When life as we knew it changed, and schools, universities and daycares shut down “for 2 weeks” I like many moms transitioned into a work from home, daycare at home, stay at home role I never had any intention of living. “For 2 weeks”, I was to care for my three young children keeping them alive, fed and entertained while also working 3 days a week as a now “virtual” school-based SLP and teaching a now online course at a local university.  I took crash courses to learn Zoom, learn effective virtual course management, and learn how to keep students engaged. I re-imagined final assignments, progress monitoring and my interpretation of “too much” screen time for little minds.  As 2 weeks morphed into 2 months then schools and universities announced they'd be closing for the remainder of the year, I realized that my role as working professional mom was going to look very different from what I ever intended it to be.  And so began what my husband and I now refer to as “my pandemic life”.      

When I look back at the beginning, I am struck with the sadness and anger I felt to give up my identity as a working mom. I found myself asking why I had to be the one to stay home, to make a shift, to plead with managers and coworkers and other families to change schedules and meeting times. Why couldn't my husband stay at home?  Why couldn't I go and hide in the upstairs office, why couldn't I go find a Starbucks parking lot or some other WiFi enabled refuge...and the truth is my husband tried to make it an equitable transformation. He tried to stay home; tried to navigate a world where we worked and lived and schooled and ate and played and tantrumed all together in less than 1500 sq ft. It lasted about a week, and he was on a call with someone in a foreign country, talking about distribution charts, and logistics models when our then 4 year old had the loudest, most emotional breakdown of the month, and I lost my bananas. Soon the whole house was yelling or crying or stomping, and my typically patient husband came storming down the stairs to figure out why the house was vibrating from noise, everyone was crying and he had to excuse himself from an international video conference.  And so I was left to manage the schooling, the working, the cooking, the emotional adjustment, the snack giving, the whatever else we trudged through until my school year finally ended and we could start our summer- the whole reason I took a job in a school district. It was ugly. It was filled with sadness, rage, and anxiety. I missed deadlines; disappointed and frustrated college students I was teaching; and shifted expectations more than I could track. Finally however, the school year ended and I felt like I could breath even just for a few minutes. 

Our summer was filled with time outside, distanced visits with grandparents, and beach trips. We again shifted our expectations for everything from summer play dates, to grocery store trips and walks to the ice cream place. Overnight trips to the beach we'd taken for years were replaced with day excursions and waving at family from a distance. My kids became bad asses at wearing masks, staying away from people who weren't, and playing with each other. I stuck to a schedule to make sure we got outside, broke the rut of staring at screens, and I stayed somewhat on track of keeping the house livable and the food edible.  We walked to the playground on most mornings, made use of local trails, and waved at every neighbor who passed by our gates. I still yelled, the kids still cried and I still handed out what felt like 40 bazillion snacks a day. We eventually let our guard down, and started sleeping over with my parents and mother in law. In August we decided to join a local swim club, and we went everyday to soak up as much normal (while keeping our distance) as we could. 

As the summer wound down, as a family and as a mom there was a big decision that needed to be made. Virus numbers were only getting worse, and there seemed to be no end in sight. I needed to decide if I'd be returning to work, where we'd send our kids for care, and if needed what a leave of absence for me or my husband might look like.  Initially we'd signed the younger kids up for daycare, our oldest up for Kindergarten enrichment as well as public school. As my anxiety sky rocketed, and deadlines for leave applications loomed, I made the decision to not return to work. I was able to take advantage of a union negotiated leave that would grant me unpaid time off for the entirety of the 2020-2021 school year. I also declined an offer to teach a new course at our local university. 

At the beginning of September 2020 I started my new official role as a pandemic stay at home mom. I set out to provide learning experiences for my preschooler, enriching experiences for my toddler, and foster a love of learning for my Kindergartner.  As became a theme I adjusted my expectations, shifted the schedule and tried to hold tight as emotions continued to evolve. I tried to remember that I was doing something I'd never done before. Much like early motherhood, this would take learning and grace, time and patience. I've cried, yelled, screamed and felt bitter. I started medication and therapy to work through my anxiety.  But I think most importantly, I've learned to recognize that I am incredibly lucky to spend all of this time with my kids, watching them grow and navigate their pandemic lives. My family is not negatively impacted by my pandemic life in terms of finances, food security or the ability to return to work. I am blessed and when I remember grace and patience I can almost by thankful for this shift.

