the wheel in the sky

spinning through fear and life transitions and a remembering

This essay talks a bit about depression which can be a bit of a sensitive subject, so if this topic is not helpful to you, please skip this read.

It’s been a while. The weeks go by so quickly anymore that I lose all track of my days. It seems that the only measurement of time for me is how much older my baby gets every week. At the time of writing this, he just turned 20 weeks old. When I was pregnant with him, I thought 20 weeks - the halfway point - would never arrive. All I did was blink postpartum, and he’s already past the 4-month mark. It feels like just yesterday we brought him home for the first time with no clue about what life would look like. Now, we kind of have some semblance of normalcy. We have near-dedicated nap times and a bedtime routine, and we’re loosely starting purees and sitting at the dinner table together.

There was this period of time where I couldn’t set him down long enough to work, let alone to write on Substack. Now he’s sitting in his chair yapping at me (it’s more of a squeal and blowing raspberries in the air) while I sit at my laptop. Don’t get me wrong, he still loves to be attached to me, but he is constantly finding ways to occupy himself - studying toys, kicking his legs, putting his finger in his mouth. It’s really wild how quickly these things shift.

One night, I put him down for bed expecting to see him in 2 hours for a diaper change and bottle, and I ended up waking up on my own 5 hours later in a panic because he was still fast asleep. Even though you pray for more rest, you just don’t know when your last 3am night shift is going to be… and when it does happen, you get a little sad because the transition is another reminder that these days are short.

I love being his mom, but I’d be lying if I said motherhood has been a cake walk.

Please understand this, it is the best feeling in the world to experience life through your baby’s eyes. Everything is brand new to them. Isn’t that amazing?

Knowing what your life looks like now, would you ever want to go back in time and see the world again for the first time? Would you hold onto your innocence a little longer? Would you appreciate the little things more than you did before?

However, even though I’m enjoying this experience, I was experiencing some days where I feel like I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I’ve never been so tired in my life. Even if I get a 6-7 hour stretch, it still never feels like enough. I’ve had anxiety before, but never anxiety like I’ve had postpartum.

At 7 weeks, just as I was getting back to work, I was diagnosed with postpartum OCD.

I had a fear that someone was living in our third floor room and was waiting for us to go to bed so that they could steal our baby. I had vivid visions of dropping him down the stairs, losing my grip on the stroller and him rolling into traffic, someone stealing the stroller at the grocery store, drowning in the bathtub… The intrusive thoughts weren’t just thoughts and visions though, they were genuine feelings in my body as if these events were actually taking place in front of me. My nervous system went haywire - often resulting in my fight-or-flight kicking in, or me completely shutting down.

My vagus nerve couldn’t tell the difference between me giving my son a bath or a lion eating me for his dinner.

I was so overwhelmed, I had to turn to an SSRI prescription just to get some sort of mental relief. I had taken such pride in getting myself off of SSRIs back in 2022. I felt confident that I had my mental health under control. After all, I finally left my job that I knew in my heart was not the career for me, I was meditating and working out regularly, my apartment was almost always clean, I felt good in my own skin… And even though I knew that you never stop healing, I really thought I had it all figured out.

Then I met my love, Joe. Being in a relationship opened up all new parts of unhealed wounds. It’s a lesson in communication, in patience, in understanding, in meeting someone (both of us) exactly where they are.

Just when I thought I had that figured out, I met my new love, my son. What a giant shift.

It feels like I was completely reborn right alongside with him. I’m me but I’m totally different. And some days I feel really lost. It’s extremely hard for me to sit with discomfort. I don’t want to process my emotions. I want to let it pass. Whenever I’m in a new life transition, my brain goes into panic mode.

“Maybe this isn’t where I’m meant to be? Maybe motherhood isn’t for me? Maybe I didn’t get enough accomplished before I got pregnant?”

It’s like I’m playing a mental game of Wheel of Fortune, but instead of cash prizes and luxury vacations, I’m spinning through different fears.

A common thought that comes up to me during these phases, these spins, is how scary change is. I spin and land on “run away.” Then I remember, wherever you go, there you are. If I run away, my problems don’t just disappear. They come with me and then I’m in some new place with the same unresolved problems back home. So, I spin again.

This time I land on walking off of my roof into the street below or standing on the ledge of a bridge and letting the wind take me.

It’s not what I want to think about, but my brain wants to take it there. Oh how easy it would be to just not be here instead of simply sitting with anxiety or fear.

And so, with all of the chaos happening in my brain, I had forgotten what it felt like to be present. I had forgotten what it felt like to breathe without reminding myself to do it, or what it felt like to place a hand on my chest and the other on my belly and take a deep juicy breath from my nose and feel it expand through my chest, then my ribs, then my belly… and what it felt like to release it back down into the ground.

My fears were screaming doubt and criticism so loud that I almost — almost — forgot that life is a series of ups and downs.

I think about the Wheel of Fortune again - but this time what it symbolizes in tarot. Life transitions. There is good and there is bad, fortune and misfortune. When things feel like they are at the lowest of lows, don’t get attached to this as your new way of being. Remember that change is inevitable and everything can start anew with just one more spin. “This too shall pass”- both good and bad. All you can really do is find peace in the present and know the wheel will spin again. It always does.

Remembering this, and partnering it with an SSRI and therapy, I have begun to silence some of the noise. To come to a more peaceful place and begin to exist fully in the presence of this new version of Me, the mother.

In this process of doing “the work”, I’m learning to surrender to the discomfort. In my unbecoming, I’m becoming a new, wiser Me. Working through my fears is healing the past versions of me that worked tirelessly so that I could finally have my own little family. I remember that placing trust in the Universe/Source/God to allow what’s meant for me to come to me, when I release control, when I sit in the discomfort, everything works out for me.

I acknowledge that I am exactly where I am meant to be. As tired and as uncomfortable as I may be, I love being a mom — specifically, his mom. I have no doubt in my mind now that every thing I have accomplished so far in my life was exactly what I was meant to accomplish before his arrival. Everything I am going to accomplish next, my next chapter, it all includes him. I have not missed out on anything in my life. As far as the spinning wheel, I have won the greatest fortune.

This motherhood business … it’s not easy, but it’s worth it. I’m still only in the early stages of it, but it’s the best place to be, and, well, actually, the best is yet to come.