Wild Mama: One Woman's Quest to Live Her Best Life, Escape Traditional Parenthood, and Travel the World

A sample of Wild Mama: One Woman's Quest to Live Her Best Life, Escape Traditional Parenthood, and Travel the World

Contents

• Author’s Note — ix
• Foreword — x
• Introduction: Culture Shock — 1
• 1. Solo on a Spare — 15
• 2. Under the Microscope — 26
• 3. Checkmate — 40
• 4. American Dream — 46
• 5. Fantasies Aren’t Real — 59
• 6. Un-Adventure — 70
• 7. One Moment in Life — 86
• 8. Lay That Baby Down — 99
• 9. Please Not Nudism Forbidden — 110
• 10. What I Wanted — 119
• 11. Superhero — 129
• 12. Unwanted Passenger — 138
• 13. Wild Mama — 148
• 14. Sidecar Sally — 157
• 15. Tough Love — 168
• 16. Sweet Summit — 174
• 17. Where I Began — 183
• Epilogue — 193
• Acknowledgements — 198

Foreword

A few months ago, I walked into the gym, dropped my two-year-old daughter off in the daycare, and ran into an acquaintance in the lobby. She grabbed my arm. "I love your Wild Mama column," she said. "You do so many adventurous things." She was probably referring to a piece I’d written about a solo trip to Rome, or the backpacking trip my family took into the mountains near our Colorado home.

Before I could respond, she added, "I used to do lots of fun things, but that was before I had kids." A pregnant pause followed. And then she said, "But that’s okay. Being a mom is more important anyway. It’s all I really need." The look in her eyes, tired and confused, was not convincing.

This conversation reflects a theme that comes up nearly every week in my social interactions. When women make the transition into motherhood, it becomes difficult to maintain one’s sense of self. It’s no wonder. Pregnancy and early motherhood are totally disorienting. Physical changes, raging hormones, and deep love for a helpless new life make it difficult to see clearly. It’s easy to get lost in a whirlwind of diapers, spit-up, and endless decisions that all feel urgent and important. But sooner or later, when their children are toddlers or adolescents or somewhere in between, women find themselves asking a question that is critical for their well-being: "Wait, who the hell am I?" It’s a moment of self-consciousness that can be downright terrifying, especially if the answer is buried so deep, it feels lost.

It’s not only women who experience this; plenty of men do, too. Although I’m writing from a female perspective, I recognize and respect that the face of parenting is diverse, and my intention is to share my story in an inclusive way. The themes explored may even resonate with non-parents. The idea is about feeling whole as a human, and this transcends boundaries that might otherwise divide.

In reading parenting blogs, I haven’t found many that are focused on a woman’s identity. They discuss breastfeeding, potty training, discipline, the ups and downs of parenting, and the Mommy Wars. Occasionally there’s a paragraph on five-minute self-care routines. It’s useful information, perhaps, but child-centered. When Outside Online posted their top travel memoirs written by women in June 2012, one reader responded by asking, "Any (memoirs) by women who are also mothers? So, so hard to find."

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy stated in a TED talk that when a person loses her core identity, it leaves her powerless. People want to know: How can I honor my self after having kids? How can I tune in to my identity? What does it take to carve out time for my individual passions? They want role models, inspiration, and ways to take action. Many people agonize over the decision to have kids, because they view the leap into parenthood like standing at the end of the high dive. They’ve watched their friends with babies transform into a foreign species who use words like "mastitis" and "playdate." Pull-ups no longer refer to exercise. Suddenly, "valet service" means wiping poop from a partially-potty-trained kid’s butt. Standing there, toes curled around the edge of the board, fulfilled in their lives pre-kids, they don’t know if they want to jump.

The intertwining ideas of femininity, motherhood, and identity comprise an age-old conversation. The book Gift from the Sea, first published in 1955, explores a woman’s desire for inner harmony from the point of view of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, mother of five, who is on a solo beach vacation. She emphasizes that it is critical to women’s overall well-being to carve out consistent alone time in their lives, to create, think, and simply be. It’s not a frivolous luxury; it’s a necessity.

Similarly, Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ book Women Who Run with the Wolves examines the female psyche through stories and fables, and asserts that all women desire, deep down, to honor their authentic, or wild, self. Estés provides a call to action for women to reconnect with this essential part of their soul; to listen to what’s inside of them, instead of subscribing to social norms that suggest doing so is selfish or superficial.

