lost mind

a new mom walks into a dance studio

When I became a mom, I lost my mind. I mean that literally, not euphemistically. My mind as I knew it was gone. This loss has really been hitting me lately, mostly because I’ve been trying to use my mind more, trying to grab onto it, do the sorts of things I used to do with it. Because I love my mind, because it’s mine. (Interesting wordplay, my mind is mine, little flick of that last letter from “d” to “e”). I’ve been trying to read, trying to write, trying to hop from one thought to the next. Trying to make plans and keep them, be dependable. And, um, it’s hard. All those things feel hard right now, which is so disorienting for me. I didn’t realize how much the quickness of my mind was a tool I used to live my life, do my work, feel good — but it was. Even to write down that I’ve lost it makes me feel a sort of horrible desperation, like it’s really true. Oh no! When will I get it back? Will I ever? What is happening to me? 

I was listening to this interview with Rachel Yoder who wrote Nightbitch — a book I am SO EXCITED to read. In it, she says that in the early months with her baby, the hormones made her feel high all the time, like extremely stoned. YES, I thought. I’ve never been stoned before (too much of a goody-two-shoes, even still), but I’ve had so many moments of feeling something that I imagine is what being stoned would feel like. Sitting on the floor of the baby’s room after breastfeeding him, watching him play, idly handing him things, stacking his stacking cups. I really could get up! I could pick him up, take him along with me, do things! But I don’t. I can’t. I’m too woozy, my mind too empty, my body too loose, too heavy and warm. It feels good. It feels sleepy. Flooded with the same hormone as what fills the body after sex, oxytocin, that sleepy full warm feeling, over and over and over again each day. In those moments I am so far from my mind. My mind is like an idea I had once, a meadow I used to visit, a dream of a house I could live in. I don’t live there anymore. 

A few weeks ago, my sister invited me to go to a modern dance class with the dance company she’s doing summer teaching-artist work for. I hadn’t been to a dance class in years — as soon as we walked through the door I felt like I was in an alternate universe. The wide, clear, grey expanse of marley on the floor, no air-conditioning, high ceilings in some sort of old gym. Door open to the street. There was so much energy, seeing the other dancers in their warm up clothes. They do this all the time, I thought. I felt amazingly un-self-conscious, a welcome surprise. I was happy to be there, in a rehearsal space, again. 

The class wasn’t easy. Simple movements, but a sort of perpetual motion I was not accustomed to. Things strung together. It was hot, we were all wearing fabric masks. No mirrors, which my sister and I remarked later made deceptively simple things harder because you don’t get the visual reference of your own body making the shapes you’re taking in. I kept up, at first. It felt so good to move. So good to follow along, feel it wash over me, take new shape, not think except for immediate action. I felt myself riding along on the current, buoyant. My body new and old at once. Different and familiar. I felt beautiful. The other dancers were clearly dancers, but I wasn’t so unlike them, right? I could blend in, couldn’t I? 

In the second half of the class, after all the warming up, the teacher started to casually put together a combination for us to learn. I loved the choreography immediately as she began to take us through it. It was soft, swingy, flowy — the kind of thing I knew I could execute well, dance beautifully, if not now then earlier in my life, back when I was really dancing. I could do this, I thought. I could be a mom who dances.

But a curious thing started to happen to me. I couldn’t remember anything. We learned several eight-counts somewhat quickly, which is normal for a class like this. And as soon as the choreography entered my mind, it left it. Poof. Slipped in the front door, out the back, like running water. I couldn’t get past the first four counts. My mind felt literally blank. I could hear crickets. But I didn’t notice at first. The realization came on slowly — for a while we were all just in the learning part, following along as the teacher taught it, all of us nodding our heads. But then she was like, “okay, let’s try it,” and I watched everyone else doing it with some sort of cognition — I had literally nothing. It was almost funny! Like a fact. I had NOTHING. I could sort of do it if I truly had my eyes glued on the teacher, and I’m sure I looked ridiculous doing that. That’s no way to dance. 

When the time came to do the combination in small groups of three or four, I waved my hands, said, “I’m sitting it out!” I knew there was no way I could even pretend to go through the combination, that’s how thoroughly I didn’t know anything about it. No one batted an eye. Not a big deal! And I noticed myself not feeling embarrassed. The social aspect of sitting it out didn’t bother me like it would have when I was younger (they’ll think I’m a bad dancer, horror!), no, but it was definitely bewildering. Sort of a surreal experience in my mind. I remembered nothing. Holding out my hands, empty, empty. I watched the others dance, clearly remembering some if not all of the choreography — even remembering it enough to really dance instead of just going through the sequence of movements. I watched them with a gratefulness and an envy. I wished I could dance — not to show off or anything, but to feel the euphoria of it again. 

