Strength in Numbers

I know the old saying is "safety in numbers," but lately the concept of strength, comfort, and even joy in numbers has been on my mind.  Last week, my infant daughter and I went to a new moms (and babies) group for the first time.  The group is led by a nurse and meets at a local hospital, and it provides new moms an opportunity to get out of the house with their babies and ask questions of other new moms and a medical professional.  There were questions ranging from sleep patterns to starting solid food, and I listened to all the other moms and the nurse out of one ear, while I also entertained my curious 3-month-old during the meeting.  But those words of advice were not the most valuable part of the meeting for me.  The most valuable piece for me was meeting other moms of babies.  Imagine that!  Other moms!  Just like me!  And right here in my local area!  Maybe it shouldn't have been, but it sure was a revelation for me.

Moving day 2013

My husband and I moved to Virginia just over a year ago.  Shortly thereafter, we found out I was pregnant.  While the end result of that pregnancy was and is the greatest blessing of our lives, it was not the world's easiest pregnancy.  And for the first time in my life I was not working, looking for work, or going to school.  I was just home, often alone, and often in pain.  And, for the first time in our marriage, my husband was not attached to a squadron, so there was no spouses group, no ready-made social network to welcome us when we arrived.  It was, in many ways, one of the most joyous and eventful years of my life.  But, it was also a lonely one on a lot of days.  

Once my daughter was born, both the joy and the loneliness intensified.  I feel incredibly lucky to be able to stay home with her in these her first months of her life.  And I was beyond blessed to have my parents be able to travel to stay with us when my daughter was first born and when my husband has had to be away for extended periods of time.  But, when they left and the house was empty, I must admit there were some very lonely moments.  With an infant daughter, we did not get out to meet our handful of friends in the area for dinner anymore.  With that infant daughter being born in the winter and the middle of flu season, we really didn't get out much at all.  She and I spent basically all of our time in the four walls of our house, alone except for the occasional friend dropping by and in the evenings when my husband would return home to be bombarded with my requests for him to help with the baby and to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to me!

So this new moms group really was like a revelation to me.  Not only are there other new moms living mere minutes from me with their new babies, but they too are eager to get out of their houses, talk to other adults, and find "playmates" for their children!  In the one (1) week since our first meeting, my daughter and I have met up with other moms and babies twice already.  We have walked, talked, and bonded over this period in life that we are all experiencing for the first time.  And because of that I have smiled more, laughed more, relaxed more.  There is indeed strength in numbers and joy in knowing we are not alone.

Initially, I thought this would be the end of this blog post: a nice little anecdote about how my daughter and I are making new friends and I am settling in to life as a new mom.  Everyone smiles and proceeds with their day.  End of story.  But then I thought about how often in life this is true - especially in military family life.  

My husband and I moved here in 2013 from Jacksonville, Florida, where he had been stationed since before we married and where I had lived since 2010.  I look back on our time in Jacksonville very fondly.  I had a job that I loved most days with coworkers I enjoyed every day (which, incidentally, is a big part of enjoying one's job).  We had a great network of friends in my husband's squadron, and I was thrilled and honored to serve twice on the board of the Officers' Spouses Club (OSC) there.  We had many favorite dinner and date night spots, and we loved our neighborhood.  Even my husband's last deployment is a time I look back on fondly - I was incredibly busy and thriving at work, enjoyed several visits with my family, supported and was supported by my fellow Navy spouses and my coworkers, and counted down to my husband's return.

Homecoming 2011

What I seem to have forgotten in all this lovely nostalgia is my husband's previous deployment. The one that happened when I moved to Jacksonville from Atlanta (where I had lived for five years), and he deployed 2 1/2 months later.  The one where I knew next to no one in town besides my husband and a few people he introduced me to, and then he left for seven months.  The one where I started a brand new high stress job literally the day after he left; a job from which I came home at night to an empty house with no one to talk to about the struggles (and occasional triumphs).  If we're going to be completely honest here, I cried every single night for at least the first two months of that deployment.  Even though I saw plenty of people at work every day, I was profoundly lonely during that first deployment of our marriage.  But during the second half of the deployment, things got drastically better.  I had gained some confidence at work and bonded with some coworkers; the job became less stressful and more fun.  I started making true friends with some of the other Navy wives in our squadron (several of whom I now count among my closest friends), and suddenly I did have someone to grab a drink with after work and vent about the struggles (and share the now more frequent triumphs).  By the time my husband came home, I was all smiles - and not only because he was home, though that surely was a big part of it.  There is strength in numbers and joy in knowing we are not alone.

