I know, I know, I am stating the obvious here. But I think the difficulty of this situation is something we all need to acknowledge from time to time.

Last weekend, I was grumpy. I just felt utterly and completely drained. I saw some mom friends at the park during a playdate and vented. My friend Katie looked me in the eyes and said, “This is hard. This is really, really hard.” Again, so obvious, but damn, I needed to hear someone say that and validate it for me.

So that’s what I want to say to everyone: this is really, really hard. There are not enough swear words in the English language to describe how hard this is!

My therapist has told me many times that she believes the pandemic is a traumatic experience. That resonates with me – but what are we supposed to do with a traumatic experience? I guess I’ll have to reflect on that in the months ahead…

There are many things that are difficult about the 2020 pandemic, but here are a few that I talked about during Episode 9:

• We don’t have a handbook for this. We are living history! There have been pandemics before, but never like this one, with social media and international travel and a 24/7 news cycle.
• It feels endless.
• There are so many ups and downs. Just when I think I have processed my pandemic feelings, new feelings pop up and down I go again…
• The isolation.
• The boredom.
• The grief. So many layers of grief for so many different things.
• The loss of momentum! Here in Pasadena, the pandemic just stopped life in March. It’s hard to get back into the groove of doing things.
• Sensory overload. The pandemic is just too big for my brain to process.
• Helplessness.
• Loss of control over our lives.

And despite all these difficulties, regular life with regular life problems marches on.

How will we heal from the pandemic? When will we heal? Can the healing even start when the pandemic is ongoing? Can we have catharsis? Is there an ongoing healing that we can seek? Where we heal and keep breaking and ripping and falling apart and healing again?

I feel so raw and transparent and fragile and tender and also I feel grateful and joyful and filled with grace and then angry and frustrated. It is so much.

I will keep paying attention to my experience with the pandemic and stay curious about my feelings and thoughts. I know I can get through this. But damn, it is really, really hard.

When I started thinking about this episode, I thought it would be helpful to have a definition of “intuition.” The word can be a bit woo-woo and mysterious. I decided to start with the dictionary.

According to the folks at Dictionary.com, “intuition” means “1. direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process…”

My intuition immediately objected, so I decided to see if Brené Brown has any thoughts on intuition. She does! According to Brené Brown:

Intuition is not a single way of knowing – it’s our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we’ve developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith and reason.”

Brené Brown

Yes! That feels more like my understanding of intuition. Then I found this great quote from Einstein:

I believe in intuitions and inspirations…I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.

Albert Einstein

Double yes! Sometimes I know something, but I cannot tell you why I know it. I just know that I know something and it is right. That is my intuition.

Sometimes intuition feels like ancient wisdom, as if I am drawing upon something that one of my ancestors learned. Other times intuition feels like my connection to the divine. Still other times, it just feels like my gut is able to process a quick answer far faster than my brain by relying on all my experiences, feelings and knowledge.

Intuition is a deep inner knowing. It is soul knowledge. It often feels magical.

I believe everyone is born with intuition and we never actually lose it, but our intuition often gets buried and obscured by modern living. But it is still there! The connection can always be reclaimed and strengthened.

I started reconnecting with my intuition in 2013 after I had postpartum depression. When Pippa was a baby, she did not like napping in her crib. I could get her to take really long naps if I held her in my arms or got her to fall asleep during a walk. But the Popular Majority disapproved and insisted that Pippa nap in her crib. (The Popular Majority consisted of my husband, my parents, a doula who helped during my recovery, my psychiatrist at the time, various friends, and assorted parenting experts.) The Popular Majority insisted that my mental health depended on me getting Pippa to nap in her crib.

My intuition, though, knew that crib naps were just not for Pippa.

But I wanted to make the Popular Majority happy so I tried. A doula taught me a method to get Pippa to nap in her crib. It involved lots of rocking and hushing and putting Pippa down and scooping her back up the moment she fussed. It sometimes took forty-five minutes to get Pippa to finally nap in her crib. Then she would only nap for twenty or thirty minutes. But if I held her in my arms or pushed her in the stroller, she napped for two or three hours! With no fuss!

