wildernessA pregnancy test is like a Rorscach: one’s inner world gets tossed back at her in sharp relief. I stared at mine and felt the weight of my childhood and the hope of a different future in a dizzying twist of emotions.

My own mother had become pregnant with me in 1968, when she was single and an as yet undiagnosed schizophrenic. Exhibiting a striking combination of paranoia and common sense, she moved herself and me a few hundred miles away from her dysfunctional relations and embarked on the next 13 years of our life together.

She never held a job for long, and in most of the years we lived together, she prostituted to provide us food and shelter, neither of which we had predictably or steadily. My mom was intelligent, beautiful, capable of moments of tenderness and good humor, and these very significant contributions to my childhood probably saved me from insanity despite the traumas. In 1981, the State of Wisconsin intervened, the bruises and scratches on my face and neck and arms from my mother’s latest attack too obvious to others for them to ignore, and I entered foster care for the remainder of my teens.

And at 37, I was newly pregnant, single and panicked. It was quite clear to me that despite lots of therapy and spiritual practices, I wasn’t yet a very good parent to myself. I was still searching for my calling in life and hoping to make more money and get out of debt and finally get into a healthy romantic relationship. I didn’t want to be a single parent. But I felt the bond with my mustard seed of a baby already, my body raging with hormonal urges to cocoon my child and protect him from harm. A spark of hope arose within me with this new spark of life:  perhaps the Universe had given me a personal invitation to the fast track of healing?

Like addicts sent to wilderness therapy for the summer, maybe I was on the edge of the wilderness of motherhood, where I would learn greater character and will and strength and wholeness than my previous life had taught me? Maybe my greater freedoms in singleness were not so great; maybe greater freedom felt a lot like being lost. I was intrigued with what the wilderness time might hold, intrigued with what it might make of me.

So I got myself in gear and prepared for a new life that started the moment he was born. I managed to condense all of my work into tasks I could do from home, so that when my sweet child slept, I could rush to the computer to make our living. I moved in with friends who had children so I could watch others parents and learn from them, and I could also keep our expenses down. And I got really, really tired.

My own spark got low. I loved my little boy before he was born, and I loved him more when I held him and stayed up awake with him at night and when I wanted to nap with him during the day and couldn’t. And it took everything out of me to love him and to work while he slept. I got very lonely. I couldn’t run around my old haunts in Chicago looking for social situations where I might get hugs or have a deep conversation that would sustain my need to be loved and seen. I abandoned my New Age Church, where I got nothing but flakey platitudes. I went on a few dates, but they clearly sucked on my limited energy, and I dropped them, too.  I withdrew because I had to. I had to conserve what little I had in order to keep our little family boat afloat.

And a shift started to happen.

One of the deepest wounds of my childhood had been that I learned I did not matter. My hungers and desires were a burden to my mother who could barely feed and shelter me. My noise disrupted her already scattered thoughts.  My observations didn’t fit with her twisted ones, and she told me I was wrong. And so, in order to survive, I had agreed with her. I hid my hungers from even myself; I became quiet to avoid disturbing anyone; I kept my thoughts to myself because exposing them just exposed me to ridicule.

And in this very early time of Isaac’s life, my little spark of life got so low and small and so critically essential to my child’s well-being, that I began to protect and nurture it. I took my precious little time alone to write an essay or two about what I was learning. I started to notice that some people actually gave me more energy than they took, and I sought them out. I learned that sucking up the happy moments of my life was a balm that healed the wounds of my youth, and I allowed myself the freedom to do that. I learned to pay attention, even in the inevitable miserable moments of parenting, because my presence with myself and with my son fed us both. I learned that I could be kind and compassionate to both my son and to myself in the middle of the pains of life, and one step at a time along the path, I practiced doing that.

This little boy whose profile looks so much like my own when I was young has healed me. He has taught me that in loving him well and fully, I must love myself, too. This wild adventure in uncharted territory gave me what I’d hoped for.

I am 45 years old as I write this. My son is seven and a half. We live in more civilized and sheltered times, but we would not be where we are now were it not for the time we’d spent in the wilderness together.