Help studying for my 2nd Bar Exam

Similarly, as I became better integrated into the fabric of my husband's squadron and the OSC in Jacksonville, it often felt like no one quite understood the unique pressures that my job added to my life.  I enjoyed the job, but it was stressful; and it was stressful in the I-want-other-junior-associates-to-commiserate-with kind of way.  (As an aside, I was the most junior associate in my office by four years, and no one else was hired in my year; so, I was really lacking commiseration!)  Plus, there was the added stress of knowing that the reality of our military life meant we would leave Florida at some point.  I had already taken two bar exams in two years at a cost of pushing $10,000 for the exam registration, background checks, review courses, travel, and hotel accommodations.  Would I have to take a third?  Would I have to sacrifice my career for my husband's?  Would my employer be understanding when the time came?  Would I ever be able to maintain a legal career with the inevitable résumé gaps down the road?  That too was a lonely feeling.  But then a law school classmate introduced me online to the Military Spouse JD Network (MSJDN).  Wow.  Not only was I not the only person going through this, there are pushing 1,000 other military spouse attorneys who know exactly how I feel.  Again, revelation.  Since moving to the DC area, I have been able to meet more and more MSJDN members in person (some of whom are among my closest friends here) and become more and more involved with the organization.  That too has been an immeasurable blessing as I navigate the uncharted waters of being a stay-at-home mom and spouse for the first time.  There is strength in numbers and joy in knowing we are not alone.

All of these are lessons I have tried to take with me.  During my husband's second deployment, I tried to be especially mindful of spouses who were new to the military and/or to Jacksonville when the squadron deployed, and I tried to support them in many small ways as the months went by.  But I am sure I could have done better.  When associates more junior than me started at the Firm (yes!  the day did come when I was no longer the most junior attorney there!), I tried to support them too in any way I could.  But surely I could have done more.  As my involvement with MSJDN increases, I hope that I am helping support fellow military spouse attorneys and paving the way for both less professional barriers to career mobility and less personal loneliness in figuring out the process.  But I would like to do more.

As for being a new mom, I'm still learning as I go.  But I know a few things.  I know this is the best and most important job I have ever had.  I know that I love my daughter with both a fierceness and a tenderness that didn't exist in me before her.  I know that I make mistakes for which I am sorry and from which I try to learn.  I know that I worry more than I ever have before in life.  And I know that none of that is going to change.  I also know how glad I am to be meeting other new moms who are becoming new friends and confidantes as we all figure out this whole mom role.  

And I know, without a doubt, that there is strength in numbers, and joy in knowing we are not alone.

On Teaching, Mothering and Perfectionism

Bulletin board in my first classroom

Before I went to law school - what seems like a lifetime ago - I was a teacher.  Fresh out of college at the ripe old age of 20, I joined Teach For America and moved to Miami, Florida to start teaching middle school social studies.  I look back on teaching as the most challenging and most rewarding work I have ever done.  But at the beginning, the reward had not yet come.  Instead, it was pure challenge.  I remember vividly driving to the first day of school.  I had my roster already, of course.  I knew what was coming: nearly 200 (yes, that's right) eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old students.  In my classroom.  Under my care and instruction.  If they failed, it would be my fault.  My stomach was in nearly as many knots as when I actually was a middle school student. 

Very, very early in my teaching career, I realized what I found most difficult about it.  It was not the classroom discipline struggles.  Sure, there were plenty of those.  Yes, there were days I cried when the door closed behind the last student of the day.  Any teacher that tells you otherwise, I'll wager is lying.  But I had been well trained by Teach For America, I had an amazing support system, and those were challenges I was able to overcome.  Likewise, it was not the content.  Sure, it had been a while since I'd had to recall secondary social studies material, but after all, I had a fancy college degree (not to mention the teacher's guides with all the answers).  Content I could learn.  It was not the lesson planning, the grading, or the frequent evaluations by my administrators and Teach For America mentors, though those were all time consuming.  For me, the most challenging thing about teaching and the thing that kept me up at night was this: there was no measure of perfection. 