Still, I kept trying to please the Popular Majority.

Until one glorious day… I was at the mall. I was rushing to leave so I could get home in time to put Pippa down for a crib nap. I felt stressed by the whole situation and was agonizing over the stupid nap time rituals that just made my baby wail.

So I thought, Fuck it.

The crib naps were not working for me or Pippa. I pushed her around the mall and let her fall asleep in her stroller and had a grand time shopping. After that, I let Pippa nap in the baby carrier, against my chest, or in her stroller. We were both so much happier and I felt deeply satisfied to be trusting my intuition.

Society does not want us connected to our intuition. Companies want us to feel insecure about our inner wisdom so we will buy their product, watch their show, read their magazine. The patriarchy is not really interested in our intuition, either, unless our intuition is telling us to stay in the kitchen and do all the housework like a good wife should.

Well, I am sick of marketers trying to separate me from my intuition, and I am tired of the patriarchy telling me what it means to be good.

After defying the Popular Majority and giving up on crib naps for Pippa, I felt an ache to paint. I stumbled upon Brave Intuitive Painting, by Flora Bowley. Somehow my intuition knew this was the book I needed. I started painting and it was a wonderful way to connect with my inner wisdom. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in getting messy with her intuition.

Flora turned me on to the idea of taking intuitive walks. When I leave the house on my daily walk, I never know which route I am taking. I let my feet and intuition decide. I always feel delighted when I get to a corner and my intuition tells me which way to go next.

I also reconnected with my intuition through journaling. I heard about this technique on an episode of the Elise Gets Crafty podcast but damned if I remember which interviewee talked about it. But the guest talked about asking her intuition a question, waiting for her intuition to respond and then writing the response. I adapted that technique in my own journaling practice.

If I have a specific question for my intuition, I write that question in print. Sometimes, I just write, How am I doing? or What areas of my life need attention?

Then I wait.

When my intuition responds, I wrote that response in cursive. Sometimes my intuition has pages and pages of things to say. Other times, it’s just a few sentences.

This was completely awkward and uncomfortable at first. I felt very self-conscious the first time I said Hello to my intuition. But this practice quickly became second nature. Now the responses from my intuition tend to arrive within a few seconds and I enter into a deep flow state as I converse with my inner wisdom.

I also love using the Tarot to connect with my intuition. I have the Universal Waite Tarot Deck. I would like to get two or three more decks so my intuition can not just pick a card, but pick the deck. But for now, I’m happy with the one deck I own.

When I am working with the Tarot, I write a question in my journal. Then I shuffle the deck, spread out the cards, and pull the one that feels right. I look at the card and write about it in my journal. I describe what I see and what feelings and thoughts arise. I write about why this card speaks to me – or why it doesn’t. Sometimes my intuition says, Nope, not this card, so I pull another.

There are lots of books that describe the meanings of the different cards. I don’t care about any of that. I’m just using the Tarot as another path to access my intuition. The images on my Tarot cards help me get into the intuition zone. Why? I don’t know. But my intuition guided me to this practice, and my intuition knows what it needs!

Meditation has also helped me strengthen my relationship with my intuition. When I meditate, I create space between my sense of self and my thoughts. The practice helps me distinguish between my inner wisdom and my busy monkey brain.

If you are looking to strengthen your connection with your intuition, you need to do what works for you. Trust your intuition. Trust your inner wisdom. I don’t care what anyone else has told you. You are already the teacher that you need.

1. Journaling. Bonus points if I start my day journaling before I get sucked into the Mom Vortex. That way, I feel more juiced up and ready for the extreme parenting of this Pandemic Season.

2. Meditation. I use the Calm App.

3. Long walks. Alone.

4. Texting with friends.

5. Talking to friends on the phone

6. Creating a memory box of pandemic life. I have been saving some magazines so one day, I can look back with my kids and reflect on this experience.

7. Getting as much fresh air as possible. We are in the midst of a brutal heat wave, so right now, “as much as possible” is very little. But when the heat dies down, we’ll be back out in nature.

