@stillbecomingmama: both of us crying is the detail i want to stay inside because i think it is the most honest picture of what new motherhood actually looks like at 3am and we do not show it enough. not the crying baby with the competent calm mother who has this handled. not the crying mother alone after the baby has settled. both of us. simultaneously. the crying happening in stereo in a dark room where neither of us can stop the other and neither of us fully understands why the other is crying even though we are both crying for the same reason which is that this is hard and we are in it and crying is the most honest available response to both of those facts. and there is something about the both of us that i did not understand until much later. i thought the both of us crying was evidence of failure. evidence that i was supposed to be the one who was not crying. that my job in the crying duet was to be the resolution to her crying not a participant in it. and the feeling of participating in it instead of resolving it was its own layer on top of everything else. the both of us are crying and i am one of the both and i am supposed to be neither. and then the dots. and what the dots returned to me was not the ability to stop crying. it was permission to be one of the both without it meaning failure. because every dot is a mom who has been one of the both. who has sat in the dark in the crying duet and participated instead of resolved and stayed anyway and kept going anyway. both of us crying is not failure. it is just both of us. it is just honest. it is just 3am. #postpartum #newmom #momtok #postpartumjourney #postpartumsupport
