Friends with Secrets

by Christine Gunderson

School-supply shopping was a treasure hunt where you paid $100 to participate and the prize at the end was unfocused anger and a gigantic headache.

In Nikki’s experience, some people didn’t change as they aged. They just became more so.

Why were women expected to both give birth and remember to buy No. 2 pencils?

She missed excelling at something, at being good at what she did, and the recognition that came with it.

But no benchmarks of excellence existed in motherhood, and she received no recognition for surpassing or even meeting these invisible standards. God did not reach down from heaven and mark the worthy. Instead, judgment rained down from grandparents, education experts, parenting columnists, in-laws, dentists, and strangers on airplanes. But the harshest judgment came from the endless whisper of self-reproach from within. It came on long days when she fell short of the invisible mark in some small or large way, failing the people she loved with a love so pure and primal that it took her breath away.

How had she acquired all the trappings of adulthood when she did not know all the things adults were supposed to know?

A psychological need to please others in a sad attempt to earn love and approval because she did not believe that she had intrinsic value as a human being?

Motherhood was only easy if you did it the wrong way. She knew that from watching her own mom, who hadn’t even bothered to feed them regularly. “You listen to me,” Ainsley said, her voice suddenly fierce. “Motherhood is hard because you’re doing it the right way, did you know that? It’s hard because you are a great mom.”