8. Social distancing play dates with friends. Community builds immunity!

9. Audiobooks and podcasts.

10. Music that makes me want to dance.

11. Watching The Star Wars movies with my kids. We started with the original trilogy a few weeks ago.

12. Reading Harry Potter to my seven year old. We finished The Sorcerer’s Stone last week and started The Chamber of Secrets last night.

13. Strength training. I started doing this last week. I used to lift weights at the gym but have only been walking the past couple of years. Right now, I have two pound weights. Baby steps! I’m planning to hit the store for resistance bands very soon…

14. The Far Side. I just checked today’s cartoon and literally laughed out loud.

15. Stretching. It helps me relax.

16. Zoloft.

17. Talking to my therapist every two or three weeks. We talk over Facetime. It is not ideal, but it works.

18. Watching old movies with Nathan. We just finished The Gold Rush, a Charlie Chaplin silent film, that took me away from the pandemic.

19. Gardening. We planted cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and basil that are booming. We have four stalks of corn that are growing and one watermelon plant that is deciding whether it wants to wilt or thrive. We also have two pumpkin vines but no pumpkins yet. Right now, with the heat, all I can do is water the garden before running back inside. But when the heat dies down, I’m looking forward to more gardening with my kids.

20. Knitting. I do this at night while watching t.v. with Nathan.

21. But any crafting boosts my mood as well. I did perler beads with Pippa recently and made a rainbow out of rope and yarn. All very satisfying and soul-charging.

22. Reading poetry.

23. Making lists.

Our adventures with The Distance Learning Shit Show resumed today as Pippa started second grade. There is no finish line in sight, so I am going to have to work hard to keep my mental health in good shape. I think this is going to involve a very intentional balancing act.

On the one hand, this experience completely and absolutely sucks. For me and Pippa, distance learning is just not as good as “real” school. She loves school. She wants to see her friends and have some independence. And I love having her go to school! I need time alone so I can write and feel like an individual.

On the other hand, I do not want to wallow in self-pity and despair. We are still having fun! Pippa and I read the first Harry Potter book together, and I’m slowly introducing the kids to the Star Wars movies. We have done lots of swimming this summer and gone on some fun hikes. Life is good.

But then I think about the things we have lost. We did not go to Las Vegas for our annual trip with my extended family. We did not go to Nebraska to see Nathan’s family. My cousin’s October wedding was postponed until September 2021. And those are just the big things! We have also lost the indoor activities — movie theaters, bowling, the mall — that make hot summer days easier. I would kill to just sit inside an air conditioned Starbucks for an hour to write and daydream and people watch.

Yet these are precious years. Pippa is 7, Julian is 4, and they are so sweet and fun and relatively easy. Who knows what the future holds? I do not want to dwell on the things we have lost and miss out on the things we have.

Yet we have lost so much and we keep losing more.

I have to honor both the good feelings and the bad. It’s a balancing act. When I am feeling frustrated or sad or angry, I vent to Nathan or text friends. I write about it in my journal. I make a note to talk about it with my therapist. I let the feelings flow through me.

But once the negative feeling has had space to unfold, I let it go. I go back to gratitude and joy in the little things: the way Julian’s hair sticks out; Pippa’s latest art project; a particularly magnificent cloud.

This is a very imperfect art and it takes work. I often catch myself stewing in shitty annoyed feelings. Then I have to pause and consider. Is this how I really feel right now? Or am I just enjoying some unwarranted outrage because pandemic life is boring?

And I don’t always pause and consider. When I am sucked into a vortex of shitty emotions, it feels a bit self-righteous to linger there. Look at me! How I suffer! Like I said, this is an imperfect art.

Grace and self-compassion are going to be essential in the weeks (months?) ahead. I am going to wallow in shitty feelings. I am also going to eat too many potato chips to numb some other shitty feelings. I am going to beat myself up for being annoyed with distance learning. I am going to swing abruptly from grief to joy to annoyance to peace to frustration to contentment, and that might all happen in the space of five minutes.

But then, every now and then, there will be a moment of balance. I will make space for the grief and joy at the same time. In that moment, I will be aware of the challenges and blessings, and I will hold them both dear to my heart. My heart will ache and swell simultaneously. And as my heart beats with both joy and sorrow, gratitude and grief, I’ll know that despite all the uncertainty, I am certain that I can do this.

