Piece of Cake

Most of you know that my baby turned one this week. Ok--probably all of you know that. (Because all 12 of you are also facebook friends.) A few weeks prior to the event, I had in my mind how I was going to make it a special and memorable day for...um, his siblings? Because who remembers their first birthday? Not me. Not my other kids, that's for sure.

In my mind, I saw a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed birthday party. I would make a Pinterest-worthy birthday banner, using the different items the caterpillar eats through in the book. I would decorate with red and green...maybe a few balloons, maybe some streamers, but it would be festive. Most of all, I would make Little T the cutest cake. I toyed with the idea of putting mini-cupcakes on top of the actual birthday cake, decorating all of the above so it would look like the caterpillar on a leaf. As it drew nearer, I decided to go with full-sized cupcakes in the shape of the cute little caterpillar.

So, I made cupcakes. And they didn't turn out. But, I had a little extra batter, which I poured into a pan and baked, (because there was enough). The cake wouldn't come out of the pan, in spite of the fact that I totally greased it. And it's a non-stick type of pan. (I think I was laughing by this point.) So in the pan it stayed and this is what I ended up with:

 

I am actually kind of embarrassed to put that picture on my blog. I took cake decorating classes years ago and enjoy making cute cakes for my kids' birthdays. They're not over-the-top amazing, but they have all looked better than this one. As I was decorating it and actually laughing about how horrible it looked, Ryan jokingly commented that he's seen what I'm capable of--so I shouldn't worry too much about this one. Not to mention, I love cooking/baking, etc. and the cake itself did NOT turn out. Ryan, not jokingly, assured me that the cake really did taste good, though.

 

But this story isn't really about the cake. Because what most of you don't know is that for the past 4 (or so) months, I have been dealing with post-partum depression. I've consistently said it was mild, but it got pretty challenging for a while there. During the worst of it, I didn't tell many people. At first, the only people who knew were my husband and my friend who babysat while I was going to my therapy appointments. But as things began to get better, I told a few more of my friends, some of whom were VERY influential in helping me make progress. I'm definitely on the downside now, thank goodness. I can't say it's completely gone yet and I do still have some days (fewer and further between) where I wonder if it will ever fully go away. But for the most part, life is a lot better than it was a few months ago.

 

But even that is not the point of my story. The point of it is where the cake situation and post-partum depression collide--in a good way--to show me what I've learned in the last few months. There are few more things I have to explain before we get there, though.

 

Part of post-partum depression is that your expectations for yourself do not match up with the reality of your life. And you constantly feel like you're failing. You don't have the mental capacity nor the physical energy to keep up with everything you used to--and, therefore, you fail. (Again.) (And again.) (Oh, and one more time.) This feeling of constant failure brought me to tell my therapist that not having a clean house reflects poorly on me. Misbehaving children reflect poorly on me. Anything that isn't done perfectly--or at least to my personal, way-too-high, exacting standards--reflects poorly on me.

 

And then she explained something to me that has taken me a long time to really embrace. (Still working on it, actually. I think I'm getting there though...most days.) She said, "You are not your house," and then extended that idea to my children's behavior and those other "anythings" that I feel I don't do perfectly. She reminded me of all of the capabilities and qualities I have--not the external manifestation of those qualities, but what's actually inside of me--and explained that the state of my house (or insert any other imperfection here) does not represent those talents and abilities that make me who I am.

 

Which brings me back to the cake. In the moment I was decorating the cake, when I realized how horrible it was turning out, I made a choice. Instead of putting ME into the cake, instead of piling another guilt rock into my backpack, instead of freaking out (internally or externally) that it wasn't perfect, I decided that this cake did not represent me or my love for my child. It was a cake. That's all.

 

In the past few months, I have learned that motherhood is about being ME--and not a mom. All of those things that you see and hear other moms doing? Those are them being THEM. Not a mom. It's about giving yourself permission, (because really, who else will give it to you once you're an adult?), to be YOU. It's about letting go of your expectations and realizing that just being YOU is enough in the first place. And it's about detaching yourself from external sources of self-confidence or weakness and finding those things within yourself. I'm definitely still working on this. It will probably take years to change my thinking and fully apply this idea. But I hope as I continue to grow into this concept, I can remember the moment when it looked like a piece of cake.