are missing out on what could be a happier childhood for them. That’s what hurts most—knowing my silent battle affects them directly. I’ve done many things during the course of my brief experience with motherhood to try to combat the depression. I’ve gone back to work and then felt guilty for spending too much time away from my kids. I exercise regularly, keep myself as physically fit as my physical illness will allow. I take time for myself in the afternoons during naptime. After nearly a decade of fighting this, I’m starting to see that maybe the depression is something that will never be gone for good. I’ve accepted this, but I have not given up. I’ll keep fighting it not only for my family’s sake, but Morse 40 for my own as well. I will keep fighting for those happy moments that make me glad I chose to stay and fight that desperate afternoon in my kitchen. As if the depression alone weren’t enough, when I was 19-years-old, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune diseases, Idiopathic Tracheal Stenosis, a disease that causes scar tissue to grow in my airway and close it off. It is something that must be combated on a daily basis. My airway narrows down to the size of an infant’s airway, which feels a lot like breathing through a straw, especially when walking up and down my stairs at home all day long or jumping on the trampoline with my kids, or taking that family walk on Sundays. If you were to see us walking, I would be the one trailing behind everyone else, coughing, trying to clear an airway that can’t be cleared, and pausing to rest and allow my heart and lungs to slow down from the strain of trying to breathe normally. As the scar tissues narrows, and until I am able to have another routine surgery, which involves a laser cutting away the scar tissue, I cannot do more than get my kids a bowl of cereal or have a normal conversation without panting and feeling as though I need a long nap after exerting minimal effort. I have had steroid injections through my neck and into my trachea while awake, numerous scopes with a camera on the end snaked up my nose and down my throat “to get a look” at the stenosis, had my vocal chords paralyzed, had my trachea resected and my chin tethered to my chest, had a trach that required suctioning with a thin tube placed in the opening and then down into my chest, and have been told that I would lose my voice for good. That’s already happening with each note in my voice that refuses to make a sound no matter how hard I try. Sometimes it’s hard to not feel a little downhearted when thinking about my future. How many surgeries can one person handle year after year for the rest of her life? I don’t know. I’ve Morse 41 done everything I can medically to keep the scar tissue at bay, but this year, I found out there is just no stopping it this time. I’m 31 years old and can’t picture myself doing this upkeep as I grow old. Best not to think that far ahead in my case. I’m learning to take this disease one day at a time and not let one bad day, bad week, or bad month set the tone for how my life will play out because of it. This kind of thinking is useful for trying not to become depressed about my future, but I haven’t figured out how not to feel like a burden on my family and friends. Sometimes I wonder if there will ever be a point when my husband says he can’t handle it anymore, or if my family will get tired of hearing about this and that procedure that I’m having done, or if my kids worry that I’m going to die from this each time I go in for surgery or come in the room and see me coughing so hard that blood speckles the tissue I use to cover my mouth. I never wanted this health problem to be anybody else’s problem but my own, but life is never that tidy. I never wanted all eyes on me each time I have a coughing attack that lasts for 20 minutes, each time people ask me if I’m sick or if I have “smoker’s cough,” each time people ask me to speak louder when I’m not able to, each time I wheeze for air while presenting in class or at church and people tell me to “take a deep breath” because they think I’m nervous. I never wanted to hurt anyone, but it’s hard to not feel guilty when I see my husband turn his face away, wiping the tears from his cheeks because he wants to fix this and can’t. It’s hard not to cry when I hear my mom fighting the tears through the phone when I tell her my stenosis is back for good. It’s hard to hear my 8-year-old son praying by his bed at night for me, praying that my throat will get better again. I don’t want my kids to remember “mom” as being “sick” and having to go to the hospital a lot and not being able to do things with them. Being physically unwell also leads me to believe, like the depression, that I am not the mom my kids need me to be. Morse 42 I’ve been learning, slowly, that I can’t do much to control how my children and other people perceive my battle with depression and the stenosis. My hope is that my children are able to see past these things about myself that I can’t change, see the person inside who loves them and cares deeply about how good of a mom I am for them by what I am able to do for them. I’ve had to let go of the sense of control that I thought I had over everything in my life: how my future will play out, whether or not my kids think I’m a good mom, whether or not other people think I’m a good mom, and what regrets I’ll have at the end of my life. These illnesses have cemented the idea in my brain that perfect mothering is not actually a thing and that what I have to offer my