If I feel rage about motherhood, or, honestly, wonder, it’s at this internal phenomenon — the loss of my mind. When I was younger and dancing, it was definitely difficult to pick up choreography quickly, and there were others who were quicker than me, but I could always keep up. I would have been able to try, at least. This was totally different than that feeling. More pure, in some ways. Like standing under a waterfall with a slotted spoon, trying to catch something to drink. Feeling the new information rush over me, absorbing none of it. Why has my mind become so impermeable? Does this happen to every new mom? Even eight months on? Or just to me?

As I process all that is shifting in me, I wonder if I’m slower at this than others. If I’m not moving on quickly enough, getting over it, taking it all in stride. I have felt this way about a lot of the transitions in my life, like I keep yammering on about things after others have moved on. Integrate! Integrate, I tell myself! Easier said than done. I thought I’d be used to it by now.  

But the oxytocin! That stuff is no joke! Like I said earlier — imagine getting stoned every three hours all day every day and trying to keep your life on track, meet deadlines, have coherent thoughts that string together! VERY HARD! I’m amazed I’m doing anything at all. But, my goodness, we don’t talk about this — or if we do we do it with weird euphemisms like “mommy brain,” and we don’t build it into what is actually expected of new mothers. I really feel like part of prenatal education should be an in-depth weather map of what hormones will hit when, and what to expect when they do. No one ever talked to me about these things (probably because it’s all sorely under-researched and sort of not discussed in general), but it is affecting my actual day to day life in profound ways! I’m really grateful to be breastfeeding my baby, but it should really come with a disclaimer — “if you do this it will be wonderful but you will also lose your mind. Try to avoid deadlines, other’s expectations, anything upsetting, any sort of hopes for accomplishing things at all”

Here’s how it should actually be. — “You will lose your mind, and we will support you through it!” That’s what’s missing. I’m sort of incredibly supported by my family right now and still coming up short — so I am astonished at how little support is built into our social systems for mothers. If this is affecting me, one for whom life is quite gentle indeed, what about people who are under much more pressure?  I’m coming to understand how honestly sort of violent the lack of societal support for new mothers is — no universal paid leave, such expensive and complicated childcare options, all of it. I’m accidentally like fully My Year of Rest and Relaxation over here, but I didn’t expect to feel this way! I thought I’d be able to pull myself up by my bootstraps and accomplish things! Not lose my mind! But instead I’m stoned and want to lay on the carpet in my nursery beside my baby and let him climb all over me for six hours a day. I can’t make decisions. I can’t remember anything I’m supposed to figure out. Keeping up with the baby’s nap schedule is enough to tie up my mind’s bandwidth for an entire day. I’m usually a very driven and capable person — I can’t access that drive right now. Life is showing me the choreography, and it’s flying right over my exhausted head. 

I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining. I think I’m just confused. Or exhausted. Or too sensitive. Or too privileged, to even get to think about this at all and spend time writing about it in a free online newsletter. And worried I’m alone, that everyone else figures this out much more quickly than I do, and I’m left in the dust with my feelings hurt. But that can’t be true — I know other people feel this way too. I’ve got the esteemed writer-mothers (who I trust implicitly) to back me up. In that same interview, Rachel Yoder said that she didn’t write a word for the two years after her son was born. That sounds like profound “lost mind” to me. I’m grateful that I’m writing (something!), but that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that any of this makes any sense at all, or that I have any sort of plan for the way it fits into my life or career, gives me any sort of forward momentum, makes me valuable to society or the marketplace. No, I’m just writing this weird diatribe, a flurry of fingers on keys, and then I’ll press send and a few people will read it and then… nothing. Which is fine with me, but not really helping my case. I’m not over here selling a novel anytime soon. 

I think the problem is that the physical experience of motherhood, by design, makes women unproductive — except for the huge quiet productivity of nurturing a child. That has been my experience. I was always confused about why mothers were so infantilized until I became one and realized that my mind is out for lunch. I can’t think straight, can’t speak clearly, can’t get anything done — anyone would take one look at me right now and not want to rely on me for anything important. We can’t just pop back into place, keep all the money-cogs rolling. But also we’re not stupid! We are not sleeping and we are profoundly responsible for a very vulnerable small child and our brains are fogged up by a constant cocktail of weird hormones! There’s a lot going on! 

