I recently welcomed my second child, a pandemic baby. I was never someone who fantasized about getting married and having babies, yet here I am: married, two children, still chasing my dreams as a creative.
I left my successful news career in 2019 to work as a full-time freelance writer, something I had dreamed about doing since college. In this new career, I’ve tried to take advantage of every opportunity while still balancing my role as a mom, and that has meant working throughout my pregnancy and postpartum.
Launch a podcast while pregnant? Check!
Write a book while pregnant? Check!
Sign up for a six-month mentorship program while pregnant? Check!
Attend a Zoom meeting for that mentorship program hours after giving birth? Check!
Write a new book to win a publishing contest with a newborn at home? Check!
All of the things. To say I’m overwhelmed would be an understatement.
I knew the demands of a new child before she was created and I wanted her anyway. Confidently, I proclaimed I would have a girl before the sonogram even showed a baby with a head. To borrow from Gabrielle Union, my daughter was loved even as a thought.
But thoughts and realities are different, and seeing "pregnant" in the indicator field of one of the most expensive tests in the pharmacy shifted something in my brain that has yet to work itself out. When I first learned I was pregnant again I felt a gray cloud of depression descend upon me. It is still with me. Heavy with the question, “What did you do?”
How do I manage two children, continue to work from home and not only survive, but thrive as a writer? I want to live a life I love, and for me, that includes nurturing my professional identity. It’s a life I feel is slowly slipping away because caring for my family means I can’t devote more waking hours to my work.
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I am writing this while my daughter sits at my feet playing with her toys. My son is at school — thank God — giving me exactly six hours to fit in all the writing, Zoom meetings and interviews I can before he comes home and demands the attention he used to have before his sister was born.
Stress lives in my shoulders and across my upper back. It tenses the muscles beneath my skin when my daughter launches into a full-on fit while I’m in the middle of an interview with a source for a story or recording my podcast.
The question that lingers in the back of my mind is, ‘What if I don’t succeed?’ It’s not a question of failure because I am doing the things I love. I have not failed, but have I succeeded? I ask myself often, ‘What if what I love doesn’t love me back enough? What if it doesn’t work out? What if the sacrifices aren’t worth it?’
Then my anxiety starts to take over. In my impatience, I use a snippy tone with my 6-year-old son. Suddenly, we’re all crying at once because our needs — no matter how wholly different — aren’t being met.
I start to worry about the model I'm setting for my children, my daughter especially. My son is old enough to remember when I worked a “regular” job. But my daughter will only know this singular reality of her mother. She has been present for all Zoom calls, interviews and podcast recordings before her birth and after.
Recently, while interviewing a therapist for a story I was writing, she commented that "Sometimes women have children not because they necessarily want them, but because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do according to society’s patriarchal standards, and they don’t have a good enough reason not to have them.” The therapist made the comment after she saw my daughter’s hand peeking from beneath my shirt in the frame of my camera. Yes, if I’m on Zoom my daughter is probably breastfeeding.
I completed the interview, wrote the story (in the margins of the day, as the great Toni Morrison would do) and continued trying to do and have it all at once. But her comment lingers, as does the depression weighing my shoulders, as does the anxiety that keeps me up at night and sends silent tears down my face during the day.
Now nine months postpartum, I am still fighting my depressive demons and my fear that I can’t have it all at once. I don’t know if I’m succeeding or failing at motherhood. I don’t know if I’m succeeding or failing in my freelance career. I do know that many times on this journey I have wanted to drop every ball I’m juggling and sprint toward the nearest exit.
When I feel I have run right past my stopping point, I see the image from the cartoon of the Road Runner being chased by Wile E. Coyote. The Road Runner stops at the edge of a cliff but the coyote keeps going, only to discover that he’s run right off. For a moment, he’s suspended in the air before falling. That’s where I am: suspended in the air, looking back at the caution sign I ran straight through.
No matter what, I keep going. For my dreams, for my family.
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