To Have and to Hold

by Molly Millwood, PhD

Psychotherapist and renowned relationships expert Esther Perel once referred to children as “cherished intruders.” They come steamrolling into our lives and creep into all corners of it, invited or not. They are in our beds instead of their own. Or we think they are in their own beds when suddenly they are standing at the edge of ours, asking for a glass of water when we are about to begin—or, God help us all, are in the middle of—lovemaking. They are in the bathroom showing us their drawings while we’re peeing. They are climbing all over us while we are on the phone. They are in the back seat of our cars, in the back of our minds while we’re in a meeting at work, in the center of our dreams while we are sleeping.

  All this is as it should be. If all is well in the realm of attachment, kids* don’t hold back climbing right up into the laps of their parents to get the sense of safety and comfort they need. They do this without hesitation because they trust they will be held and feel seen and welcomed and witnessed. And that means that with any luck, we will be intruded upon over and over by these little people we cherish so.

  Paradoxes abound in the world of motherhood. The same little people who hamper our freedom and spontaneity are also the ones who compel us to savor the present moment. Although parenthood makes us slaves to schedules and planning, it also necessitates extraordinary flexibility and affords new opportunities for unexpected, unbidden joy. Even as they exhaust us beyond compare, children can revitalize adult life. We see through the eyes of our children and the world becomes more tantalizing again. We adopt—if only for brief moments at a time—our children’s curious orientation toward what they encounter, and we are more alive again. Babies are sensual and fully present, and this is contagious. It’s not hard for me to conjure up memories of all the times I was pulled from distraction and into the present moment by my children’s remarks on the experiences we were having, like the time Noah said, while we were enjoying a beautiful day, “The earth is giving us so much love right now.”

  When Noah was not quite three years old, we started referring to him as Mr. Politeness Man. Our devotion to the task of teaching him manners—all those seven hundred thousand times we insisted he say “please” and “thank you” and wondered if he was ever, ever going to stop needing the reminder—had finally paid off. All requests were prefaced with a “please” and all receipts of snacks, meals, drinks, favors, and assistance were acknowledged with a heartfelt “thanks.” It was pretty fantastic. One night he and I were hanging out together, just the two of us, and he was on a thanking roll. In his tiny sweet toddler voice, he said, “Thank you for this mac and cheese! Thank you for these cucumbers! Thank you for my milk! Thank you for reading me that book!” And then, the kicker. I poured myself a glass of wine and he said, “Thank you for having that for you!” I was doubled over with laughter. What was I supposed to say to that? “You’re so welcome, Noah. It’s the least I could do.”

  Fast-forward six or seven years, and this same boy is sitting at the kitchen table, about to dive into the big breakfast we had recently instituted as a Sunday tradition. “Thanks, Dad, for being willing to make everybody whatever kind of eggs they wanted.” Suddenly, I got teary. This was an expression that went far beyond mere politeness: it was gratitude. Noah was expressing gratitude not just for the food on his plate and for having his egg fried rather than scrambled, but for his father’s willingness to accommodate each person’s preferences, for his father’s effort, his generous spirit. None of this was lost on Noah, and he took a moment to say so.

  On that evening years ago when Noah thanked me for pouring myself a glass of wine, I recorded it in his baby book as one of the more hilarious things he had ever said. But what I realize now, and the reason his remark about the eggs struck such a chord for me, is that this child’s default mode is to be grateful and that’s because of what we have modeled for him. The toddler version of Noah was looking around for reasons to feel thankful, and why not the fact that his mommy had served herself a lovely glass of wine? That has become for him a habitual way of engaging with the world. This was one of the happy Buddha moments—the ones that seem not to happen as often as the uncomfortable ones. Noah was showing me something pretty great in that mirror he held up to me. He was reflecting back for me that my default is to be grateful, and that this is contagious. We’ve succeeded in giving gratitude a central place in our family life.

  Ari and I have a habit of saying thank you. We say it probably more times each day than we even realize. Thank you for emptying the dishwasher. Thank you for the delicious dinner. Thanks for making the kids’ lunches. Thank you for the massage, the back scratches, the cup of tea. Thanks for remembering that I would need the checkbook today. Thanks for listening. Thank you for being so patient. Thank you for staying up to clean the giant mess in the kitchen when you were so tired. Thanks for being supportive. Thanks for getting up early with the kids so I could sleep in a little. Thanks for booking those plane tickets. We are giving thanks for actions, gestures, sentiments, attention, consideration, sacrifices, energy expenditures. Big and small. Over and over, every day. If you were a fly on the wall in our house, you might find it a little strange, maybe even a little obnoxious, how frequently the word “thanks” is being exchanged. But it isn’t forced or insincere. It has become a way of life, a customary way of interaction. It isn’t contrived or saccharine. It’s just the truth. We are thankful. And I see this as a key reason for the happiness that reigns over the daily chaos and hardships and frustrations that characterize our overflowing, imperfect family life.