I'm going to go ahead and admit what will shock no one who knows me: I am a perfectionist.  And at that time in my life, I was used to doing things where there was a measure of perfection.  I was used to school, where I could get A's; sports, where I could win; piano performances, where I could get it right and receive awards.  I was accustomed to striving to be the well-defined "best" and usually coming pretty damn close.  Even getting accepted to Teach For America had been another example of this, as it was - even at that time - more selective than my undergraduate institution. 

Note from one of my students

But teaching was a whole new ballgame.  My success as a teacher depended largely on being able to motivate this group of young people - each with their own individual personality, learning styles and difficulties, personal struggles, and attitude - to try their very best.  My very best effort wasn't going to do it this time.  I needed those kids to work with me.  And I wasn't sure I knew how to do that.  I recall very clearly thinking: "Don't these kids know that if they all got up and walked out right now, there's not a single thing I could do to stop them?"  Thankfully, they apparently hadn't thought of that.  And they did try.  And together, for the most part, we did succeed.  By all objective measures in my two years with Teach For America, I was a very successful teacher.  And that's all good and well in retrospect.  But in the moment, it was very difficult to work day after day without that measure of perfection that, if I just worked hard enough, I could attain.

After two years, I went to law school.  Ah, the familiar world of academia.  There were fellowships to win, high grades to get, law review articles to publish, interviews and BigLaw jobs to land.  Objective measures of success.  Once again, whether I succeeded or failed was in my hands.  Either I would work hard enough, be smart enough, interview well enough - or I wouldn't.  But it was in my hands.  I did pretty well in law school - well enough to then complete a clerkship, get a couple of BigLaw job offers, and go to work in private practice.  Private practice brought its own set of challenges, but again I was largely in a world where one could strive for perfection.  Or if not perfection, at least objectively measurable success.  I could write without error, research until I found the answer, and work until I was the best prepared lawyer possible.  I could help clients, please partners, and win hearings.  Of course, I didn't win all the time, and the partners weren't always pleased.  But I knew what success looked like, and I could strive for it every day. 

A year ago, I left the practice of law.  Not for good, I hope, but for now.  My husband and I relocated (as we military families often do), and I got pregnant with our first child.  I knew I wanted to stay at home with the baby for at least the first few months (or years) of her life, so I did not look for work aside from the occasional contract gig.  And now, as planned, I'm a stay at home mom to an absolutely amazing baby daughter.  She is the light of my life, and - as any parent will tell you - I love her more than can be put into words.  But as much as I love mothering, it is also deeply challenging, even though I've only been at it a few months.  And when I really reflect on it, I think it is for the same reason that teaching challenged me so.  There is, again, no measure of perfection. 

Success will ultimately be measured by the type of daughter my husband and I raise - whether she is smart and kind and polite and happy and all those things we hope our children will be.  And someday, looking back, I hope to know whether we succeeded.  But that day is a long way off (truthfully, I wonder sometimes whether my own parents - with children ages 27 and 30 - believe they have reached that day).  Right now, I question everything I do.  And I mean everything.  Does she sleep enough?  Does she sleep too much?  Am I feeding her enough?  Should I feed her more often?  Is she reaching her milestones on time?  Do we talk to her and read to her enough?  Should we give her more independent play time?  Do we interact with her enough?  I have quickly discovered that one can drive oneself insane reading books and articles on the Internet about how one "should" be parenting and what one's baby "should" be doing.  And I am trying not to drive myself insane in that manner, but it's hard.  Because part of me (a big part of me!) always wants to look in those books and articles for objective measures of success. 

Truthfully, I think the only book I should be reading is a journal I received at my baby shower that now sits next to my bed.  In it, all of the wonderful women who attended my shower wrote their words of advice to me.  Though they each wrote individually, on separate pages, without consulting one another, a theme emerges from their writing: "Do what works for you and your family;" "Relax and enjoy;" "Try not to read too many books.  There are so many different opinions! Remember to listen to your heart;" "Love unconditionally - the rest will fall into place;" "You know what is best. Don't listen to others;" "Just remember not to listen to what all your friends say and go with your mommy gut, only you know what your baby needs."  All of those words were written by mothers.  Great mothers.  One, in fact, is both a mother and a doctor!   

That is the book I should read every day, because those are really the answers.  There is nothing objective, I am quickly learning, about raising a baby.  She cannot - or at least she should not - be measured by some standard in a book or against someone else's child.  Rather, she is my beautiful, smiling, babbling, one-of-a-kind baby.  Who I love.  Unconditionally.  Here's to letting the rest fall into place.