“Just A Mom”

“Just a Mom”

I’m cleaning out the closets.

Looking for hot button words

Loaded words that have transformed into phrases

Phrases that have transformed into cages.

Today I stumbled on the words “just a mom”.

You know in movies when a character hears something shocking and the soundtrack kind scratches?

Yeah, that’s how “just a mom” landed.

It had heat, friction, bite.

I began to think of all the ways this idea has held me back. And where it came from.

And all of the ways I have used this as a handy tool to keep myself small when I wanted to hide.

“I don’t have any business with a big dream like that, I’m just a mom”

“I won’t have time to cultivate that thing I love, what about the kids?”

Oooh and all the ways being a mom has served to get me out of anything and everything that felt like a challenge.

This is a huge crutch for me.

Like I can’t even express the magnitude of self oppression I’ve heaped upon myself with this concept.

Buried alive by a hall pass.

“I can’t come the kids aren’t feeling well”. No Damascena, you just didn’t want to go…you didn’t want to participate. You said you wanted to live full out. But here you are hiding. Hiding behind your kids? Wow.

If you ever “feel” me use my kids as an excuse please just tap my shoulder and say “tag you’re it”. Because people know. They know when you are ducking and dodging life.

I really do want to be seen. I want to cultivate the capacity to show up even if people don’t like me, or don’t like something I’m doing. I want to be in that space and not shrink. Hold center and shine anyways.

Here’s my story… “After your own mom rejects you, (twice) it’s hard to believe that you won’t be rejected by strangers.” I have rolled this concept around and around my head like a damn anthem. At first unconsciously, now I know it’s there.

But why do I need that “story” anyways? That story is me collapsing what happened, with what I made it mean, and accepting that as truth. A maladaptive coping skill. It Designed to save me from a trigger. Trauma is funny like that.

Playing small, being a wallflower, walking amongst the dead. Looking for signs of approval. “Yes we’ll welcome you here.” Creating the conditions that I only participate fully if YOU make ME feel ok. Create a safe space just for me.

Fuck that!

I’m ready to burn this whole story down. I’m not just “a mom, wife, women, daughter”…

That trauma doesn’t hold some big existential truth. I am done with labels and all of their associated narratives. I’m done with weak strategies designed to keep me in a padded play pen.

Boring. Literally. Boring and predictable.

With each label you give me, I can give you the entire plot line. And it rarely involves a juicy climax, with a complex, multidimensional, fully alive heroine.

The motif will be flat. Performative plastic.

No my preference, at least for now, is that you can’t pin me down. I want to exist in a land beyond language. Someone who isn’t easily definable.

I want to get lost in all of the luscious possibilities or rather impossibilities that this incarnation can offer.

And I want to do it standing fully in my truth. Sourcing myself. Feeling my own power. Brave and electrified.