mothering

My gut never lets me down. I’m an empath raising an empath. Empaths are people who can absorb or intuit other people’s emotions.

I'm 44 and I’ve been in second grade for eight days. What about my child? Well, she’s been in second grade for eight days, too.

I was married to my own child for 21 years. I thought I was marrying my high school sweetheart, but I was actually becoming my husband's mother.

While I appreciate knowing the correct fork for any situation, my mother’s relationship advice can basically be summed up as this: “There are girls who marry and girls who date. You’re a girl who marries.” (In Mom’s defense, I was a late bloomer. Since no one wanted to date me, this advice was also a form of encouragement.) Dad’s advice was a bit more literal and involved an imaginary quarter that should be held between your knees at all times. Seriously, I couldn’t make this up if I tried. So, I’ve compiled a supplemental list of tips for my daughters, more in line with the confident, sex-positive women I want them to be. I intend to shove these inside my hand-me-down copy of Pretty Me because, after all, knowing proper cutlery never hurt anyone.

I went to the premiere of Bad Moms last week. I might have peed my pants during the movie and it took about two days until my face stopped hurting. I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. (Okay, fine. There’s no “might have.” I did pee my pants. So what?)

Yes, a lot of parents are assholes. But you know what? A lot of people are assholes; some of them happen to have kids, some don’t. I can’t speak for all parents, and I wouldn’t want to try. But speaking as one particular person with kids, here’s what I wish my childfree friends would understand…

The reality is that any person I love, including my daughters, can deeply hurt my feelings. Does this mean that I hold my daughters to the same level of emotional accountability as my husband or my best friend? Nope, but for it damn sure doesn’t mean that I morph into some feeling-less version of myself because I’m a mother, either.

I am still a very spiritual person, but don’t necessarily agree with a lot of the things I was taught growing up — or the way it was shoved down our throats. So when Branden came along, we decided not to baptize him, because I just didn’t believe our sweet baby was born in sin. My husband wasn’t religious, and this was the right choice for us.