When It All Just Falls Apart

A story about running and motherhood and my achy private parts

I started running again today for the first time since having a baby.

Really, this is the first actual exercise I’ve done that isn’t walking since I was like three months pregnant.

And it sucked.

The running itself didn’t actually suck. It was the fact that I bought this fancy jogger when it was on super sale as a way to motivate myself to run. Then, I put my kid in said fancy jogger with a cushy seat thinking she’d have the time of her life only to listen to her bawl her eyes out for thirty minutes because she thought we were going to the beach, not on a measly run.

The running itself was actually fine. It was the fact that my pubic bone still hurts almost seventeen months postpartum and no amount of chiropractic work or stretches are helping it. That damn bone burned and ached so badly with each step I took, and it reminded me that when we birth a human a part of us is ripped open from the inside. And that takes time to heal.

So I’m running down the street with a screaming toddler and a painful vagina with my very overpriced (even on sale) jogger and I just felt defeated. It was one of those moments of, “why am I even trying?”

Being a mom is so beautiful and the most fulfilling experience to ever happen to me, but it’s also absolutely freaking hard. Because suddenly you’re not doing your life anymore. You’re doing life with your child. And you’re not just regulating your own emotions and talking yourself through different experiences, but you’re having to navigate those same things with a human that’s crash-landed on this Earth and needs to learn it all from scratch.

So I’m running, trying to keep myself calm and feel proud that I’m actually exercising for the first time in probably two years while also continually saying, “I know it’s frustrating we can’t go to the beach right now. I know it’s hard. It’s okay to be upset but we’re still not going right now.”

I feel like the imaginary walls around me are caving in, I feel like everyone we pass must think I’m a horrible mother for just letting my kid cry while I run.

How selfish I must be.

But I continue on. I run in intervals when my app tells me to. I hold back my own tears while working through my daughter’s big feelings. And I just keep going.

We make it back home and I’m frustrated. Why does it have to be so hard sometimes?

I carry both our water bottles, snacks, and her up the stairs. I give her some milk and put on a show and we both sit there, calming down, regulating ourselves. She comes over to cuddle, smiles at me, and the deepest, truest love I could ever feel engulfs all the frustration I experienced only moments ago. It’s gone. And what’s left is just joy that I have someone I made, grew, carried, and birthed that loves me even when she’s mad at me, or even when I don’t do this parenting thing quite right.

And who cares if I’m never able to run again. I literally did the thing. I created an entire human and now it’s my job to support her as she grows.

Motherhood, man. It’s a trip. A constant ebb and flow, push and shove, a balancing act that echoes your own wounds and flaws right on the surface for the world to see.

When I lay down in bed at night, whether it was a good or a bad day, I marvel at the miracle that I get the honor of raising a child in this life. And whatever the world has thrown at me that day, however many poopy diapers I’ve changed and meals I’ve cleaned up. If I’ve said the wrong thing at the wrong time, given her too much screen time, or didn’t get her outside enough.

Whatever my shortcomings may be.

It doesn’t matter when I lay there with her and she turns into me, puts her little hand on my face, and feels completely safe to fall asleep.

In those moments, I’m reminded that life, and parenting, is hard.

But it’s so insanely worth it, too.

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