Testimony

By: Carina Caldeira

We are taught from a young age that there is no love like that of a mother.

They try to prepare us for everything, they want us to have short hours of labor and long hours of sleep.

But the truth is that no one prepares us for anything.

I was an anxious pregnant woman full of insecurities. Being in a rush, I wanted everything to go by too quickly, I suffered with the changes in my body, with the hormonal ups and downs. The only thing that calmed me down throughout the nine months was the unshakable certainty that I would never love anyone as much as my daughter and that my life would change that day.

Let's talk calmly about motherhood, without glitter or unicorns whispering in our ears.

We don't have to live everything according to other people's scripts.

I will never forget the first time I saw each of my children.

Did I love them at first sight? I don't know.

Especially the first time, I looked at such a small being and I only felt fear, a debilitating fear that I had never imagined.

I was terrified.

Because the survival of that person, a person who only lived in my imagination until that moment - and spending nine months idealizing someone is too much for someone so small - depended on me, and because I felt guilty for not feeling what everyone took for granted.

And quite honestly, they looked at me with the same scared look of someone who didn't know whether to trust me.

In addition to unconditional love, there are mothers who talk about smells, the seventeenth instinct and an animal impulse to, suddenly, simply know and be able to resolve everything.

Maybe it works that way for many.

But I just felt fear.

“Hello, stranger! I’m your mother”

No one told me that that would be the most memorable, but also the strangest and most terrifying moment of my life.

Because - I believe! - it is not the same in all delivery rooms and, even so, it is not this moment that dictates the quality of each mother's life.

Love also comes in the form of fear and the terror of failure.

Love knows no guilt. So keep your fingers where your imagination tells you to and don't point them.

I had to get to know my children. They got to know me. I had to get to know myself better and recognize all these anxieties and fears.

I went to therapy and I continue to do so.

I'm not a perfect mother, I never will be.

But every day I'm better.

No one told me that motherhood is also darkness and that it brings new guilt all the time.

Nobody told me. And that's why it's important to be here telling you, strangers.