  And, Not But

  When my boys were younger, there were times I felt pretty certain that I would have been better off with only one child. I know some readers are thinking, WHAT?! How can she say that!? Doesn’t she know her younger son could read this someday and be devastated? Well, I am not worried about that. I have faith that my second child will recognize the enormous difference between believing I might have been better suited to be the mother of an only child and regretting his existence. It was never him I sometimes wished weren’t around; it was the dynamic of my two children together and the sheer degree of stimulation in my immediate environment that sometimes made me think, This isn’t the greatest fit for me. If anyone is disparaging me for having felt that way, and for putting it down here on the page, that is a reflection of the very reason I wanted to write this book. The complex truths of motherhood will continue to make everyone uncomfortable and ashamed until they’re articulated readily and repeatedly.

  My love for Quinn, my second son, is deep and fierce. I do not favor Noah over him. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect him, and there is no threat more ominous than the threat of losing either one of them. It’s silly that I’m even saying all this, but therein lies the problem. We are afraid that if we give voice to the darker, less acceptable facets of our experience as mothers, this will somehow render the prettier, acceptable facets untrue, or at least obscure them from others’ view. Why must we preface our expressions of frustration, fatigue, loss, and anger with expressions of love? “I love my baby, but she exhausts me.” “I love my baby, but sometimes I just can’t handle how needy he is.”

  We do this with our relationships, too. “I love my husband, but he is so oblivious sometimes.” As women we are expected to be unwaveringly nurturing and loving; to waver in those regards is to risk being seen as a lesser kind of a woman. For fear that we will be shunned for voicing a difficult truth about the way we sometimes experience the ones who matter most to us, we package that truth in sentiments of love and fondness. Though this is far better than never voicing the dark or difficult truth at all, I often wonder what it would be like if it was taken as a given that the feelings of love and fondness always exist. How much suffering would that alleviate when the not-so-loving and not-so-fond feelings rise up?

  A lot, and here’s why: Without realizing it, with these I love my spouse/child, but . . . statements, we put ourselves in a bind. We are essentially saying, These two things don’t go together, so w
hich of them wins? Which of them will I deny, minimize, banish from consciousness? What can I do to resolve this contradiction?

  Rachael, whose horrifying images of harming her new baby brought her into therapy, has long since moved past the concerns that characterized the early postpartum period for her. A recurring theme in her therapy now is how to accept her wildly fluctuating feelings toward her husband. This has been a real struggle for her, because when she feels negative feelings toward Scott, she feels them hard. The feelings are far from subtle. She hates him sometimes, and there are some moments when she finds him quite unattractive. She wonders what the hell he was thinking in putting that shirt on with those pants, and if he’s ever going to shave, and why she even married the asshole.

  The thing is, Rachael and Scott are quite in love. They have a very strong marriage. And so it’s always such a hard moment when Rachael sits down on my couch and says, sometimes in tears, “It happened again last night. I looked at him and felt repulsed. And when we went out to dinner and he was so silent, I wondered if some other husband would be a better conversationalist.”

  Rachael must remind herself, again and again, of the full catastrophe. Being close to her husband means, among countless other things, seeing his flaws. Feeling joy and love and passion within her marriage means that she has the “vitality” button turned on, which means she will also feel sadness and pain and aggravation and disgust. She feels the full spectrum. She cannot have it any other way if she wants to live her life in color. It is not her love for her husband that fluctuates, nor is that love in question. What fluctuates are the feelings that come with the territory of love. I turn again to psychiatrist and eloquent author Peter Breggin, who, in The Heart of Being Helpful, writes about the nature of unconditional love.2

  We love them not only warts and all, but nasty, self-centered intentions and all. We love them despite, and even because of, the inherent flaws and contradictions that plague all human beings. We love them when they are feeling generous and when they are feeling selfish. We love them when they are brave and when they are cowardly; when they are brilliant and when they are stupid; when they are physically beautiful and when they are ravaged by illness and age.

  On one level, these words capture an ideal to which we all aspire; we wish we could feel the same degree of fondness for a loved one when that loved one is ill-behaved or looking shabby as we do when that loved one is at his or her best and looking amazing, but we don’t always pull that off. On another level, the words are a statement of fact. We do not stop loving our partners when they become wrinkled and gray or when they act like jerks. But we do often feel threatened, deep down, by these momentary negative appraisals. We think they mean something they don’t. We think the negative cancels out the positive—that only one can be true, and one day we will realize which one it is.

  For Rachael, learning to ride the waves of her changing perceptions of her husband happened with a shift in the story she told herself about her husband. I call it the “And, Not But” shift. When people modify the language they use to describe their experiences, they also modify their perception. When we use the word “and” instead of the word “but,” we make room for all emotions. There is no competition between love and hate, no tension between exhaustion and invigoration, no mutual exclusivity between the grief of lost personal freedom and the joy of a new tiny human we love more than we ever thought possible.