kids despite my many imperfections will have to be good enough. Morse 43 4. On Being a “Good” Mom, Whatever that Means… Being a “good” mom sans depression and illness is hard all on its own, but add those elements, and suddenly even being a regular mom, forget about good, is hard. I am the orchestrator of my children’s lives. I decide what they eat, what they wear, the activities they participate in, the things they learn, the people they associate with, the state of the home they live in, and the list goes on. My central motivation behind all those choices that I make for them on a daily basis? Doing what’s best for them, not just now, but in the long run. I am plotting the trajectory of their lives, right now, in their childhood. I am responsible for the direction their lives will take. I am in charge of launching them into adulthood as well-rounded individuals, as “good” people, who make goals and know how to work hard to achieve their dreams. The weight of these great responsibilities rests heavy on my shoulders some days and I worry that I won’t be able to live up to the task. I worry that I will fail them and that they won’t do more than “survive” adulthood. I fret the most about being a good mom for my daughter Haiven. There is so much to teach her about how to not just survive in this world, but how to live. I want to show her how to live despite her roles and responsibilities. I want to pull her along with me and show her that she is more than the titles people will use to define her. How will she learn to pick herself back up again when things don’t work out? Or how will she navigate motherhood? Will she still feel like herself or will she lose herself like I did? Haiven, now five years old, is quite vocal about the kind of mom she wishes I could be, or wishes I weren’t. There was that one afternoon last year we were watching E.T. together and she declared, “I wish Elliot’s mom was my mom!” I don’t usually take such comments seriously, but I paused to question what “Elliot’s mom” had that I didn’t that made her so appealing in my Morse 44 daughter’s eyes. Was it the blonde hair? That leopard costume she wore on Halloween the night Elliot and E.T. go missing? Was it because she let her kids play card games at the table while they ate pizza for dinner? She certainly wasn’t a Marry Poppins-type mom. She even yelled at her kids, so what made her better than me in Haiven’s eyes? I imagine that my kids think that moms are supposed to be “nice” all the time, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, facing each day with a big smile. Perhaps in their minds, moms are supposed to cater to their every whim, not ask them to help out, and never become angry or disappointed with their bad behavior. A “good” mom would let them do what they want to do and when they want to do it. Their lives would be set on cruise control with their own personal assistant to make sure the ride goes smoothly in every possible way. They wouldn’t have to fight their own battles or learn to stand for something because their “good” mom would do all those things for them. Children are demanding and I know if I let them, my own children would railroad right over the top of me, crushing me with their demands of who they think I ought to be as their mom. When Haiven was three years old, she told me as I drove her to preschool, “I just want a different mom." I looked in the rearview mirror at her arms folded defiantly across her chest, her brows knit together in frustration. Her long, brown sun-kissed hair held back with a pink bow glowed in the morning sunlight. I laughed under my breath, telling myself that didn’t hurt, not even a little bit, before I responded, “Is that right? How come?” “You’re a mean mommy. You’re not my best friend anymore.” I should have quit while I was ahead. We finished the short drive to preschool in silence. I walked behind her on the sidewalk leading up to the school and trying to understand how such Morse 45 a little person could be so opinionated. Two pencil-sticks-for-leg and tooth-picks-for-arms are all that’s visible behind her enormous Hello Kitty backpack, as if the backpack were walking itself into school. I smiled at the back of her and before we went in the school, I told her, “You’re still my best friend and I love you.” She stopped a moment, in what I hoped was her reconsideration of her previous declaration that she wished for a new mom. She didn’t say a word, but before she kept walking inside, she grabbed my hand to finish the long walk to her classroom. I knew then that she was letting me off the hook for whatever “wrong-doing” I’d done in her eyes. That’s how it is on a daily basis trying to raise children and be a “good” mom at the same time. There is no one right way to be a mom, and yet, how am I to know if the way I do it is a good enough for my kids? Naturally, I look to other young moms to see how they do it, but most of the time, I come away feeling even more inadequate because I can’t do motherhood like they do it. My friend Tiffany, for example, absolutely loves being a mother. She claims it is the best thing that has ever happened to her, that she couldn’t imagine doing anything else, and that being a mom is all she’s ever wanted to be. She posts about four or five pictures a day on social media of her kids and the love her kids have for each other and for her as their mother. Her kids always look happy with perfect hair and clean, smiling faces. She loves the hell out of being a mother and invests herself 100% into raising them and loving