the glow

I love to visit The Glow when i'm feeling uninspired. I discovered the site when I was pregnant and I would daydream about what my foray into motherhood might look like. I have to admit, the site is aspirational and I can't say that my life always correlates to the mothers featured (for instance, I would love to say that my go-to maternity uniform was a Rick Owens t-shirt paired with a pair of stretch jeans from The Row, a la Ferebee Taube... but it sure wasn't!) BUT, one can always indulge right?

The most recent post featured Molly Guy and her darling daughter Sunny. Molly Guy is the beautiful creative director of the popular "anti-bride" resource Stone Fox Bride and this is what she said:

I was very ambivalent about becoming a mother. Once she arrived, the love was like a drug. But that whole passage of time was also really colored by an intense sadness. Embracing the responsibility of motherhood was a real mindf*&*ck. No longer could I get away with being a selfish, disorganized, chain-smoking negligent who bounced checks left and right and hit snooze a hundred times while dirty dishes piled up in the sink and never answered to anyone.

There are some mornings when I'm cutting up my daughter's grapes into fours after three hours of sleep while the sun is coming up and I'm in a flannel granny moomoo and NPR is on and I'm like, "Where's my cigarettes, where's my naughty Saturday night fling and ripped black lace lingerie and I just wanna call in sick to work and take Klonopin and google all my exes and only eat Gummy Bears all day." Falling in love, becoming a mother and growing up in general has this sort of beautiful "deal with the devil" vibe to it. The amount of wisdom and love you gain is directly proportionate to the vanity and ego you're willing to lose.

My personal transition into motherhood was similar. I don't know what Klonopin is and I was never a chain smoker, but the sentiment is right on. And it's a "mindf*&*ck" because this sadness and yearning for your past life happens as you're falling madly and deeply in love with your child - it's difficult to reconcile, to exist with two such opposing states of being simultaneously. I've never experienced such a bizarrely beautiful thing before. 

As the days and months go by and I've gotten into the groove of being a mother, that sadness and yearning has dissipated.  The day to day of motherhood becomes all I care about. So the transition becomes easier and I start to feel settled in and my love for my baby continues to grow and I believe it knows no bounds.

Sometimes - only sometimes - when my head is hitting the pillow at 9pm because I'm exhausted and know I'll be up several times during the night, I'll remember when 9pm was the start of my night, not the end, and I'll smile.

{via the glow}