RAW TALKING MOMMA

By: Cynthia Litman

Pearl of the Day: Love The Deepend

Our kids are our greatest joys, they can also be our biggest pains in the asses which is why Clark Gable/Rhet Butlers brilliantly uttered pearl from Gone with the Wind (1939)  “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” is something many a parent want to say.

We may bite our tongues but our energy still needs to get released. Yes, it would be ideal to transmute it into love in every waking parenting moment but sometimes our kids give us such a run for our money that pushes our physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological to its limits.

Such is why Adam Mansbach’s book GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP comes as a welcome reprieve. When you’re at the breaking point, and you can feel it coming on, you can border on the utterly ridiculous. Sleep is just one miniscule area. I mean, if your child isn’t sleeping, neither are you. Sleep deprivation, as we all know, leads to some funky messed up behavior and poor health conditions. We simply don’t function right without sleep.

In our delirium anything is likely to spew from our mouths. Actions you may never have taken in your right mind, when you are sane and well rested, now become your last grasp of desperation.

I remember a former colleague of mine, who happens to be among the most stable, grounded, down to earth people I know, has multiple children, saying how she’d be up all night with her baby trying to get them to sleep, rocking them in her arms, humming to them and with each one, she was tempted to just walk over and toss them out the window.

Joking of course. Kind of. Sort of. Okay, not really.

There’s only so much one can take. With kids, even when it's bad it's good, but there's not enough oxygen available for the number of ommmmm needed to get you back to center, back to that loving space where your children are the most blessed miracles.

Way Out

Parents all face that breaking point, that place where it’s you or me kid and you’d better get on board or I am just dropping your ass and heading for the nearest exit sign. 

Nothing personal kid, just a matter of self-preservation.

Many a nights my husband and I wish we had a cross bow shaped tranquilizer dart gun to aim straight at our children’s asses when it’s way passed our bed time but our kids are still so completely revved up with no signs of slowing down.

So Adam’s book comes as a much needed collective sigh of relief that you in your 3 o'clock in the morning madness are not alone, but are among millions of parents (yours included) who wish their child had an off button so you can re-charge your batteries.

When you've faced the end of your rope and your child won't stop whining, mistakes you for a tissue, or insists on being carried when your back is breaking, your most primal survival instinct kicks in.

You are not alone in the deep end, we've all been there, some of us just passed the deep water test. 

But it is those desperate moments, where you begin to deconstruct every form and feeling of love you feel for your child, your role as their protector, and begin to challenge every fiber of your strung out being that makes you feel like the worst parent in the world. 

Are there suddenly conditions on my love for my child?

Nope, you and they just need to go the fuck to sleep.   ;)

Copyright © 2011 Cynthia Litman d/b/a Tigris Imprints. All Rights Reserved.