let them be inconvenient

the cultural obsession with ease & why neediness needs a rebrand

Remember how 1 month into being a mom I was like omgggg this is wayyyy easier than I had prepared for.

LOL 😂

6 months in, and while Ora maintains to be relatively low-needs, this transition has been intense, to say the least.

Photo by Alina Rubo on Unsplash

The low hum of being constantly needed

I am sure different parents all have their own versions of hard, depending on all kinds of factors in their lives and depending on each individual kid. My particular brand of challenge is the incessant reality that this vulnerable little human is 100% dependent on me.

Sure, you still make it to an outing here and there your pre-baby self enjoyed, but it becomes difficult to fully engage because at every little whinge (I’ve adopted this word from a Brit mom) your brain tunes further into them and further out of whatever else is happening around you. You keep nodding your head, maintaining eye contact, but your hands work tirelessly to change the diaper, soothe the sore gums, bounce the uneasiness out of them.

This constant state of being ON, attuned, constantly scanning, means your attention is accounted for and the stakes of splitting that attention, the potential cost, is life or death.

I’m leaning into the dramatic here to convey what’s going on chemically, hormonally, biologically inside my body. If you can’t feed your child the instant that they begin to cry, they are NOT going to die BUT their cry makes your body activate in a way that feels like they might!!

You haven’t lived until you’ve whipped your tit out and dangled it over a screaming baby in a carseat in the back of an Uber.

While I’ve had days of the baby blues and rode the hormonal rollercoaster that’s had stops in irritation, rage, and ha-ting my partner (😅), for me, it’s mostly been a workout for my discomfort muscle. A crash course in time management and prioritization. A coming to terms with the reality that things won’t always go according to plan.

From eating to sleeping to how I might envision my Saturday unfolding, having a child is a masterclass in accepting that humans are not machines. We are soft, fluid creatures with needs.

A word on neediness

People love to exclaim, “What a good baby!” when they witness Ora smiling, quietly lounging or sleeping on the go.

Yes, Ora is chill and she also screams her head off sometimes or stays awake from midnight to 4am or wants my boob the very minute I need to hop on a work call.

In all these scenarios she is not only a good baby, but a precious little creature that needs protection and love and cuddles and attention. Perhaps we stop equating goodness with needlessness.

I can think of many other ways we might describe a baby:

willful or headstrong!

smart

funny—so funny

decisive

curious — (I didn’t say “nosey” — I hate when people call babies nosey, it has a very negative connotation. They did just arrive on this insane planet for crying out loud, don’t we want them to be interested in the world around them?)

spirited

grounded

social/vocal

engaged

Aren’t these much more perceptive than “what a good baby?”

Speaking of will, this child has helped me release the grip on my own

Becoming a mother has been a total confrontation of the messy, clunky, slow, non-aesthetic life. It’s taught me to appreciate the average.

To clarify, my kid is totally not average (said every mom ever 😅). She IS complete perfection and every time I look at her my heart feels like it’s going to burst AND her existence in my life has shaken up much of my former expectations for myself.

My context is that I was/am a conflict-avoidant, maximizing, perfectionist, Millennial (yes, I think this matters). My ideal afternoon? Tucked away in a sunny coffee shop writing for hours. Or sitting across from a dear friend having a one-on-one conversation that has many tendrils and touches every corner of our brains.

^^literally eye rolling at that sentence.

Ora arrived on this planet and was like, Oh yeah, Mom? Watch this!

Nope, not blood, thankfully. Just strawberry fruit puree…alllll over the place.

Gone are the days that I go and do as I please at the pace that I wish for uninterrupted periods of time. Goodbye to carefree beach frolics where I forget sunscreen, leave the umbrella at home, and read a novel with sand between my toes. I think I started this newsletter draft three months ago and nearly every time I’ve sat down to write, my child has woke up and begun her cries for milk, attention, play.

The goal is no longer, The Ideal Writing Session. The Ideal Hangout. The Ideal Sunday. The Ideal Living Room Layout. The Ideal Meal.

