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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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I Miss the Person I Thought I’d Be

May 22 Leave a Comment

Last week while I was changing Eamon’s diaper, he poked me in the eye. I hadn’t cut his nails in over a week (or maybe two weeks or three?), and his razor-sharp claw hooked me just right. My eyeball filled up with blood and I couldn’t blink without pain. My ophthalmologist couldn’t schedule a video visit, so I booked an early appointment for the next day.

Normally, this sort of thing would be a source of frustration: the ophthalmologist’s office is a thirty-minute drive from my house, and I would have had to rearrange my schedule to fit an appointment I didn’t even want to go to. I’d have to sacrifice work time or rest time just to have this teeny tiny scratch examined and then be given standard-treatment eye drops.

In the time of COVID, however, this trip to the doctor was more akin to a vacation.

Thirty minutes in the car to return Voxer messages. An hour in and out of various rooms, reading my Kindle with no children to interrupt me. A stop at the Starbucks drive-thru and then thirty more minutes in the car to listen to my favorite podcast.

After the appointment, as I turned the minivan onto my street and my house came into view, I imagined Selah leaping into my arms (after a good hand washing, of course) and Eamon covering my face with slobbery kisses. I didn’t miss my kids, exactly, but I also didn’t dread walking in the door.

It’s been a long time since I felt that way.

***

My family has been practicing social distancing for 68 days now. I’ve been in this smallish house with two very young and very demanding children for 10 weeks straight, trying to do my job while they ask for snacks and cry for attention, with just an hour “off” here and there. (Though even when my body is off the clock, my mind is definitely not.) If you’re a mom reading this, you know I’m not an outlier. This is your story too. This is our collective new normal.

My constant refrain to Dan is that I just want a chance to miss the kids. 

I was supposed to have that chance in April. Along with dozens of writer friends, I planned to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing. The festival was scheduled for just a few weeks before Eamon would turn one, and I started dreaming about it before he was even born. It would be the perfect time to wean, the perfect way to celebrate the end of a sweet but suffocating postpartum year, the perfect chance to promote my book and build energy for the next professional and creative season of my life.

I would get some much-needed space and distance from my kids, time to be both alone with my thoughts and together with my friends, and an opportunity to be the creative, put-together, sociable version of me.

It’s a version of me I haven’t seen in quite some time.

As we continue to obey stay-at-home orders, I desperately miss my extended family, my friends, and my coworkers. But what I didn’t expect to miss so much are all the other versions of me I thought would engage in the world.

This summer, I thought I’d be fun-loving, spontaneous Brittany, the version of me least likely to be seen but who comes alive on carefree days with Dan and the kids at Six Flags.

I thought I’d be creative and productive Brittany, a version of me who grabs ideas and nails them down with my computer keys, generates new essays and Instagram captions, submits work and promotes her book.

I thought I’d be shiny, well-rested, tan Brittany, a version of me who has this mom-of-two thing figured out, who has consistent childcare and time to create and work out and go on dates with her husband.

Instead I’m perpetually exhausted, resentful, quick-to-snap Brittany, a version of me who has unwashed hair and hormonal acne and rotates her yoga pants every few days once they are sufficiently covered in kid food and dog hair. It’s the version of me I was last summer, when Eamon was first born, and I never expected to be in such a similar place a full year later.

I suppose what I’m realizing is how much I rely on other people and other spaces to bring out these other versions of me. I’m an introvert, a self-preservation subtype, and an “I can do it all myself” island. 

This quarantine has shown me time and again what a fallacy I’ve built.

***

There is a set of paradoxes I keep coming back to. I walk along their edges, press against their walls, searching for a door I will not find.

  1. The person I thought I’d be this summer is an unattainable projection even under the best circumstances.
    And also: There exists a better version of me than I am right now.
  2. I am doing my best and I am enough and I am good here in this moment.
    And also: I need other people in my life in order to be the truest, fullest version of myself.

I’m not my best self right now. To expect that would be ridiculous and impossible—remember how we’re all trying to survive a global pandemic?

So instead I’m trying (and sometimes failing) to show up as a decent version of Brittany, one who doesn’t yell at her kids for simply being kids, who remembers what’s most important and prioritizes effectively and lives from her values and asks for help.

But honestly, I’d settle for the version who misses her kids.


This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series “Together, Apart.”

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Filed Under: Life, Motherhood Tagged With: covid-19, family, freedom, isolation, motherhood, relationships

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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