18 Hours Later and I Felt Braver {For Moms}

I did something I never thought I could do this summer – drove 18 hours alone with my three kids on our marathon road trip.

Not straight – that’s madness. Over three days, I drove 9 hours, 5.5 hours, and then 3.5 hours.

But still. Eighteen hours.

I feel like John Glenn.

Voyaging beyond an hour from home with my boys is NOT MY THING. The thought gives me insomnia. But I desperately wanted my children to see people I love, especially their great-grandma. And my husband needed to fly home to work, so I took the wheel alone and pressed on.  I would never have done this before kids, but motherhood trumped fear.

Parenting does that. It can make us narcoleptic-tired, paper-thin stretched, and worried like we majored in it, but out of the hard parts comes this crazy new kind of strength.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

From day one, we are forced out of our comfort zone.  At first, we can’t even believe someone would trust us with this little human being. Then we’re astonished that in our sleep-deprived state, we’ve kept our baby fed, rested and clean. We get our kids safely through the toddler years despite the type of things they insist on doing, like licking spilled chocolate milk off of McDonald’s floor. (True story. That was also the day my first grey hair came in.) We become master researchers: illness, milestones, parenting tips, schools. Our strength becomes sub-human; when our children insist on koala-bearing us for ridiculous distances, we carry them. We throw our eight-year-old across the pool simply because please mom it’s so fun. We make hard decisions: “Should I let my teenager take my car?” or “Should I start my child in kindergarten or wait until next year?” In juggling work, family and household, we become bolder, we speak up. And somewhere in it all, we find our inner Mama Bear.

And she is empowering. She nudges us to do things like drive alone with kids into outer space…

…or 18 hours across America – whatever, same diff.

All I know is after the road trip, I feel like I can do more than I could before.

Not that I want to drive alone again. (I don’t. And I don’t recommend it to you either.) But I could do it if I had to.

Parenting persuades us to be braver today than we were yesterday.

And that feels good.

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  Kendall Patton August 3, 2016 at 3:53 am - Reply

  Oh how right you are! This Motherhood thing is daunting and wonderful. We are really all superwoman, every day we wake up and face the world/our chikdren, every time we look them on the eye and say I'm sorry, every time we take them out of the house where the entire world will judge them and us, every.single.moment of every.single.day we are tested and proven stronger, even if only to ourselves! 😀
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  sinceibecameamom August 22, 2016 at 1:26 am - Reply

  Yes! You said that so well!