The Louder Voice

“I don’t want to give away my energy. I want to choose where my energy goes. I want to be alongside my child every step of the way, and share my energy with [him].” Amanda Doyle, activist, human rights attorney, and podcast host of the award winning program “We Can Do Hard Things” recently shared the above insight (closely paraphrased). By all accounts and measures, Doyle is a superstar, overachiever, incredible force. This week, she shared with the pod that she will be undergoing surgery for a double mastectomy to combat breast cancer. In light of her recent cancer diagnosis, she was reflecting on the choices she makes in and for her life and family. She shared an anecdote in which, immediately after her diagnosis, her daughter concurrently had to run the mile for health class at school. Her child was overwhelmed with fear and apprehension. Amanda was on deadline and mid work- project the day of the mile, but felt a gravitational pull to be with her daughter. She didn’t ignore her intuition, or the heartstrings. She dropped her work, midday, and drove to her daughter’s school so that she could run alongside her, and emanate the love and energy she knew her child needed and deserved. I heard this story and gasped. This is exactly it.

I want my son to know that I will always run alongside him. I want him to know that between the din of society and his insistent “mama I need you” I will always choose him first. That my energy and time is ours, before anyone else’s. I feel the time slipping away from us in every glance at my phone, every “uh huh” I offer in return for his attention, and each time he experiences a milestone at daycare across the city. Naturally, I feel guilty. But this is not about guilt or shame. This is about presence, and autonomy, and creatively owning an authentic life. This is about choice and awareness and relearning.

This year, we have had a significant loss of childcare coverage, which has meant reexamining and reimagining what our days look like. How we show up for each other and our child and the personal and professional expectations we have for ourselves. In between the redundant conversations about schedule alignment, naptime battles, and relay race handoffs to make it to the next meeting we have found so much more meaning than we could have imagined. (But, No lie, it has been hard.) While our careers haven’t suffered or even stalled due to this shift, neither have our priorities. In fact, our awareness of each day has been reimagined as opportunity. Opportunity to experience this life alongside our child and to connect at a level that felt previously out of reach.

Recently, I journaled about the evaluative, distant, and appraising nature of the parenting I experienced as a child, and how feelings of sorrow or loss tend to arise during the holidays. Mother’s Day, of course, being no exception. I wrote, “I am predisposed and certainly conditioned and attuned to cleaning before and after each moment of joy, curating my appearance before visits, and still sensing disapproval at the lack of space, low ceilings, unfettered wild. After, relishing in the closeness of each other, holding hands, wrapping limbs in blankets, and knowing the beauty of this life we’ve built. Our island whose drawbridge has yet to be raised high as it should. Holidays as a mom mean I get to choose and build alongside and grow with and hold the dearest ones. The ones who sing raucously off key, inviting me in to an unofficial holiday with each other. Drawing with crayons. Eating from mismatched bowls. And realizing, that the holidays are just days when each day of this life and peace we’ve nurtured is worth celebrating.” Beyond the holidays, this softening of the rigid expectations has been key to closeness.

I was raised to be the best, do the most, and sacrifice myself for the appearance and embodiment of success. I have chosen a different path-ish. Though winding, hilly, and exasperating, it has been the one to lead me home to my people. Sometimes this Selah feels like a stilted sigh, but usually it feels like the tender, lingering kiss on a no-tears shampooed temple. As an adult human I get to choose my child and our precious life together. But this is certainly not without sacrifice. I work remotely, in a role I would not have selected out of a line up a decade ago. I downshifted from a whirlwind world of executive nonprofit leadership and commensurate income. That sting of self defeat and causal math is only a scab I occasionally and wistfully scratch at half heartedly. That is not to say my motivation has diminished. Quite the opposite. My motivation is redoubled and twofold. My motivation is redefined.

The could have would have should haves do not go away, they just interrupt quietly and sometimes murmur: as I hike in the rain smelling the soft decay of last season, as I step away from tasks to focus on chalk art and kitchen dance parties, as I share the first tangy sweet lemonade of summer and of many firsts with my toddler. I realize that I am running alongside my child, holding hands, letting the heartstrings tether. His voice is louder.

In short, I’d like to celebrate all of the bad ass women and parents choosing peace today and tomorrow and the next, choosing a life of their own, choosing to reexamine the work of work, choosing to break cycles (macro and micro, societal and familial), choosing the harder, steeper, rockier path to make space for the bruised shins of wide-eyed existence, choosing to look their children in the eye and say “I choose you” and both believe it. It’s messy and it’s hard, but it’s achingly real and precious and irreplaceable.