Sunday read: On hope and motherhood and ADHD

A note to self.

This week, an essay about the messiness of motherhood that’s led to more acceptance and understanding. And also: I’d like to use this space to advocate for more education about neurodivergence. It’s astounding to me how difficult it was — even as an over-educated, resourced, urban white woman — to find accurate information from professionals, let alone support. So, here goes. If this resonates, let me know in the comments.

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You felt pretty clueless about mothering from the jump. You had good instincts — you remember immediately shielding her eyes from the bright hospital lights and how the crying stopped. But mostly those first few days and months were a blur.

Could you tell the difference between the “hungry cry” vs. the “tired cry” vs. the “diaper change cry” like the books promised? Nope. All of the cries sounded exactly the same — like a stricken creature caterwauling in a dark tunnel. For hours and hours. Days and days.

One day when you’re headed home from an afternoon walk with a dear friend, baby strapped to your chest, you wonder how the friend somehow looks into your souls when she says, “It’s OK to feel despair right now. It’s OK to feel scared to go home because you know she’ll start crying again. It’s OK.”

Once preschool starts, you trust the teachers when they tell you to drop her off and leave quickly even though she’s crying. Even though she’s desperately reaching her pudgy little hand out to you toward the glass door.

Even after it’s gone on for years and you find yourself crying in the car for 30-minutes after each drop-off.

You keep thinking that if you model ease and calmly nudge her forward, things will fall into place. That maybe, as people have suggested, you are projecting your anxiety onto her. She will get used to school, you tell yourself. She will outgrow this stage.