them. There’s nothing wrong with being that sort of mom because there is no single way to “do” motherhood, but I often feel like I should have the same attitude towards my role as a mom and I can’t help but wonder if some wires got crossed somewhere in my DNA. We grew up raised in the same LDS background, being told that motherhood would be our greatest calling in life, and the most important work that we will ever Morse 46 do, but why do I have such a hard time accepting this as my own mantra, like so many other LDS moms have already done with ease? The thought that always comes to my mind is: what will I do when my kids are grown and gone? I don’t want to wait 20 years to find out the answer to that question. Frequently, we hear in the church, from other LDS moms, the phrase, “Once my kids are out of the house, then I’ll focus on what I want to do. I’ll have time for me.” I’ve always had a problem with this statement that gets repeated over and over among women in congregations all over Utah. It is not church doctrine. It is a copout, in my mind, for dealing with the frustrating feeling of being expected to be the primary nurturer for our kids and not encouraged to also continue doing things that make us happy as individuals. I am far too practical to rely on such statements to counter my need to maintain my individuality in motherhood. What if something happens and I suddenly become the sole provider for my family? I have to be able to have skills to get a decent job and be able to support my kids. I see far too many LDS women, young women, who don’t pursue an education because all they want to do is be a “mom.” There is no thought for what happens when a perfect world goes horribly wrong, when just being a “mom” is not enough to put food on the table. I want to grab these women, look them in the eyes, and tell them they are more than “just” a mom, that it’s okay to do what they want to do now and not two decades down the road. There is a subtle practice of LDS women shaming other LDS women for choosing to work instead of staying at home or for choosing to do things that take them away from their children for longer periods of time. We are made to feel guilty and selfish for wanting to pursue our own interests. This “shaming” results in many LDS moms, myself included, in concluding that we are not “good” enough as mothers because being a mom is not everything we saw ourselves becoming. Morse 47 Because I don’t feel like I measure up to moms like Tiffany, I feel that I am not good enough for my own kids. I tend to think that I’m screwing up my kids’ childhood because I’ve got one foot in motherhood and the other foot still reaching for that life and that freedom to be who I wanted to be before I had kids. I still don’t know what it means exactly to be considered a “good” mom, and maybe I won’t ever be like Tiffany and declare this the greatest calling in my life, but two weeks ago, as I stood by my son Taj’s side, holding his hand, while the doctors stitched his face up after he was brutally attacked by a dog, I realized that in that moment I was being a good mom. I put on a brave face for him, told him to squeeze my hand when it hurt, and that I would be right by his side while they pushed a steel needle through his torn flesh and brought it back to wholeness again. I know I’m a good mom when my kids wake up sick in the middle of the night and I sit next to them through the early morning hours, nursing them through their sickness and watching movies until we fall asleep with exhaustion. Being a good mom, to me, is putting my kids first during times when all I really want to do in that moment is focus on something I want to do. I’ve come to learn that being a good mom, for me at least, involves sacrificing my time, my sleep, and my wants and needs for theirs, even when I don’t feel myself able to do it. Maybe I won’t ever be the Mary Poppins-type mom who does motherhood with a smile on her face and a song in her heart all of the time, but I am giving them my best efforts despite my misgivings about motherhood and my yearning for something more. Giving them my best despite who I am and while still pursuing my own interests, that is what being a good mom means to me. Morse 48 5. Guilt: The Curse that Keeps on Giving However “good” of a mom I think I am, it does not absolve me from the guilt in the motherhood equation. Guilt in motherhood is ever-evolving and always present. It sneaks in when deserved and butts in when it’s not. It shapeshifts and finds surprising ways to needle its way into the heart of a mother and make her question everything about herself. Guilt looks like me telling my kids that I’m so tired of them that I’m going to drop them off at a yard sale and let some weirdo buy them and then turning my back on them when they start to cry, and walking away when they ask, “Are you really going to sell us?” Guilt is yelling at my daughter to go back to bed for the tenth time and that if she comes out of her room one more time, that I’m going to spank her butt and lock her in her room. Guilt is when she starts to cry and says, “I just wanted a kiss and a hug.” Guilt is me not being there to catch my daughter as she took her first steps because I felt like I needed work as an outlet from the hassle of taking care of her and her brother. It’s the daycare workers celebrating this milestone with her instead of me. Guilt is wanting to spend my spare time reading, watching t.v., scrolling my Facebook feed, or doing anything I want for the hell of it instead of playing a game of