And that will be enough.

I recorded this episode on August 13, 2020, Day Sixty-Freaking-Nine of my menstrual cycle. But guess what? I am typing these show notes on August 14, 2020, and it is DAY ONE OF MY CYCLE. That is right! Fire the confetti cannon! I got my period!

Oh Lordy, I feel so good. Zoloft did a good job of taking the edge off my Epic PMS, but I feel like my body is renewing itself now in the best way possible.

Okay, so back to the regularly programmed show notes. At the beginning of episode the seventh, I mentioned a podcast that I have been recently binging. It’s called Therapy Thoughts, and it is hosted by Tiffany Roe, a licensed clinical mental health counselor. I would like to talk about therapy in a future episode (sooner rather than later), but for now, I just wanted to share this awesome podcast because it is helping me supplement the work I am currently doing with my own therapist.

During the bulk of this episode, I talked about my transition from using a traditional Western doctor as my primary care physician to a naturopath. A naturopath is a doctor who goes to medical school and passes all the requisite boards but takes a more natural approach to helping the body heal itself. Instead of just quickly writing a prescription to alleviate a symptom, they dive deeper to figure out if there are any deeper issues and then recommend things like nutritional changes, supplements, meditation and exercise in addition to prescriptions. Yes, when necessary, my naturopath gives me a prescription! I am currently taking Naturethroid for my hypothroidism.

I love meeting with my naturopath. I feel like I have made enormous strides with my health since my first appointment three years ago. With my more traditional physicians, I have always felt like the doctor had one eye on the clock. My naturopath regularly spends an hour with me.

Traditional physicians also did not always seem to believe me when I told them about health issues. For example, when I started taking the birth control pill years ago, I noticed my periods suddenly got way more intense. I told my gynecologist, and he said, “Periods get lighter when you go on the pill.” And he gave me a look like he thought I was crazy. I had to talk to my girlfriends to learn that many women experience heavier bleeding when they are on the pill and even feel crazy. But my old gynecologist just wanted me to fit into a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all-uteruses.

But that is not how the human body works! We all have our own biological nuances. Some of us have allergies. Some of us don’t. Some of us are lactose intolerant. Some of us can eat whatever we want. After years of being made to feel like my health did not matter to the doctors who were supposed to be caring for my health, I finally decided to take a chance on a naturopath.

Oh my god. I am never turning back. I love my naturopath!

A few appointments ago, my naturopath told me that I deserve to be healthy. My whole body tingled joyfully when she said that. After so many years of feeling like a nuisance to my doctors, I finally found a doctor who affirmed my right to be radiantly and joyfully healthy. I have felt so empowered the past few years and feel confident that even as my hormones go a little bat shit crazy, my naturopath will help me navigate the curves ahead.

Embracing Radiant Health is one of the themes I want to keep exploring on my podcast and blog. I might be in perimenopause land, but I still want to end this new decade of life healthier and stronger than I started it.

Last week, I told my therapist about a defining childhood moment that has had my brain churning ever since.

I went to Catholic schools for eleven and a half years. Mass was a regular feature. During elementary school, the entire school attended Mass together at least once a month. I can still remember being a first and second grader, watching all the big kids lining up to receive the wafer that the priest had turned into the body of Jesus and yearning to be a part of that exclusive club. It just seemed so grownup!

In the second grade, we had a special book to teach us everything we needed to learn in order to be ready to receive communion. This felt very important. In the spring, at a special Mass, the second graders would celebrate their First Communion. (In this case, “special” means very, very long.) The girls would wear fancy white dresses, and the boys were wear suits. Then there would be cake and donuts and everyone would go home and have a party with their family and get presents. All this pomp and circumstance seemed like a big deal.

Except on the big day, I would just be an onlooker.

According to the Catholic Church, I was not even eligible to take communion because I had never been baptized. (The horror! The scandal!) My dad had been raised Catholic; my mom was Jewish; and they were not religious. They sent me to public school for kindergarten and the first half of first grade. Then they switched me to my cousins’ Catholic school because long story short, I was tutoring kids older than me and the older kids were tormenting me with sexual jokes. (That’s a whole other post!)

