On Maternal Ambivalence

I’ve often described the Christmas holidays as time spent entertaining a vague suspicion that you’re supposed to be feeling differently than you do.  It’s painful to have feelings you’re not supposed to have, but that rarely makes them go away.  Better, of course, to normalize them.

Maternal ambivalence as a feeling can be pretty awkward.  Cause whether we admit it or not, we have strong beliefs about how mothers should feel about being mothers.  As if judging them on what they do and how they do it weren’t enough, we also have thoughts on how mothers should experience those actions of mothering from the inside.  As though we warrant access to even their private psyches. Spoiler alert:  we don’t.