08/19/2021
The Bond.
I'm not sure if anyone reads captions here, especially long ones, but my heart is feeling especially inclined to share right now. It's been some time since I've posted on social media. It's strange, but the online world that so often feels like a second home is also the one that leaves me feeling the most broken. As I browse through the lives of others, I'm always left doubting myself. I doubt my work. My passion. My ambitions. My progress. My creativity. My voice. But shortly after my daughter was born, I noticed social media tossing me into a whole new world of doubt. Looking through the pictures others painted of their family, I began to doubt my bond. I looked down at my sweet girl and I knew I loved her, but I just didn't feel the bond it seemed like the rest of the world experienced. I didn't find myself in a place of motherhood bliss. I felt trapped. I felt lost. I felt alone. I couldn't shake the fear that I wasn't doing this correctly, that I was missing some innate instinct mothers found so very easily. Every day felt like a little more of myself was slipping. I held my daughter and didn't find confidence, I found trepidation. Every image I'd see online of a happy mother sent me further into a spiral of doubt and worry. And so I disappeared for a bit. I logged off. I focused on my story, not theirs. While the hours felt long, the days began to drift by more quickly. I started find myself a little more. I started to trust myself a little more. But most importantly, I started to get to know my daughter a little more. Now I sit here, ten months into this new life and I'm feeling more confident than ever. I think about my little one and my heart swells, just like all those other mothers described. I see the way she looks at me and I cannot deny the bond we share. She is my forever. We were made for each other. She were a part of me before I could have known what that meant. She is mine and I am hers. Bonding with her was not immediate. It was a slow, steady fall, like drifting to sleep to the sweetest lullaby. Our story is just that, ours. And there's no right or wrong story, there's only your story.