But, in motherhood, I still want to be asked to do hard non-motherhood things, and I still think I’m capable of accomplishment. That’s what I want to say really clearly here, will repeat over and over again if I need to. World, don’t count me out! Don’t count us out! Don’t count any of this, all that I am learning, all that I am achieving, out. Mothers can make things, do things, build things, but how? And what do we really want? I’ve considered whether I want to truly not even try to work this year — and that doesn’t feel good to me at all. It has become clear to me that I need to write, that it isn’t something I’m willing to lose or set aside. And my career goals go on ahead of me, there’s a momentum there! But it all  just needs to look different. It has become strange, fluid.  It’s rife with paradox. I become an unreliable narrator. My left hand doesn’t know what my right hand is doing. I’m always trying to figure out what the bare minimum of time I need child-free is — because I don’t want to be free of my child. I want him always near me. AND I want to use my mind, make things, do things, continue. So what am I to do!? I saw this reflected to me in this great interview between writer Susan Choi who wrote Trust Exercise and other excellent novels and interviewer Sara Fredman (whose newsletter is my new favorite read). 

The main thing that I can say looking back is that period was characterized by me being in constant denial about how much childcare I really needed to be able to return to my life as a writer.

It's a real thing.

Constantly thinking ‘if somebody just came for a couple of hours a day, okay, three hours a day. Maybe if somebody just came for three hours a day, three times a week, or maybe five hours a day three times a week?’ I just couldn't get a grip and accept the fact that- part of it was I really enjoyed being a mother to a young child and I'm kind of glad that I went through that tug of war with my first where it was constantly just really pushing it to the limit of how little childcare can I get away with having?

I read this and thought oh my gosh that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Pushing it to the limit, filling all the little cracks of time with work, spreading myself very thin — but is there another way? I could figure out full time childcare for my child so I can write and make sewing patterns. But I don’t want to. I want him in my home. I want to breastfeed him. I love being with him, having him very near me at all times. I intentionally chose this work so I could find something in the middle. But it turns out that the middle isn’t simple or clear at all, and there’s lots of other mother-writers with cobbled-together work hours / childcare who are nodding their heads along with me. 

I’ve been ambiently thinking a lot about feminism lately — what I thought it was, what nuanced parts of it I couldn’t quite access without experiencing motherhood. In my experience, the path of motherhood is the path of sustained powerlessness. Of self-emptying. Of littleness and very little to show for one’s self. Of course feminism is about women being able to do whatever it is they want to do and be taken seriously as much as men are — but I think I did still hold an expectation that the goal was sameness. Now that makes no sense to me at all. I think I thought that at least a piece of feminism was about rising above the stereotype that women who are mothers can’t do everything that men can, can’t participate in the economy, are stupid, quaint, unsexy, or babyish, etc.  — no, we can do it all! — but that isn’t quite it. I want to be allowed, even encouraged, to embrace the mind’s silence postpartum, call that power instead of weakness. I want women who are mothers to be honored for our emptiness. The quiet that suddenly cuts through the noise. Our having nothing to show for our hours of hard work literally keeping alive these babies except… well…  living thriving babies. I’m learning that I have so much unintended internalized misogyny, or really just lack of experience, having absorbed the very skewed and unnatural culture of motherhood-under-capitalism that’s handed to us. Have the babies, show them off, bring them along, back to work! I didn’t realize how profoundly the whole thing would change me, from the inside out. That’s embarrassing to admit, but I’m not sure I could have learned this any other way. 

This “lost mind” state of being is not advertised as valuable, but I think it is. It must be. It’s protective, it’s powerful, it’s arresting. It’s sort of marvelous how empty my mind is. That’s a wonder to me — unusual, mysterious, interesting, and strange. We mothers know something about mindfulness, about humility, about toil and boundlessness and energy that isn’t energy at all but a sort of well-managed torpor, where we bear our little babies along like rafts atop a slow river. 

But it’s still sort of horrible to be at the dance class and not be able to dance. I didn’t feel embarrassed, but I did feel bewildered. Surprised at the force of my not-able-ness. Maybe I will never be able to learn the choreography ever again. But maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to. The kind of dance I’ve always loved best is improvisation — whatever is possible, whatever movement is natural for the body’s propulsion in space. You can’t remember it afterward, can’t repeat it if you tried. This mother-year like improvisation instead of choreography. Could there be value in that? Could that be something? Can I still be called a dancer, one who is showing up in the middle of the floor, body and soul, no mind to speak of, just overflowing self, self, self?