Ending a 25-year stress cycle in mothering.

I birthed and placed my first child for adoption when I was nineteen years old. 

I didn’t place her because I wanted to, but because I thought I had to. 

There was a strong and even coercive rhetoric that I was not only not old enough to raise a baby, but that I was ill prepared, that I didn’t know enough and hadn’t succeeded enough at that point to be able to raise her. 

I believed in my own unworthiness to have my own child. 

But, oh did I want her. Oh, did I love her. 

And now, at forty-four, I smile to look back on how my younger self knew to take care of that growing baby. How I read Ina May Gaskin and birthed her naturally with a midwife, how I instinctively was a wonderful mother. 

After the separation from my daughter, all I wanted was to become a mother again. I pointed my life in that direction and began doing the things that I thought I needed to do before I was worthy of motherhood - undergrad degree, master’s degree, jobs, extra jobs, and securing a man to father my next child. 

It was a stress-orientation, to be sure. 

And this summer, I’ve been reflecting on this. Not by choice, necessarily, but because a soulful life has a way of making you come back around to yourself. 

Because, you see, my second child left. He left home, and I thought I had two more years with him. 

And I didn’t like it. I don’t. I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t my choice. I do not consent. 

And yet… all I can do right now is reflect. No matter how I might want to control the situation, I do not want to control my son. He’s an autonomous being. And so I do what I can and what is mine to do. 

This premature empty nest that I’m experiencing has revealed a lot of things to me, including, the stress pattern of motherhood that originated twenty five years ago with the birth of my daughter, the extreme loss, and the way in which I oriented my life toward mothering. 

The way my entire adult life up until now was about becoming a mother and then pouring myself into my child(ren). I didn’t always do a perfect job, but I did a damn good job. I didn’t always have the money and I didn’t always have what I needed as a single mother, but he always not only had what he needed - he had my attention, my guidance, my therapeutic background, my insight, my intention, my love. 

I love my son incredibly. I’m the president of the fan club. He’s been the center of my world. 

There’s plenty more to say on this and seeing as though I’ve had the goal of becoming a more accomplished writer and now I have nothing but time to write, I’m sure I’ll be back to say more. 

People close to me keep reflecting to me how I’ve just gotten my life back. My life - as in, my life as a woman, beyond mothering. It’s a bit bewildering. 

When my son was five and I divorced his father, people would say, “Oh, but you’re going to do so much with that solo time,” and all I could think was, “I didn’t have a child to have him half time, you nut!” But they were right. I did recover so much of myself in that time he spent with his dad. Eventually I left a traditional career and built a soul-led business in that time I had to myself. Not only that, I walked my own wellness and spiritual path fully and didn’t have to compromise on that like so many women do. 

I feel myself on a precipice of a phase of life I wasn’t planning to live into yet. Some call it “empty nest”. But I sense it’s the burgeoning years of Crone, the slowing down of perimenopause, the wisdom years of Elder coming on. I’m not sad about this. I know in my ways of knowing that I was also made for this as much as I was made to Mother. 

But I’m in the in-between. I’m grieving, I’m walking through the court process I don’t want to be in, I’m still hopeful he’ll at least visit home. And I’m healing the stress-response of motherhood, of having done it too alone, of pouring myself into the task out of the immensity of my love for my children but having also not been filled back up, not nearly enough, especially in the last three years. 

It is my time to choose my own life, they say. It is my time to replenish. 

I’ve been on a purpose-led path intentionally for many years. I suppose you could say I was also experiencing burnout, from motherhood and the difficulties that presented on my path. But I reflect on my mission often. I have been disheartened by lack of success or impact. I have slowed myself down with this negative attitude. 

But this, and the events of the world, have me asking again how I can show up to make any difference at all. 

I feel the energy of motherhood slowly being reallocated into creativity, but not without first slowing down to replenish myself. 

And so I write today because at the core of my soul’s mission was always truth-telling. To choose to craft words into something honest, and maybe they’ll find their way to someone else’s heart. That is why I write today. Because I’m a mother, a woman, walking step by step into the next stage of my becoming. 

And maybe you are too. 

Much love,

Sarah Poet

So grateful for these photos from Nov 2024, after Hurricane Helene, on the mountain where we lived.