For some people, a flourishing individual identity might mean working full time, running a business, painting, sewing, cooking, volunteering in the community, training for a 10K run, or some combination of things. For me, it means travel, outdoor adventure, and writing. It took me many years to uncover my wild, but eventually I realized that my creativity sparks when I jump out of my comfort zone, change the scene, and meet new characters. The key is in figuring out what it means for you. What’s your wild? What makes you feel alive? How can you feel whole?

We each have our own set of gifts and challenges. In my travels, I’ve met mothers around the world who’ve found ways to honor their passions, despite their obstacles. They are single, married, or in relationships, and they come from diverse geographic locations, racial and ethnic groups, and life circumstances. The one thing they have in common is that they are all women who have figured out ways, big and small, to feel complete. It’s easy to make excuses and accept a hopeless cycle, saying, "There is nothing I can do to change things," or, "I am so lost, I will never find my way back." But with effort and focus, it’s possible. It’s just that sometimes you may need a machete to clear the way.

Introduction: Culture Shock

Five Weeks Into Motherhood…

It’s Monday morning and I’m navigating the parking lot of Walmart, a zombie behind the wheel. I’ve had eight hours of sleep in the last two nights, and zero showers, and the Walmart parking lot is a maze; rows of shoulder-to-shoulder cars punctuated by screaming children, harried moms, stray carts, hustling blue-smocked employees, and trolling mini vans. If the foothills of Northern Colorado weren’t rising up in the west, greenish-brown humps against the piercing blue sky, grounding me in reality, I’d think I’d been plunged into a game of Pac Man. Although I don’t frequent Walmart (or at least I didn’t until a month ago), I have the overwhelming feeling that although the prices may be low, the risk of picking off a pedestrian before entering the store is high.

I’m taking my chances, because I just discovered we have zero remaining diapers. Actually, that’s not true. There are a dozen vibrantly-colored cloth diapers sitting in the corner of our mudroom next to the hiking boots—fire engine red and egg yolk yellow and sage green—hues that looked so pretty on the website when I bought them. In that moment, I was high on pregnancy-induced hormones and imagining motherhood like a Snuggle fabric softener advertisement, full of warm breezes and sunshine and teddy bears, and I thought it would be nice to cover my baby’s bottom in organic fabric. I didn’t know if I was having a boy or a girl, so I picked out a range of gender neutral colors, a whole rainbow (who says a girl can’t wear red!), and clicked Pay Now.

Ironically, they got used once. (Cue: criticism from cloth diaper supporters.) Yes, I’m aware that the Diaper Battle is a tier in the overarching Mommy Wars: A battle in which well-intentioned people from both teams—Cloth or Disposable—argue in lengthy threads on the internet about which is best, citing their favorite statistics. Or they announce on Facebook if they, for instance, use cloth, posting a picture of their little Avery in an aqua heap of cloth, with a caption that says, "Cloth diapers rock!" And then a handful of people "Like" the status, and it’s not until you read down to comment #5 that people begin to respectfully disagree. Parents, start your engines. The flurry begins. Both teams compete for support, similar to adding sponsor logos to a racecar, or picking players in a junior high kickball game.

I respect Mommy War topics because they’re important personal choices: breastfeeding vs. bottle, pacifier vs. self-soothing, crib vs. co-sleeping. It’s just that I try really hard not to get involved in the war part, although I admit it’s tempting at times. I’ve chosen breast, pacifier, and none-of-the-above on sleeping arrangements (my baby, oddly, sleeps in a swing), but it could all change in a flash. Because really, I’m simply trying to survive here, which is apparent every time I look in the mirror and see the dark circles under my eyes, my tangled brown hair, the hormone-caused hyperpigmentation splotched on my forehead and cheeks like spilled paint, and the leaking milk making extremely un-sexy stars on my T-shirt over my nipples.

Regarding the disposable diapers that are #1 on my Walmart "We Need" list, my husband, Chris, and I guesstimate the water used to wash cloth diapers about equals the landfill situation from disposables. And as for covering our kid’s butt in chemical-free material, well, my mom swathed both my sister and me in disposable diapers and we turned out mostly fine. Chris doesn’t remember what his mom did, and he keeps forgetting to ask her, because he’s not getting any more sleep

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