  It is a simple yet quite powerful shift. When Rachael says, “I feel like we have a good marriage, but Scott is so quiet when we get time together,” the words put her in a worried, unresolved place. Do we have a good marriage or not? Does his silence mean something bad? Am I wrong about our strong connection? When instead she says, “I feel like we have a good marriage, and Scott is so quiet when we get time together,” the feeling in the air is altogether different. One does not negate the other. Scott is allowed to be the quiet person that he is without this having any bearing on the quality of their marriage. And when she untethers Scott’s behavior from the quality of their marriage, Rachael sees the issue more clearly. She sees that she simply longs for more of a window into his internal world. Rather than ruminate about the strength of their marriage, Rachael begins to conjure up some creative ideas for how to feel connected with a man of few words. Even the furrow of her brow softens when she uses “and” language. I can see the perplexed feeling, the pent-up tension stemming from the “but” language, dissipating.

  Looking upon our internal experiences with benign curiosity is often enough to modify them. Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has suggested we hold our thoughts and feelings like a mother would hold her crying baby. It’s the difference between asking with compassion, “What’s going on here?” and asking with judgment, “What the hell is going on here?” As we saw with Rachael, something significant happens when we gather up seemingly opposing thoughts and feelings into our arms and just let them be. Maybe even rock them a little and lovingly tend to them. “I love my daughter, and she also makes me madder than I’ve ever been.” “My partner is so supportive, and he also lets me down.” There are no dilemmas to resolve or apologies or justifications to be made. There are no angsty questions lurking, like, How is this possible? What am I going to do about this? Which of these realities am I going to choose as righter or truer? There is also no shame. There is only the full catastrophe—the cherishing and the resenting, the fulfillment and the disappointment, the pleasure and the pain—where shame finds no home.

  So I treasure my two boys and I am sometimes completely overwhelmed by the commotion and noise they generate. Every single day, more than once, I consider myself the most fortunate mother in the world because my boys are mine, because they are alive, healthy, kind, beautiful, and smart. Every single day, at least for a minute or two, I quietly celebrate each of my children as the extraordinary, complicated, remarkable, unique human beings they are, and I cannot imagine my life without them. And every single day, I lose my patience with them, and I want all three of the noisy, busy, buzzing-with-energy males in my house to go away for just a few minutes, please. I would never want to trade in my children for different ones, and I remain sad all these years later about not having a daughter. Sometimes the voices of my children fall on my ears like beautiful music, and sometimes it’s more like nails on a chalkboard. I want for nothing when I have my children in my arms, and my mind sometimes wanders to an alternate life in which there are no small people making demands on me.

  Self-Discovery and Empowerment in Motherhood

  As Adrienne Rich first articulated over forty years ago in the 1976 classic Of Woman Born, the experience of motherhood is both oppressive and empowering. It is when we embrace all of the paradoxes of motherhood that we can come to understand not just what we have lost, but also what we have gained. Throughout the pages of this book, I have focused primarily on what’s difficult about the transition to motherhood—all the loss and constriction it entails—because that is what either gets buried and denied or causes us tremendous shame. We have no trouble speaking to the pleasures of motherhood, because those pleasures are as socially acceptable as it gets. However, the “dark side” of motherhood is also a tremendous opportunity for positive change—for reflection, insight, adjustment, and growth. The dark moments, when not banished for being unacceptable, can call into question our customary way of seeing things and propel us toward personal growth. Embedded within the full catastrophe of motherhood is the potential for self-expansion, even healing and redemption.

  Often it is through our perspective as parents that we develop greater compassion for ourselves. I remember vividly a time that my therapist, upon hearing some of the harshly self-critical internal talk in which I’d been engaged, asked, “Molly, would you ever speak that way to your children?” She had tears in her eyes, showing me how much my cruel self-talk pained her. She knew, of course, that the answer was no. It was a powerful moment. When my children are hurting, I might sometimes fail to pick up on it because I am o
nly a good-enough, imperfect mother. I might miss their signals or offer a distracted, halfhearted but generally supportive response. But I recognized instantly that I would never say to them the things I was saying to myself that day. As we learn to care for our children, we learn to care better for ourselves. We tap into our wells of empathic concern and compassion for these little people we love so much, and subsequently we find more compassion for ourselves. Our view of ourselves softens just a little and begins to include some of the tenderness we feel for our children. We begin to realize that, as I once heard someone say, we are all adults with little-kid hearts beating inside us.

  When my children were just shy of seven and three years old, I walked into a recording studio in the remote woods of central Vermont and emerged five or six hours later with two completed songs. I sang, with my whole heart, two songs I had chosen because of what they meant to me and represented about my life and my family. One of them was a lullaby of sorts that Noah had been requesting I sing to him at bedtime for a couple of years, and I surprised him with the recording for his seventh birthday. The other was a song called “Sweet Spot.” Some of the lyrics are at the start of this chapter, which tells you a little something about the song’s significance. Though the meaning of lyrics and poetry are never the same for everyone, for me it captured where I suddenly found myself seven years after becoming a mother:

  Once you stood below a mountain

  Now you find yourself surprised

  This is the sweet spot of your life

  And this new view compares to nothing

  Gone the hardship of your climb

  This is the sweet spot of your life

  Well it seems the ice is melting

  Seems you’ve come in from the cold

  This is the sweet spot of your life