The Gap
Juggling expectations, potential and reality.
For years I wrestled with my desires (increasing revenue for my nonprofit, publishing my book, and speaking on stage), and what I could produce (none of those things). I had BIG desires, but low results. Ugh.
I just had to work harder, obviously – wake up earlier, shorten my workouts, tether myself to my desk at night in the dark of my basement office. I simply had to want it more, I was told...by myself, by others, by our culture. Because priorities get focus, focus creates action, and action creates results. These are the facts. I was the thing that needed to be better.
Then, in a fog of exhaustion when I couldn’t will myself to do these things, I’d pour myself a drink as incentive and try anyway. Inside, I became a tangle of anxious energy and weakness, and the results I was achieving on the outside were meager at best. I began to question if I really wanted these things. Others questioned that too.
During the day, I’d waltz between phone calls, meetings and emails to manage my nonprofit and its massive cross-country relay, while simultaneously juggling nursing sessions and nap times with a baby, which then became a toddler and a baby, and then two toddlers and a baby! It was a precarious two-step that had me yearning for the quiet moments when I got to sit in the nursery rocking chair, pinned down by the love and want of my little one, and close my parched eyes. “Could I have used those minutes for work?” my mind would wonder, knowing very well that what I had done was the most of what I was capable of. Other moms seemed to be balancing personal and professional growth beautifully. I knew this because I viewed their thriving social media profiles. “How are they doing it and managing their family?” I’d ask myself.
I couldn’t deny the deep hole of nothing-more-to-give that lingered at my core. It was the center of a space that wedged itself between my desires and my capacity. This gap is where disappointment lives.
In reality, I was producing – just not in a way our culture values or pays for. My children and raising them are of no worth when I’m asked if I work full-time. And so the external pressure I felt to capitalize my career potential persisted. Ultimately, I had little words for those who asked why I wasn’t doing more for my nonprofit and career at the time.
I felt like I was letting my organization down. I began to believe I was the problem.
What I lacked back when I was making humans within my own body was the energy to produce at a level myself and others were accustomed to. Energy flowed abundantly, exactly to the places it needed to. But the message was clear – that wasn’t good enough. Given the commonplace of motherhood, what was amiss was the courage to call it as it was — an immense effort of the body and mind.
I’m not saying nothing should have been expected of me, but I am saying that what I was able to do should have been trusted more. High achieving mothers should be trusted more.
I wish I had known that it was more than okay to maintain something; that it is okay to solidify the foundation that has been laid, to evaluate current systems, and to keep a ship steady along a defined course. There is great value that can come from such efforts.
And isn’t that growth?
If I could go back and change the woman I was, trying to drive revenue upwards and create more without the energy or systems or a diverse group of people to help her, I wouldn’t. There’s too much that I learned in those years of wrestling.
If I could go back, that’s what I’m doing now. Reaching to a time I think about often and offering up what I know to the mother rocking her child, feeling exhausted while gazing out her window, wondering about the depth inside of her yearning to burst forth again but unsure of how that’s ever going to be possible. This one is for you: It’s okay to maintain what you have for now. Make it better as it is. Keep reaching and your energy will return again. You’ll stop nursing and you’ll sleep. Dear God, you'll sleep. You’ll refill the reserves that we’re told will never be full again, and one day, months down the road, so much longer from when you’d like it to be but exactly at the time it’s supposed to, you’ll wake up and realize that you have more to give again.
And when that happens, use it.