I can't get it out of my mind, Brooke Shields on Oprah a couple of days ago. If you didn't see it you missed some pretty scary stuff. Basically, Brooke has a new book out all about her battle with post partum depression. I mean, she just laid it all out there for everyone to see, dirty laundry completely soiled and blowing in the breeze. The kinds of thoughts she had about herself and her child, it really just blew my mind. Not because I can't believe it, but because it is exactly things like that, like what she was feeling, that make me worry so much about being a mother and why I have yet to decide if that is even something I want or need to do. She talked about feeling completely disconnected from her own child. Feeling as if she wanted nothing to do with this baby, having no sense of mothering what so ever. She said that it wasn't even that she was scared of not being a good mother, but that she was completely uninterested in her own child.

Reality is scary. Being a mother even scarier.

As I was telling this story to a friend the day after the show aired while we were walking down the street, the woman in front of us spun around and started talking about it too, she didn't miss the episode. She assured me that mothering is the most beautiful thing a woman can do and that I shouldn't be afraid. I looked at her the same way I look at my friends who talk about not being able to wait for the days when they are moms--with a blank stare. Mothering is a real fear for me. It isn't just about not being good at it or worrying that I will screw up my child. It's about not being sure that I want to do it, and then being pressured by a husband or a society that tells me it's my job, and then getting to that point when I have to push and realizing that I am completely uninterested.

I keep telling myself that I will grow into it. That one day, I will suddenly have this yearning to hold a baby, my baby, and not feel worried or frightened or unsure. I don't know that it will ever come, that moment of certainty and connectedness with my womanly duty. I'm okay with that. My mother, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about. But that's when I remember that it isn't about her or anyone else, it's about me and my body and my legitimate and very real concern, that like so many women who lose themselves for a while after birth, that I may never find myself again. I give so much credit to Brooke for telling her story. I hope it helps other women be less ashamed of their journey through motherhood. Luckily, there's plenty of time for me to figure it all out, one way or the other.