hide and seek with my kids. Guilt is seeing the look of fear in my children’s eyes after yelling that they are driving me crazy. It’s hearing them whisper to each other, “Mom is so mean.” Guilt is not being able to control my emotions, flying off the handle when my kids spill a cup of juice or when my youngest, Sawyer, dumps a new bag of pretzels all over the kitchen floor. It’s me remembering that I’d once said I would never react to my kids’ mistakes this way. Morse 49 Guilt is telling my kids that I hate the dog for digging up my flowers and running through the house with muddy paws and that I wouldn’t care if she ran away. It’s watching my daughter’s eyes well up and watching her pull our dog Lucy close to her, crying into her soft, white poodle fur. It’s me wondering what kind of a person becomes irrationally irate with a dog that is my shadow. Guilt is not being the mom that I wish that I could be. It is wishing I had a different personality, a temperament that was more docile, gentle, nurturing, and slow to anger. Guilt is chasing my ambitions and feeling as though I’m abandoning my children. As much as I wish to avoid guilt, I know that as a mother I will always bear the weight of it, not only for my own mistakes, but for the mistakes my kids make, and for the bad things that happen in their lives that I will inevitably take upon myself as things I could have prevented had I only done this or that differently. It part of the fine-print in the contract of parenthood, a side-effect that doesn’t get better with time. As far as I can see, I have three choices concerning guilt: 1. Keep pretending I can avoid it by not making the same mistake twice, which, c’mon, who’s that perfect? 2. Dwell on the shame and self-loathing and what-ifs produced by guilt and convince myself that I’ll always be a screw-up mom and never get anything right. 3. Accept guilt because feeling it doesn’t mean I’m a bad mom or a bad person, and instead welcome it as an opportunity for self-reflection that promotes subtle changes in my approach to motherhood. Obviously, I’m working on my best attempt at number three, and trying to use guilt to my advantage instead of letting it become a little green monster wreaking havoc on my perception of myself as a mother. I’m changing my perspective, digging myself out of my own motherhood pitfalls, one shovel-full at a time. Morse 50 7. Learning to Climb Mountains with Kids on My Back Not granting guilt long-term residence in my mind has allowed me to have the clarity I needed to understand that my life will never be perfect, that perfect shouldn’t be my end goal or even my daily goal, and that a flawed individual such as myself can be a damn good mom regardless of my mistakes and especially because I’m working on becoming the best version of me by pursuing my own interests. A fulfilled, happier me, equates to a more positive, nurturing, and focused mom. During the summer of 2016, on a trip back home to Monticello, back to the mountains of my youth, I threw on one of my dad’s ball caps, donned my sunglasses, and loaded my three kids up in my parents’ jalopy of a jeep. I announced to my kids that we were going for a ride and we started up the mountain road, the jeep belching and coughing with each gear I happened to grind. Old Red only had three gears, with reverse starting where first gear should have been. After fighting with the gear shift the first ten minutes into our drive up the mountain, I figured out the backwards ways of it, which was a relief to me because second gear bit back hard every time I didn’t get it just right. We drove past Lloyd’s Lake, the local reservoir for Monticello, still half-full mid-July. The sputter of the jeep drowned out the dull roar of the grasshoppers as we drove past the lake until we hit the dirt road. I glanced over at the satellite towers on South Peak, specks of gray in the dead of the afternoon heat. I looked at the gas gauge, half-full, and wondered if that was enough to get us where we were going. Haiven and Sawyer, not even two years old, sat buckled together in the front seat, their eyes squinched against the glaring sun, legs and feet jostling with every bump in the road. The jeep vibrated and rattled violently as we hit washboards in the dirt. An old screwdriver and other lost tools rolled around on the floorboards. I looked in the rearview Morse 51 mirror at Taj’s contented smile, followed his eyes watching the steep rise of the blue mountain peaks to the west. “You guys want to go to the towers?” I yelled over the noise of the jeep. “Yeah!” was the enthusiastic reply. I called my dad to confirm that I was on the right dirt road, the one that would lead us through the steep passes, by the beds of lava rock, and into the cold thin air of the very top of South Peak. “You’re going all the way to the top?” he asked, sounding surprised. “Well be careful—it gets steep.” In the next hour we wound our way slowly and steadily up into the coolness of the aspens. We breathed the heavy scent of pine and spruce and let ourselves get lost in the beauty of the lush green grass speckled with wildflowers in the draws and up the steep slopes of the surrounding peaks. We slowed for the deer that crossed our path and waved happily at the other brave few who had already begun their own decent from the towers. Towards the top, the road grew ever more narrow and steep and the temperature dropped. We were nearing over 11,000 feet in elevation. With goosebumps on our arms and legs from the chill, we kept our focus on the towers, the road ahead, to