At first, I was actually okay with not receiving First Communion. Sure I would miss out on a party and presents but I still got Hannukah and latkes.

But then.

Oh, this is the part that makes my inner child hurt.

My second grade class was at our weekly music class. We had to learn songs for the special First Communion Mass. The principal, an Irish nun, arrived unannounced. She remained standing by the door so all had to swivel around in our desks to give her our full attention. We all got quiet and turned around in our desks so we could give our full attention to the principal. In her no-nonsense voice, she asked for a handful of students to come to the front of the room.

Theo.

Mei.

Courtney. (That would be me.)

I went to stand by the principal, not knowing what to expect. Was I getting an award? A prize? I felt so special.

Sr. Stella gestured at me and the other kids standing at the front of the room. In a loud, crisp voice, she announced, “These children are not receiving First Communion.” Then she gestured magnanimously toward the twenty-five seated children. “Everyone else is.”

My stomach flipped. My heart pounded. I felt a bit dizzy. I was special, but from the principal’s tone of voice I knew it was not a good sort of special.

After that music class incident, my friends liked to tease me that they were having parties. They would receive gifts. I would not get a party. I would not get any gifts. To add insult to injury, I still had to go to the First Communion Mass and watch my cousin Julie celebrate her first communion and then go to the family party where presents would be heaped on Julie and I’d receive a big heap of nothing.

This sucked. Why should my cousin and friends get parties and fancy dresses and presents and the right to receive communion with all the big kids and not me? I was studying all the same stuff in class. I was a good student. What was wrong with me? Why was I being left out?

I no longer felt special for having a Jewish mom. I felt ashamed that the principal thought less of me. Now, as a forty-one year old woman, I can look back and say, Hey, what was that bitch nun thinking? How dare she ostracize eight year olds that way?! How dare she use shame to push her religious agenda?! And then, a more compassionate part of me thinks, Wow, how sad for the principal. If she was that cruel to children, how cruel was she to herself?

But at the time this all happened, I was eight years old. I did not have the experience to process my feelings. Instead, I shoved them away and then told my parents that I wanted First Communion. When they refused, I sulked and pouted until they relented.

I received a shotgun baptism one month before First Communion.

And then, I received First Communion with my classmates, feeling proud and victorious. But also, hollow. Even when I was eight years old, my body knew that changing who I was for the sake of fitting in did not feel right.

Whew! It feels good to write that story. After sharing that incident with my therapist, I have been wondering about what other messages I internalized during my Catholic school years. For example, my therapist mentioned the concept of “original sin.” According to what I learned at Catholic school, a baby who dies and has not been baptized goes to hell. Holy shit! When my therapist mentioned that, I felt my entire body writhe uncomfortably.

I think I need to do a Catholic school detox.

I don’t like writing that because I know a lot of good Catholics. I am related to a lot of Catholics who love their faith and religion. But we can all have different experiences with the same thing. Just because Catholicism works for some of my friends and family does not mean it was a safe experience for me. I have a right to detox from a damaging experience just as much as they have a right to continue embracing a religion that works for them.

I want to dig into this work. Examine the things I learned in Catholic school and question them. I am forty-one years old. I get to keep the ideas that work for me and abandon the rest. But I will not know what internalized subconscious ideas are holding me back until I take a closer look.

When my son Julian was born, I knew I was at risk for postpartum depression because I had PPD after the birth of my daughter Pippa. With some help from my psychiatrist, and a lot of soul searching and journaling, I came up with a plan to keep my mental health as strong as possible:

• Zoloft!
• A night nurse!
• AND NOT BREASTFEEDING!!!

Yes, you read that right: for the sake of my mental health, I decided to forego breastfeeding entirely.

I breastfed my daughter Pippa for four months. It sucked (pun intended). I did not make a lot of milk, so poor Pippa would breastfeed for an hour and still be cranky. Then after an hour’s reprieve, she was back at my boob. In the evening, she would cluster feed, which in this case, is a fancy way of saying “breastfeed nonstop for three hours.” I spent more than half the day breastfeeding, and then in the middle of the night, I would be up for over an hour at a time just to get her fed.