Now it’s celebrating 20 minutes of writing during her nap. It’s being so grateful that voice memos exist so I can catch up with friends and hear their voices during feedings or walks, making this strange limbo a little less lonely. It’s arranging my house to prioritize storage, but mostly safety for a baby that will pull and grab and reach as she discovers the world around her. It’s devouring a piece of pizza and a 7/11 slushie before yoga because I’ve never been more hungry in my life. It’s OMG — I GOT TO GO TO YOGA.

Motherhood has chilled me tf out. Made me a lot more grateful & graceful (as in having grace for myself and others). It’s helped me understand that life can’t be neat and tidy all the time. It’s taught me to pivot. To take breaks. To rest. It’s taught me most things we think are urgent, aren’t. And the living, breathing humans around us need us, much more urgently than our inbox does.

Motherhood has made more efficient (out of necessity). It’s made me a multi-tasker extraordinaire (did I grow extra arms?) and simultaneously taught me the necessity of paying attention to one thing at a time, of real focus—on a my child’s cues, on the sound of the wind as I ask her if she can hear it.

It’s glorious, profound, lonely, soul-expanding, hilarious, insanely hard, and completely grounding all at once.

To love, is to be inconvenienced

Having a child and with another imperfect human has had me reflecting deeply on how loving—loving as in the action—the verb, loving as a doing, is um…hard. Loving beyond the phases that are easy, sweet, the parts that “come natural.” Loving beyond compatibility.

Listen, I’m a go with the flow girlie. A pisces. The youngest of four. I like when things are smooth like a river. Tidy, easeful, clear. I reallyyyyyy enjoy when life is painless. Don’t we all? 🙃

When I look around, a lot of our culture (most of our culture?), technology, and infrastructure bends towards comfort and convenience.

There’s a bodega on every corner in NYC and we roll our eyes if we have to walk more than 1 block with our laundry, in fact“in unit” laundry has become a “non-negotiable.” We pay to stream without commercials. We blast our AC around the clock, even though we know ACs make the city warmer as a whole. Our freeways (talking to my west coast peeps here) are jammed with cars with one person in each of them. We’ll pay 20% more for food to have it delivered to our doorstep (which I personally do a lot more now since having a child).

It’s brilliant isn’t it? When things are a fit(!) and everything goes according to plan, because the alternative—being inconvenienced, having a bad meal, a shirt that doesn’t sit right, a vacation that goes haywire—is shitty and can feel like a waste of time, money, and energy.

But I think we can lose our way a bit, if we extend this expectation, for convenience, comfort, for things to be “a perfect fit” 100% of the time into our relationships—when we want it to be easier to love each other.

And I get it. Life is hard and expensive and scary as it is, so it’s extra special when we find resonance with people. There is literally nothing I love more than the “I get you” head nod. I am seen! I am understood!

And yes, the need to be able to practice discernment is real. We don’t need to be in relationship with everyone we meet—especially the kind of deep commitment I am talking about. We literally do not have that kind of capacity.

But for those we choose to go deep with, I want to be a voice saying, Let them be inconvenient. Let them be needy. Let them derail your day.

Sacrifice, after all is to turn something sacred

I’ll never forget a friend saying to me, back when I was pregnant, “you have to learn to BE a baby to have a baby.” And I think what she was pointing to is that I needed to get more comfortable with being needy myself. She and other friends in that moment were giving me the assurance that no matter how needy I got, I’d be loved. In fact, they were saying, please be needy. Let us in. Let us love you.

I ask you to consider as we close:

Would you want to be loved only when it was easy to do so?

Would you want to be loved only under the conditions that you didn’t have any needs?

Who in your world needs a little tenderness—even if (and especially if!)—you find it challenging to extend it to them?

It’s crazy out here, y’all. We all could use a little more softness—toward ourselves, definitely toward each other.

Try a cuddle. And if that doesn’t work, might I suggest a snack, a nap, or a poo?

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If this moved you, please tell me in the comments. Also, consider forwarding this note to a friend who’s in the thick of it.