avoid looking over the edge of the road that snaked along the top of the mountain slopes. I put on a brave face even though my knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel as we rounded the last corner and the tower station came into view. I drove past two older men sitting on the tailgate of a truck, deep in conversation, and I parked where I imagined the very top of the peak to be. Small outbuildings dotted the spaces in between the enormous steel towers that rose high above us in the air. Electricity hummed and the air felt alive. I hopped out and helped the younger kids out. We all held hands tightly and walked beneath the towers to look at what we Morse 52 had left down below: A patchwork quilt of fields, yellow, brown, and green, with squares of rich red dirt interspersed throughout stretched as far as the horizon to the east. We all stood, speechless, unable to absorb the great expanse of land dotted with water in front of us and felt keenly aware of our mortality in that moment. Our time was brief on top of that mountain, but as I carefully steered us back down to reality, I was again reminded that something in me had changed. I had become fearless in more ways than one that day. I was no longer afraid of the jeep and those temperamental gears. I used to tell my kids I couldn’t take them on jeep rides because my legs were too short and I had a hard time reaching the clutch. I preferred to let other people take my kids on adventures because I was afraid I didn’t know how to anymore. I was afraid I didn’t know how to live my life anymore, as a mom, being pulled in what I saw as two opposite directions: what my kids needed me to be and what I wanted to be and do with my life. I didn’t think I could be both. I couldn’t be that mom who sacrificed every part of herself for her kids—I still had to be me. Climbing South Peak that afternoon with my kids confirmed the possibility of still pursuing my own interests and investing in my own future as I lead my children towards theirs. The fibers of what I wanted to do and who I needed to be for my kids overlapped, merged, and slowly began weaving themselves together on that two-hour jeep ride, mending a rift that had split my sense of identity in two the moment my first son was born. I had done more than climb a mountain with my kids that afternoon, I had discovered what it means to be me and mom. I was finally okay with being both. My desire to create a union between who I wanted to be and who I felt I had to be for my kids was something that I had wrestled with emotionally, physically, and mentally during the Morse 53 lonely, afternoon hours of everyday mom life. The triumph on the mountain top had been in the works for nearly a decade. It all began in the late afternoon hours of daily motherhood existence. The four o’clock hour, for me, is the hour of desperation. It is that point in the day where I stand in my living room and stare out the window at our quiet street hoping, praying something will happen to offset the gloom inside. I usually have laundry that I should fold, homework that needs doing, and dinner to start, but it is the hour I most want to run away, jump in the minivan and just keep driving until I break down somewhere, ditch the minivan, hop on a Green Tortoise bus, make friends with people I’ve never seen the likes of in Utah, and ask to be dropped off somewhere with quaint little cottages and a babbling brook. Or sometimes I think I’d like to be a storm chaser racing across the flat plains of Tornado Alley, video camera on my shoulder—no I’d be the driver, tearing across a corn field, chasing the next F-5 tornado. Not many adrenaline rushes to be had like that in motherhood, except of course when one of my kids gets hurt or throws up in their bed in the middle of the night. I imagine any number of alternate realities for myself most afternoons, afternoons where I don’t have access to a mountain top, a jeep, or anywhere except home. It’s during these afternoon hours that I most struggle with the fear of wasting away, as I watch the stray cats out my window, and wonder how I will ever amount to anything just staying at home. This used to be my reality on a daily basis—putting myself through a philosophical torture and shaming myself for “just” being a mom when I could be so much more, as if being a mom wasn’t already hard enough! Five years ago, during the dreaded, 4 o’ clock hour, I determined that it was do or die that afternoon. I decided that I would do something crazy and find out for myself if I was still Morse 54 allowed to be me and be a mother. I was pregnant with my daughter Haiven, my second child, and I had to know, before she came out, that I could keep pursuing my interests in life while supporting my children in theirs. I had to know that I still had something to live for outside of those 4 o’clock hours. So I sat down that afternoon, with my identity at stake if I couldn’t prove myself right, and I began to sketch dress designs. I decided to try my hand at fashion design, a field in which I was completely inept and underqualified to pursue. I had sketched crude attempts at ballroom gowns as a young girl, but I had never pursued any formal training in fashion design. I was desperate and did not care. I wanted to be daring and I knew that stepping outside my comfort zone was the only way I was going to prove to myself that I was still somewhere inside this mom body. I spent a week sketching my ideas of dresses that I would like to see on the racks at Dillards or Macy’s. I had six