Parenting as an Elder Millennial

I did not know when I decided to become a parent at age 30 following a lifetime of saying I never want kids, that this would be one of the hardest decades of my life. This wasn’t meant to be this hard, was it? I am not even talking about the actual parenting part per say, but more becoming a parent at the start of a pandemic and then losing my job right after becoming a parent to kid number 2 and finally being a parent during the fall of America.

If you are a Millennial Parent especially us elder millennials born in the late 80s, this feels like too much. I want the parenthood my parents had without the stress of technology consuming my children whole. I want my kids to play outside until the street lights come on and not have to stress about what might happen to them. I want my kids to be able to read whatever book they want, because they haven’t been banned by crazy MAGA/MAHA moms from all the schools and libraries. I want a society that feels like it is getting more progressive, not turning the clock back to the 1940s.

I want a mortgage that I can pay off before I retire. I want childcare to not cost more than my mortgage payment. I want a government that isn’t bat shit crazy. I mean we did live through the Bush era, but somehow that feels like 10x less horrible than now. I want to fly with my kids in pre-911 airports/airplanes, where we keep our shoes on, liquids are okay, and we are served meals on flights over 2 hours.

Our parents had it easy and yet somehow we are all still damaged by their parenting styles and have to overcome our generational traumas that they stuffed down and ignored. We are expected to calm parent through the storm without an umbrella. We are meant to raise the next generation of kindhearted men and fierce women, while our President is a pedophile who is heartless. We are Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill and that boulder keeps rolling over us and we have to still get back up and keep pushing.

The amount of times I have hid in my bathroom from my kids so I could cry at the state of the world is absurd. I am at my whits end! The difference though, is I am in therapy. I am actively working on my traumas, which are my mom’s traumas as well and trying to better my mental health so I don’t damage my sons’ mental health. It is exhausting work. I was exciting to raise kids in the DEI woke world we were creating for the next generation and then Trump bulldozed that. Will we ever get back there? I will continue to read my kids books about anti-racism, intersectional feminism, and LGBTQIA rights. I pray that they won’t even remember these years outside of the little world I have created for them in our home and at school and will go on to be outstanding men who are full of empathy. I am glad they are young and unaware of the reality on our tv screens and out in the world, because it gives me a fighting change to create a better reality for them.

I did tell my son that a greedy bad man is running this country and I hope that we can defeat him. I really hope I don’t have to pack up my kids and leave the country. I am aware of our white privilege and for this reason I am staying until the bitter end to fight for a better future for all the kids. The black, brown, indigenous, immigrant, and trans kids deserve to feel safe in this country just as much as my boys do. I will fight for them!

I can’t say we as a generation have had the hardest time as parents, but it sure feels like an uphill battle since COVID. I hope somehow our children emerge from this more empathetic, more sensitive to the realities of the world, and kind. That is all I hope for my sons. Success and money are nothing if they aren’t kind, caring, and empathetic human beings. I will feel like I failed otherwise.

Stillness and Rest: Not in my vocabulary

Stillness and rest are cornerstones of the Moms Collaborative and yet these are two things I oftentimes rebel against. It is not in my nature to take a break. I push on full steam ahead ignoring sniffles that could lead to colds, sharp pains that could lead to kidney stones, and nagging feelings of burnout ready to knock me on my ass. I started my business to help other mothers like me take a rest. I told myself moms need to rest, because we ignore our bodies signs yelling at us to take a break. I am offering mothers that break, but not myself. I am always the one great at giving advice and not taking it myself.

So, I did the one and only thing that would force me to rest. I got a really intense surgery. I literally cannot move. I had my abdomen sliced open to repair diastis recti and two hernias that have plagued me since the birth of my 3 year old son. I could have gone on living with the issues it was causing me and just suffered a little for the rest of my life. I could have ignored the back pain and shoulder pain and looking like I was perpetually pregnant for the rest of time. It wasn’t that big of a deal, right!? No! I actually advocated relentlessly for myself with all of my physicians until someone did something about it.

First I got a diagnosis from my OBGYN after I told her about the issues. No one asks a postpartum woman if something feels off about their body. No one tells you about diastis recti. I only knew about it, because of a friend. Diastis Recti is a separation of your ab muscles. Mine was so severe I could fit three fingers between them and started feeling my organs floating between the gap. It took 6 months of physical therapy, a CT scan, and hopping from one surgeon to the next to finally convince someone to sew my abs back together and they would only do it because it looked like a hernia.

I pushed for this surgery and now I am on bedrest. I hate resting. Sure, reading a nice book in a hammock on a beach for 30 minutes is lovely, but the stillness of being literally unable to get out of bed on your own, that is my version of hell. Now I must face all my thoughts and finish them before scurrying off to another task to avoid them. Thoughts like: am I selfish to abandon my kids for a week to recover from elective abdominal surgery? Will my kids hate me for this? Was this the right decision giving up all of my autonomy to my parents, who are caring for me?

I literally dreamt for weeks about the excitement of getting a chance to finally finish all of the tv shows I have wanted to watch uninterrupted or finish a book in one week. Every time my kids nagged me or needed me five seconds into sitting down, I dreamed of this moment I am in right now. And guess what, it sucks. I miss my kids. I am bored. My mama ADHD can’t focus on reading, scrolling, doing crosswords, or watching tv. I want to pop out of bed and go pee without a 20 minute ordeal. But alas, rest is important. Rest is productive. Rest is literally healing me. All moms need rest and yet we are so indoctrinated into thinking it is the antithesis of being a mom that we push it away the second we actually have access to it.

So, I say to myself and all of you out there who have been knocked down by a cold, a surgery, or godforbid something worse- listen to your body, not your mind. Rest. Rest. Rest. and also throw that mom guilt in the trash, because it isn’t serving you anymore.

Let’s lead the revolution for rest, healing, stillness, and community.

-Melissa Erickson

You are Not Alone

Being a mom can feel really lonely in the United States. Moms are way more isolated in our country than in other cultures, because there is this idea that we need to be able to do it all on our own. We don’t have the preverbal “village” that other cultures have where all women help you raise your children. Of course, men (fathers) have come a long way in attempting to equalize the labor of parenthood, if you are lucky, but ultimately women carry the babies and do a lot of the physical and mental labor in raising them. Do you feel alone as a mom in this country?

I did! I had my first son in November 2019, so of course I already had time working against me with COVID happening in 2020. In addition, no one really checked on me after I had my baby. My husband went to work and I sat at home crying everyday while trying to continue working remotely and taking care of my newborn. My parents lived across the country. A lot of my friends either didn’t have children or were busy with their own. I felt so alone!

And I thought, this is not the way motherhood is supposed to be. Where was my village? I was told it takes a village to raise a child. Instead, I suffered in silence from postpartum depression and anxiety and the heavy weight of not living up to societies expectations of me to “bounce back” or be joyful as a new mom. I felt awkward telling other moms how I truthfully felt about losing my old self and not understanding who I really was anymore.

I started The Moms Collaborative, so no mother has to feel alone anymore. I want to build a village for all moms. I want all moms to take a break and fill their cups at one of our wellness events or social gatherings. I want to build a physical village- community center for moms to access all the resources they need to connect with other moms and meet their physical, mental, and spiritual needs as they go through matrescence and beyond.

So please, join the village and never feel alone again!