Endurance of Motherhood
Tales from a Momthelete
There is no formal training for motherhood. Sure, you can take the newborn CPR course or meet with a lactation consultant. You can prep a nursery and order all the things. You can read What to Expect When You’re Expecting until the pages are torn. But once your child arrives, there is no playbook.
Being a mother means being forced to do a million squats (picking up toys). And when you’re in race mode (ie, trying to get out the door), you’re often expected to slow down and reroute. Coffee cup curls become an essential part of your training.
Recovery days are a bit of a joke. Do they exist? The other day, I asked for “Mama 5”—the code in our house for a self-imposed five-minute timeout—and my 7-year-old said “ok, Mama” and proceeded to lie on top of me. Mom bed. I have learned that as much as I love to run and be active, I also make a formidable human body pillow.
There is (rightfully) much ado about the actual birthing process—and let’s be clear, growing a lifeform in your body and releasing it out into the world is no joke—but the day-to-day rigor required for being a mother is really something you have to learn on your own. It requires resilience, discipline, and sacrifice, as if you were playing on a team.
“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them,” said NBA champ Michael Jordan. Was he talking about parenting? No, but it still applies.
Being reared by sports comes in handy.
There are game time decisions to be made, timeouts to be had, rules to follow, and copious hours of actual play.
Anticipation, follow-through, and patience are cherished qualities for every momthelete who is making countless calculations in her head at any given time.
We have to read the field and react with style and grace. Like Chris Evert swinging her iconic backhand.
When your child decides one of her few acceptable healthy foods—bananas—is suddenly “gross,” the response could be: “Good thing I picked up mangos, darling!” Score: 40-Love, mom!
Range is important.
You’re constantly in air traffic controller mode—working, scheduling, entertaining, planning all while attempting to move through the world with kindness, and hopefully a healthy dose of optimism. Maintaining optimism could be its own Olympic sport; it’s always being tested.
Being a mom is hard and hard-won, and that’s the point.
If you have a zest for competition (or even if you don’t), children will match you every step of the way. And damn, can that be tiring. But the love, the love is like winning every World Championship from now until the end of time.
Isn’t that what we’re all after anyway? That kind of feeling of divine victory that surges like lightning through our bodies? That’s what motherhood has done for me.
Game on.
Sarah Cristobal is a NY-based journalist, editor, and creative consultant whose work has appeared in Wall Street Journal, W, Interview, Elle, and ESPN, among other publications. She is currently an editor-at-large for 10 Magazine USA.
❤️