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My mom died 4 months before I found out I was pregnant with my daughter.   My mom was my biggest champion, and us kids were the center of her world, even after we were grown.  Finding out I was pregnant was both joyful and deeply sad – the definition of bittersweet.  I know my mom would have been so thrilled to hear the news and would have shared it with every one of her friends that same day. (When I’d go home to visit and we’d run into friends at church or the grocery store, it was always VERY clear that Mom had kept them updated on my life!)  
As I suffered through ridiculously terrible morning sickness, I wanted to call my mom for sympathy, and I wanted to ask her if she had experienced something similar.  
As my pregnancy progressed and the morning sickness waned, I was grieving my mom’s death.  I wept, heaving sobs, crying myself to sleep many nights.  I worried about the impact on the “bean” growing in my womb.  
My sweet friends organized a baby shower for me.  The women gathered in a circle to bless me and the baby who was coming.  My friend who was leading the women in offering these blessings asked me if I wanted to say anything about my mom.  What a thoughtful offer, right?  Well, that didn’t go well.  In that moment, I wanted to run and hide and weep and never see anyone again.  Instead, I choked down my sobs and said, “No thanks.”  Awkward.  The wave of grief that overcame me was about the realization that I was going to have to give birth and make my way through mothering an infant without my own mother.  Of course I knew this intellectually but I hadn’t felt it fully until that moment.  
And then, the moment of truth.  Giving birth to my daughter was one of the most powerful experiences of my life – right up there with being with my mom when she died.  In the moments after my daughter was born, I felt more connected to my mom than ever, and also felt her loss more deeply than ever.  (Well, let’s be honest – in the moments after my daughter was born I was getting stitched up after a terrible tear, so I wasn’t really thinking about my mom.  But I’m talking about once I recovered from that!)
During that first year of my daughter’s life, I learned so much about my mom.  I learned what being a mother is, and I began to understand my mom in a whole new way.  I want to apologize to her for all the ways I misunderstood her actions as overbearing or annoying when in fact they were just the loving, protective actions of a fierce mama bear.  I want to have the relief of saying, “Mom, I’m sorry. I get it now.” 
I want to be able to call her and hear her squeal with delight at each milestone my daughter reaches. 
I both understand my mom more than I ever did when she was alive and also miss her more with each parenting question or milestone my daughter reaches. 
So, what helps? The first step: Feeling the feelings.   Talking to people who get it.  Grief work is hard work, but it’s worth it.  Grief work is meant to be done in connection and is meant to be witnessed.  I co-founded a group of motherless mothers who were also parenting small children and we supported each other in parenting through grief.  Our monthly sessions were a place I knew I could go to cry, scream, vent, and be petty about the moms around me with grandmas swooping into help.  We figured out how to talk to our kids about our moms, and to keep our relationship alive with our deceased mothers.
So if you are a motherless mother who is pregnant or parenting an infant, remember it is normal to:

• Wish your mom were here so you could compare experiences
• Wish you could call your mom for advice (even if you probably wouldn’t take it!)
• Feel too overwhelmed to talk about your grief
• Feel more connected to your mom 
• Want to share your parenting joys and challenges with her
• Feel that each milestone is bittersweet 

I now specialize in providing online grief support for motherless mothers, because I don’t want anyone to go through this experience alone.  I encourage you to: find another motherless mother to be your buddy. Find a therapist.  Hire a grief coach.  Join a grief support group. But know that your grief is sacred and necessary, not something to just push down or survive.  

On this night into the next day in 2007, I experienced trauma beyond what I even thought possible. I always write blog entries and never publish them, but today is a day I think it's appropriate to share a brief bit that led me into trauma-informed birth work. I am also linking below to the amazing Birth Bruja podcast on the episode where Eri so lovingly interviewed me about my survivor birth story. 

In 2007, I was taken and held in the home of a man I did not know, and assaulted. I survived physically, and it left me flailing, trying to find safe ground to root again and thrive. I sunk everything I had into healing, because, for me, it was life or death. I had survived, and I was not about to hand my life over any more, or give anymore than had already been taken. I found incredible healing in yoga-- my body could do amazing things! I reclaimed it, reclaimed its power and its beauty, and began to slowly love her. I went to trauma counseling. I tried groups. I started a nonprofit to help survivors heal through creative arts and movement. All of it peeled away the trauma, and left me whole again. 

When I became pregnant, I very naively expected the birth world to be trauma-informed. I expected that I would be given options for exams, and that I would be told what was going to be done to my body before it happened. This was far from the case. I always say that I am an "out loud" survivor. I am fairly comfortable sharing my survivorship. I told provider after provider that I was a survivor, and still exams were traumatic and upsetting. What was happening to all of the survivors who did not feel as comfortable sharing their survivorship with their providers? It left me with the realization that trauma-informed education needed to extend to birth work. 

I began speaking at conferences and workshops with birth workers, lactation professionals, OBs, labor and delivery nurses, and midwives. Every single time I would finish, a doctor or other provider would come up to me and unload guilt for not knowing before. It is always wonderful being able to empower birth workers and others by sharing information on birth and trauma, and  helping with the healing and moving forward-- when you know better, you do better. I have met amazing healthcare professionals and other birth workers through sharing what I know best in this life-- trauma and healing. It was after years of doing this type of education that I realized how much I longed to be back with clients hands on in a direct service capacity. 

Being a trauma-informed doula and lactation counselor has allowed me to offer healing, empowerment and advocacy in spaces that may feel frightening or retraumatizing to survivors and others who struggle with higher anxieties. There is nothing that makes me happier than helping someone realize how amazingly strong and wonderful they are. 

While my birth experience was challenging at best, it led me further down the path of post-traumatic growth, and led me further into spaces where I could help others. I learned too that my body was not my trauma, and that it could do amazing things. Experiencing this trauma anniversary in quarantine certainly is producing some challenges. Feeling "stuck" tends to be a hot button feeling for me. Not having the typical distractions of going out, spending time with friends or family, working, and generally keeping busy has left me to sit with that girl from 2007.

Today, as I sit with her, I am telling her (and maybe you) that she is lovely, and brave, and so so strong. She survived the unthinkable, and spoke it out, and healed it up, and came into her own knowing exactly her worth and her wants. She has been to hell and back, and when you touch that darkness, the light in every corner is more beautiful than you could imagine. 

If you would like, please visit the link below to listen to my survivor birth story. Note that it was created gently and lovingly, and while there is mention of sexual assault, most of the story focuses on survival, thriving and growth. Thank you for bearing witness to my story. 
soundcloud.com/birthbruja/episode19