finding the joy
“Train your mind and your eyes to look for the precious in your everyday life. What do you want to remember, twenty years from now? What would go into a time capsule of your daily life, today?
And then, reach for your camera, or smartphone, or whatever’s around. The plan is not to be perfect. It’s not to keep every photo forever. Instead it’s an experiment — in gratitude, in noticing, in being present.”
— Sara Tasker, Hashtag Authentic
The phrase find the joy came to me when I was dealing with the deepest depression and anxiety I’ve ever experienced. Izzy was almost a year old and I constantly felt like I was drowning in fear.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have gone to therapy. I should have gone to therapy. I don’t know why I didn’t, but what I ended up doing was googling ways to combat the dread.
Life as the primary caretaker of children is an interesting beast. On one hand, you have insta-moms who make motherhood look like an absolute dream with their low contrast presets and flowing dresses in rolling fields. And while the caption might reveal a tough or realistic moment with their children, the fact is, most of us don’t regularly take idyllic photos with our kids.
It’s so damn easy to look at content creators (whose job or passion it is to create this stunning, aspirational content) and feel dissatisfied with our experience as a mom. To feel like we’re defective because we’re not experiencing the dreaminess of motherhood, but rather a really difficult season of being stretched beyond what we thought we were capable of.
Life with young kids full of mundane, repetitive, traditionally thankless acts of service. As a person who grew up dreaming of her career and not her future husband or future family, I have often felt like the odd girl out in the Instagram Mom world. I always wanted to have kids, but also always planned on being a parent who worked outside of the home. So while I love the idea that for some, the day in and day out of mothering is a dream come true, it always rang hollow for me.
At least that’s how I felt.
I didn't want to stay stuck in the mud of comparing my experience to that of internet strangers. I wanted to start a practice of shifting my focus, of finding the joy in this season of raising young kids.
I don’t want to remember this time of my life as purely sad or difficult — though it has been sad at times and it has definitely been difficult. So I started logging little paragraphs of beauty I noticed throughout my day. I plan on making this a regular series on my blog and I’m starting by sharing the draft that has sat unpublished for two years. My hope in sharing these with you is that you’ll begin to look for the joy in the midst of whatever season you’re in. That you’ll practice holding space for the beautiful things along with the difficult things.
finding the joy, vol. 1
2/2/19 — Isaac, you fell asleep on me the way you did when you were a newborn. It’s crazy to think that you’re closer to a toddler than that little guy I snuggled endlessly at 3 AM. We’ve both so different from who we were then. Already we’ve changed so much. So tonight, I’ll linger here in the dark just a little longer, soaking in your sleepy cuddles, trying to form a deep memory of what the weight of you at almost nine months feels like laying on my chest. Trying to commit to memory what your coarse new hair feels like against my cheek. Trying to cherish this tiny moment of stillness.
2/3/19 — I finally made cookies and we ate them for dinner and watched a cooking competition show and it was good.
2/4/19 — The laundromat employee saw me struggling to get my clothes out of the washer with Isaac on my hip and offered to help me. Isaac smiled and giggled with strangers and while it was a physically demanding day, at least it wasn’t a tough one emotionally.
2/5/19 — We ran around all day. You were smiley and goofy even though you hardly napped. You laughed and played with me while you ate your raspberries at the coffee shop. You spread your legs wide as we walked to the co-op and I couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t matter, it was the cutest, funniest thing.
Here’s to finding the joy.