I pumped to build up my supply, but it did not work. My boobs are just not programmed to make a lot of milk. in another day and age, Pippa would have been fed by the village wet nurse.

The difficulties of breastfeeding made me feel trapped. How could I leave the house if I might have to spend an hour with Pippa latched to my boob? What was I supposed to do if she got hungry at Target? Just sit down in the middle of an aisle for an hour??

When I was pregnant, I encountered numerous breastfeeding experts: a doula who taught a prenatal yoga class; another doula who taught a class on breastfeeding at our hospital; the authors of breastfeeding books that I read; and friends who had breastfed their babies. The message from all these experts was universal: Breast is Best! Breast is Best! Breast is Best!

Spoiler alert: just because something rhymes does not mean it is true.

But back in 2013, during the four months that I breastfed Pippa, I truly believed that in order to be a good mom, I had to exclusively breastfeed my baby on demand. This created a toxic belief that I had to prove my love for my daughter by sacrificing everything for her.

The more I think back on my experiences with postpartum depression and breastfeeding, the more I think that all that bullshit about “breast is best” laid the foundation for my mental health crisis.

Because here’s the thing: a healthy and happy mama, and a loved and fed baby, is best.

For some, this does mean exclusive breastfeeding. But for others, it means some breastfeeding and some bottles; and for still others, it means fuck breastfeeding, this baby likes bottles and formula.

After four months of breastfeeding Pippa, I was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for four days. I started taking Zoloft and Mirtazipane and attending therapy. Every day, I started to feel a little better — except when I had to pump. Whenever I pumped, I felt anxious. Anxious that I was only able to eek out a tablespoon of milk at a time (how could that be enough for my baby?) and anxious that I had to keep doing this thing that did not feel right for me.

I can say that now: breastfeeding did not feel right for me.

But I hated even thinking that in 2013 because I thought it meant I was a terrible mom and therefore an evil human being.

Sometimes, when I think about the pressure to breastfeed, I wonder: what ever happened to feminism? To a woman’s right to be in charge of her body? Is there some breastfeeding exclusion that I missed?

When I was discharged from the psych unit and reunited with my baby, I tried to breastfeed her. She did this half-heartedly for a minute and then refused. Even though she was hungry, she went on breastfeeding strike for several hours until I realized something important: mother does not always know best. In this case, my four month old baby knew better. She knew that breastfeeding was not working for us. She preferred the milkshakes in bottles, thank you very much. At first, I was heartbroken but then I realized bottles and formula really were better for us. My daughter was happier, and I felt more connected to her as I fed her bottles, and gazed into both her eyes, than I ever did when her face was mashed against my boobs.

Pippa is healthy and exuberant, beautiful and brilliant. I don’t care what any expert thinks. For us, bottle and formula were indeed best.

So when 2015 rolled around, and I was pregnant with my son Julian, I knew immediately that he would be a bottle baby. After my c-section, a nurse urged me to breastfeed him.

“We just need a bottle, please,” I said. “I’m not breastfeeding him.”

“But don’t you want to give him the benefits of colustrum?” the nurse pleaded.

There were a hundred reasons I could give the nurse for my decision to skip breastfeeding entirely. But what did her opinion matter? I did not need her approval to do what was best for me and my family.

So instead of telling her the story of a mom who felt destroyed by breastfeeding, I smiled and said, “We just need a bottle, please.”

If you are interested in learning more about my postpartum adventures, check out my memoir, Adventures with Postpartum Depression!

This week, I talk about guilt on the podcast.

I have been hounded by guilt for most of my life. It was at its worst when I had postpartum depression, but I often felt guilty — for no valid reason! — long before I had kids. I remember feeling intensely guilty in the second grade because I could no longer read the words on the chalkboard and assumed Jesus was punishing me.

I have started examining my guilt when it pops up. I have found that beneath the guilt, there are some beliefs about my self-worth and lovability that no longer serve me. I am working on replacing those new beliefs with ones that build my self-esteem.

