My initials are nostalgic at best of much simpler yet tougher times. Perhaps they were more fun. Tougher in a way, so much better only because I could eat an elephant and not gain weight. It was when I started my first (well second but first full time) job in 2002.
We were referred to using our initials at work. So everyone was AU, BA, RC or KY at work. I of course was HS.
As part of the NaBloPoMo 2018 initiative revived by a handful of us in fond memory of the BlogHer tradition, the prompt I put up today was to write a letter to self a year from now.
There’s so much I’d want to say to myself and so much I wish I don’t have to say, but I will still?
Here goes.
Dear HS
Your Mom game is going strong yet a year from now, hopefully you’re able to get a better grip on your child’s behavioural growth and have weaned Sassi and not lost your marbles in the process.
I want you to remember that it was just a year ago when you were spending nights designing products, working on costs, figuring marketing campaigns, life as a mother, a wife (not a girlfriend), settling back into the city you always wanted to run away from yet ended back in, the country situation heaving like a mother about to give birth, writhing in agony. There was so much noise in your life that your introvert self wanted to curl up and die in a corner until that tiny little person would tug at your shirt and play peekaboo with the widest of smiles and twinkles jam packed in those eyes.
That made you not want to give up on life. That made you want to keep on keeping on, drowning yourself in work that is meaningful and fun and distracting! It distracted you from how tired you are. It distracted you from the maternity leave you never took because the drive to keep working and making your business go forward was bigger than your stitches aching. It distracted you from breathing.
As tiring as it was, that high was unmatchable. We can rest when we die but don’t forget that adrenaline rush and don’t let that toddler’s early babbling drown in that adrenaline rush. She was, is and will remain the centre of your universe.
This is all new territory. General happiness but your penchant of drowning yourself in work at the sight of anything new and different needs to stop at some point. Yes. The baby was new. Yes being a mother was a responsibility that would petrify any responsible adult.
No it doesn’t need to turn you into stone or make you overwhelm yourself with work placing unnecessary responsibilities on yourself. I hope you’ve learned to take it easier than last year because your child needs a calm mother more than anything else.
I hope you remember the many lessons your 18mo taught you around this time last year and every single time she makes you smile, for that alone quite literally increases your life expectancy.
I hope you remember turning the bullying gaslighting tables on people and calmly walking away without internalising a shred of those experiences because that was a muscle you had just learned to flex. I hope you’ve learned newer tricks since then but above all, do remember your darling husband who stands by you through all of those times and now. Whose love and care and even just a smile makes your day a better place to be.
Love yourself for you’ve habitually put yourself through a meat grinder, I hope you’ve stopped or are on your way to soon quit this one.
Remember your journey. You’ve come far but I promise you, you’ll go so much farther.
Much love
HS