Impossible Kind of Love

I may have said this already, but it is really important so listen to me.

When I was trying to start our family, I was asking other people who already had children "What is the best piece of advice you have for someone who wants to have children?"

I forget who she was and why I was asking apparently a total stranger this question, but her words will never leave me. She paused for a long time and then said:

"It will feel like a part of your heart is walking around outside of your body, and there is nothing you can do about it."

Of course I knew parents loved their children, but her words didn't hit me (like a freaking Mack Truck) until a few hours after my first child was born.

Gonna get real for a second - I had SEVERE postpartum depression and anxiety after my first child was born. Like the kind that scared everyone around me. I didn't want anyone to hold him. I didn't want anyone to feed him. I didn't want anyone around him without being in my direct line of sight. I didn't sleep unless he was physically in my husband's arms after being fed and changed and perfectly content (and even then was a struggle to force my eyes to close).

I held my breath at night multiple times until I saw him move, or could hear his little sighs letting me know he was breathing.

But...

Even though I felt like I couldn't be away from him for one second, I hated to be touched. I was so damn tired and sad all the time. I couldn't handle when he cried and I couldn't figure out why - I would hand him to my husband and start crying myself! I would read every day according to the internet what he should be doing at any given age, and unfairly diagnose him or blame myself if he wasn't "scoring" in the advanced category every time.

All I could think was -

What the hell is wrong with me? Should I have even been a mother? Will I truly ever be okay again?

But. What I didn't know, (and what I desperately want YOU to know...)

Is that I was a brand-new mother, with a brand-new nervous system, holding a brand-new human in my arms. And the intensity of that love?

It cracked me wide open.

That stranger’s words came back to me like a prophecy: "It will feel like a part of your heart is walking around outside of your body, and there is nothing you can do about it."

And boy, was she right.

But what I didn’t understand at the time was that this feeling - the crushing responsibility, the bone-deep exhaustion, the fear, the fierce protectiveness, the suffocating vulnerability - it was all part of the "impossible" love.

This love didn’t arrive gently.

It didn’t come with lullabies and pastel blankets.

It didn't feel soft.

It was the kind that breaks you down so it can rebuild you into someone new.

It was the kind that teaches you things about your heart you never, ever wanted to learn, and unlocks fears you never even knew existed.

It came screaming. Bleeding. Shaking. Sobbing.

It wrapped itself around my soul and wouldn’t let me BREATHE.

And it felt… well impossible.

I didn’t feel “blessed.” I felt terrified.

I didn’t feel “maternal.” I felt like I was drowning.

I didn’t feel “bonded.” I felt completely untethered from myself, my baby, and from the world I thought I understood.

And yet - underneath all of that, love was there.

It was fierce. Loud. Wild. And unrelenting and sacred in its own chaotic way.

So yeah, eventually, that impossible kind of love started to settle in my bones. It didn’t stop being a total hurricane, but I learned to breathe inside it.

I still carry that version of myself - the one who was scared, aching, sleepless, and cracked open. She’s part of me now, but so is the strength I didn’t know I had.

And if you're walking through your own version of this impossible love - you’re not alone.

Somewhere in the chaos, between the tears and the feeding schedules and the spirals of doubt and longing - you are doing the bravest thing a person can do: Loving without guarantees. Loving through fear. Loving even when it hurts.

And that? That’s everything.

Now, years later, I still hold my breath sometimes when the room goes too quiet. I still check to make sure both of my babies are breathing. I still question myself more than I’d like to admit. I lose my patience. I forget to savor the moments and write the good ones down. I still wonder if I’m doing any of this “right.” But I’ve stopped looking for the version of me that existed before they were born. That version is not gone - she's just different now. Softer in some ways. Sharper and more brave in others. (And maybe a more "colorful" vocabulary...)

It's all still impossible, but "there's nothing I can do about it."

So I'll just love them with all I have and all I am while I try to figure it out.

xoxo

Madi

Just talk to them. I can't promise much, but I promise that even the longest storms eventually pass. 1-833-TLC-MAMA