It felt really good to talk about guilt on the podcast.

I have written a couple of posts recently that dive more deeply into my experiences with guilt. In May, I blogged about Staying Wildly Alive Without the Motherhood Guilt. And just last week, I tangoed with the ways that Motherhood Guilt is Bullshit.

I don’t think this is the last time I will talk about guilt on the podcast. I was nervous about opening about this subject, but I’m glad I did.

On my most recent podcast episode, I talked about neglecting the housework so that I can have time to attend to my passions, creativity and deeper soul needs. I feel very strongly about that. But as much as I sometimes want to neglect the housework, guilt can still be such a bitch. I talk and write about neglecting the housework in favor of self-care but I still suffer from all sorts of motherhood guilt. Right now, as I am writing this, and my kids are playing in another room, I feel guilty. It’s like there’s a nagging whisper in my head. You should be playing with the kids. You should be giving them more attention. WHAT THE HELL? We are in the middle of a pandemic. I have been giving them tons and tons of attention. I am teaching Julian to ride a two-wheel bike. I do art projects with Pippa. I read to them as much as they want. I even made a worm farm with them when it was raining every day. I MADE A FREAKING WORM FARM AND YET I STILL FEEL LIKE I AM NOT DOING ENOUGH??? What the freaking hell?! I wrote a long blog post about motherhood guilt back in May. And then I backed off from that area of inquiry. That’s okay. I am figuring this motherhood guilt think out my way. To some extent, my motherhood guilt seems to arise from an internalized belief that a mother must sacrifice everything for her children. If I am being anything less than a martyr, I am failing at motherhood. But I think my guilt goes deeper than that. In the second grade, the words on the chalkboard got fuzzy. I asked my friends, and they could all see the board clearly. I realized I needed glasses. But did I tell my parents? No! I felt guilty, convinced that I had done something wrong and Jesus was punishing me. (Catholic school graduate writing here…) I hid my eyesight woes from my parents for two years before finally “confessing” the problem to my mom, who immediately assured me that I had done nothing wrong. My guilt had arisen from my faulty belief that failing eyesight was a punishment from the divine. When I had postpartum depression in 2013, guilt was one of my strongest symptoms. And holy shit, I suffered from some intense guilt during those early months of motherhood. I felt guilty if I took a shower and Pippa woke up and cried. I felt guilty if I put her down to make myself some lunch. If she so much as whimpered, I was stabbed with intense guilt. But by labeling that guilt as a symptom of postpartum depression, I overlooked the possibility that the guilt I was experiencing in 2013 was just an exaggerated version of something I have been experiencing my entire life. I am not blaming myself here! Countless books and doctors and experts have declared guilt to be a symptom of postpartum depression, just as puking is a symptom of the flu. So just as the puking only happens while you have the flu, the guilt must only happen when you have PPD. Right? WRONG. Because I felt guilty as a little girl in the second grade for not being able to read the words on the chalkboard. Because I feel guilty now, as a woman of forty-one, for writing a blog post while my kids are busy playing. This next bit is difficult to write, but I am going to write it anyway: I think I feel guilty because I do not feel like I am worthy of feeling good about myself. I think my propensity toward guilt stems from a belief that I am inferior and unworthy of love. That I must prove my worth, again and again, by sacrificing myself to others because everyone else is more worthy than me. Holy shit, that was difficult to write, but it also felt damn cathartic. I am a woman, and for most of human history, women have been subservient to men. In Biblical times, women were wives, servants and whores. We were valued for making babies and taking care of the men in our lives. OF COURSE I HAVE INTERNALIZED A BELIEF THAT I AM INFERIOR AND UNWORTHY. Women in the United States have only had the vote for one hundred years! I see my guilt and I see its absurdity. I see that it arises from toxic beliefs about my sense of worth in the world. Now I need to revise those beliefs so that I truly, deeply and profoundly believe in my value as a person. I need to take a really critical look at the world around me and call bullshit when I see bullshit. Starting with motherhood. The idea that a good mom must sacrifice everything for her children? Total and utter bullshit.