Today began with Baby waking up at 5:30 AM, calling
plaintively from his room: “See Mama, see Mama, see Mama…” I make him get up early on my clinic days,
because 5-7 AM is the only time for me to spend with him. He goes to bed before I get home in the
evening. Unfortunately, he can’t tell
when I have a day off and tends to be up early then too, just in case.
In looking back, I realize that my last Mother’s Day post was when Baby was only about five months old. I hardly did any writing last year at
all. I am extremely grateful for my two
more-than-full-time jobs: Doctor and Mama.
Many other aspects of life have to be sacrificed, however. If it is not directly related to work-work or
home-work, it does not get done. Sadly,
this includes my writing time. Now that
Baby is two and becoming slightly less dependent, I hope to regain my creative
self.
As a first step, I am reviving my poetry and
submitting to literary journals again.
This Friday, I will have a poem in Pulse-Voices from the Heart of Medicine. This journal is one of my
favorite celebrations of narrative medicine, which makes me particularly
delighted to share my work there. I
invite you to subscribe. For free! I will post the specific link when it is
available.
In the meantime, I would encourage other mothers in
medicine (and over-committed and over-extended people of all kinds) to keep
trying to carve out a few minutes in the week to nurture ourselves. I spend every moment taking care of people,
at work and at home. That is a beautiful
role to have in life. I need to
remember, though, that it is important to recharge sometimes.
Sometimes, you need to send Baby and Dada to the
grocery store together so you can spend some precious time on Mother’s Day by
yourself. And not just on Mother’s Day,
but throughout the year, so that parts of yourself are not lost.
