slides: Mum’s the Word: 4 Ways Motherhood Changes You

Friday, May 01, 2015

Briauna Skye McKizzie, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Seeing her face made me finally realize that while my life wasn’t going the way that I planed…my life was still a good life.

When I was very young, I’d write obsessively in my diary about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Convinced that my diary would eventually be found, published, and read by millions, I documented the details of my future carefully.

I planned to go to a summer camp. There, I would meet and fall in love with either Jonathan Taylor Thomas or Billy Dee Williams, whichever one of them spoke to me first.

We’d keep in touch after camp ended, but I would put my career as a nightclub singer first. Eventually, though, I would again cross paths with my true love, and so I’d give up my life of music to be with him and him alone.

Working to make ends meet, I’d get a secretary job at an office and wear these skirt suits that I’d see at Goodwill. I thought these suits were totally “tight.” I’d be in love, I’d have a “classy” job, and eventually the babies would come.

Obviously, I was a pretty weird kid who probably watched one too many movies.

However, I knew what I wanted…or I thought I did.

Fourteen years later, life wasn’t looking anything like what I had written down in my green, glow in the dark ink.

I wasn’t married or a washed up nightclub singer (bummer). Instead, I was single, in labor, and more than a little homicidal (labor pains will do that to you).

I’m not going to lie and claim that the pain of labor and discomfort of nine months of nausea, fainting, and vomiting dissipated the moment I saw my daughter. However, seeing her face made me finally realize that while my life wasn’t going the way that I planed…my life was still a good life. It was a different but good life.

Motherhood doesn’t necessarily make you a deeper human being than anyone else in your community. However, for some of us, motherhood does have a tendency of changing who we are for the better.

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Related Slideshow: Mum’s the Word: 4 Ways Motherhood Changes You

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Precious Moments

While we sometimes base whether or not we had “good” day off of how much human fecal matter we got on our bare hands that morning, every moment becomes precious. There’s hardly a day where I let more than a few hours go by before I tell my daughter that I love her.

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Simple Pleasures

Since becoming a mother, I’ve started appreciating life’s small privileges that I never noticed before. From sitting on the toilet for more than 30 seconds (hey, we all have our goals in life) to being able to spend a vacation day playing make-believe with your daughter on her birthday, all of life’s simple gifts become more valuable than the Kardashian’s millions.

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Super Powers

Since we’re constantly on the clock to care for another, powerless yet surprisingly dangerous, human being, our attention to detail and ability to quickly assess situations for danger sharpens.

You develop super powers.

Papers on your coworker’s desk start to slip onto the floor, but since you knew that would happen 30 seconds ago, you’re able to catch them just in the nick of time…

Seriously though, something about our children inspires us enough to endure difficult times longer than we ever thought we could and be far more daring than we may have been prior to having a little pair of eyes staring up at us.

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Gratitude

Working hard to be there for our children emotionally and financially makes us appreciate our own parents or the adult role models we had growing up. Doing the work of raising a child helps us to recognize the struggles other people went through before us. We understand more deeply, and we are forever grateful.