designs—all modeled off 1960s-era fashion, complete with color schemes, fabric choices, and design names like “Fancy” and “Snappy” and “Golden.” I designed a dress with polka dots, a satin dress with a sheer lace overlay, and a dress with a smart little bow that the wearer tied at the shoulder. I had two color schemes for each design and as I looked over my handiwork, I remember feeling proud of myself for actually doing something about not feeling like I could do anything I wanted to anymore because of motherhood. I was on to something that afternoon; I was taking those first steps of merging who I wanted to be and who motherhood demanded I be. I believed my illustrations to be too rudimentary to be accepted by any prestigious design corporations with stringent tastes and unreachable standards for peons like myself, so I sought out a smaller company, Shabby Apple, with an owner, who like myself, was no design expert herself, but who still managed to create her own business selling her high-quality and fashion- Morse 55 forward dresses. I said a prayer and told God that this was my last-ditch attempt to reclaim who I was. I told Him that these crude sketches represented all that I was able to offer to reclaim my identity. I begged Him to help me see this venture through because failing meant possibly losing myself forever. I had to know if I could cross that fence that I felt motherhood had staked down on all sides of me. I took careful pictures of my sketches and drafted a backstory detailing the purpose of my design endeavor and I sent them off into cyber space, praying that whoever was on the receiving end of that email addressed to “To Whom it May Concern” at Shabby Apple would see the potential in those sketches and give me a chance to prove to myself that motherhood is a conduit to becoming more than who I used to be and who I am at present. I received a reply within a week. I stared at that email in my inbox, my hands motionless on the keyboard, heart pumping in my ears. I was scared to open it. Terrified of humiliating rejection, I forced myself to double click the bolded text and before reading the reply I’d received, I looked out the window through the brittle aluminum blinds of our home office at the vinyl fence we shared with our neighbors and their scruffy pine tree just beyond the fence that looked like a Christmas tree Times Square had thrown out decades ago. It was splitting in two down the middle and few needles still clung to its arthritic branches. The sight of that tree, split in two, with few remnants of its former self remaining, branches brittle and barely clinging to life, gave me a foreboding sense of my future if I did not reconcile my sense of self and who I felt I needed to be as a mother. Chiding myself for being a coward, I finally turned my attention to the email and shrieked with joy. I didn’t care if I woke up my son napping in the room next door. My designs had been accepted and someone would be contacting me shortly to walk me through the first steps of bringing my designs to fruition. Morse 56 After eight months of long-distance phone calls and emails to manufacturers and textile companies, the owner of Shabby Apple, seamstresses and pattern-makers, and being reduced to begging for money to see my dream through, twice, my line, given the name ’69, was launched. I watched the news on October 10th, 2011 as my line launched on KUTV 2 News while I gave birth to my daughter Haiven. I was transformed. I was now a mom who could be more than just “mom.” I was someone who could still create and make connections with society and achieve my dreams all while maintaining my role as mother. I finally understood, with the success of my line of dresses with Shabby Apple, that I didn’t have to give up one role to be the other. I didn’t have to give up me to be “mom.” In reclaiming myself during those months of trial and error with the dress line, I discovered a strength I didn’t know I had. I discovered that I can do hard things while still being a “good” mom and that nothing will ever be insurmountable to me again. I will have to work harder than I did before I had kids, but the road is still wide-open to me. Since this experience with the dress line, I have been reminded again and again that when I choose to listen to the desires of my heart and not make a habit of sacrificing it for the demands of motherhood, that I am a better person, not just for myself, but for my kids as well. I feel it my responsibility to illustrate to my kids with my own life choices that none of us is really ever just one thing. I have many roles to play in life and some roles require more effort, but that doesn’t mean that my identity need be swallowed up by any single role I choose to assume. I have learned that there is always a choice out of my supposed “dead ends” in life if I am willing to alter my perspective on my life when reason or doubt says that it can’t be done. I lived too much of my early years as a mother telling myself all the things I couldn’t be and couldn’t do—telling myself that I was stuck, that the trajectory of my life had come to a standstill when I became a mother. Morse 57 Today I welcome experiences that challenge my notions of what can and can’t be done within my sphere of life. This change that has happened in me has opened my eyes to opportunities all around, to reach out and grab hold of life and demand that it make room for me and what I want out of it. I won’t ever stop looking for mountains to climb and bringing my children along for one hell of a ride.