Jemima Kirke from Girls penned a new essay about parenting for Time. She’s a good egg, that Jemima. She’s very outspoken on women’s issues, but she never takes a “look at me” approach to these important subjects. I was very impressed by her previous PSA on abortion rights. Jemima opened up about how she had an abortion in college, and she doesn’t regret it, but wants to do away with the stigma surrounding the procedure. In that post, we talked about how 3 out of 10 women will undergo an abortion, but people act like it only happens to strangers. Jemima handled the subject very well.
Jemima’s new essay talks about how terrified she was to become a parent. She never imagined herself being able to care for other living beings, and the fear increased with the arrival of her daughter. These two introductory paragraphs are so powerful and an indicator of the entire essay:
Weeks after coming home from the hospital with my first child, I would take the train into the city to see my mother. As I rolled the stroller along the narrow platform, I thought about pushing my daughter onto the tracks and watching the train kill her. What stirred this thought was the absolute shock that the only thing between the life and death of my child was a moment’s impulse. I was more powerful than I ever wanted to be, and I was scared I would screw this up. All I could think of was gore and pain and tragedy, and it felt as though it were all in my hands. How was I to be trusted? I now realize that what I was experiencing was a standoff with loss.
When my baby came out of me, I went into mourning. I mourned my selfishness, my old life, my cute body – but I also mourned her. How perfectly safe and endless she was before I brought her into the world, maybe before she was even conceived. The hopes I had for her. The perfect life I had imagined. All of that was protected before. And now she was human. Exposed, vulnerable and suffering.
[From Time]
The entire piece is well worth reading, and Jemima is excellent at putting the anxiety and dread of parenting into several paragraphs. She talks about the analogy of “to be a parent is to have your heart live outside your body.” This is so true, and Jemima worries so much about protecting her kids and knowing that she cannot fully insulate them from the world. I feel the same way. My daughter is a teenager, and the thought of her going out on dates in a few years is not a good one. I will punch the first boy who breaks her heart, you know? The little tool will have it coming, but you can’t keep your kids safe forever. You do the best you can, and then they have to fly.
Photos courtesy of WENN
Having your heart live outside your body, so well put.
She’s stunning and so well spoken.
Beauty inside and out
I’m distracted by how much she resembles SJP in her younger years.
http://showbizgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Screen-Shot-2013-03-24-at-19.30.21.png
Carolyn Bissett Kennedy vibes.
Actually, that’s a better match!!
Wow, it takes guts to say what she has – hat off to her. I don’t have children but the thought of being responsible for the life of another human being terrifies me.
OMG AMEN! I’m pretty good at taking care of myself and my husband if I do say so myself, but another person on top of that? terrifying.
That is so huge…and babies turn into kids who turn into tweens into teens into little adults and that just blows my mind!
I try my best to really try to understand and believe the ‘it’s all worth it’ mentality because I don’t think so many women would have children if it wasn’t true on some level, and I know I can’t really feel it because I don’t have a child of my own.
But it terrifies me. I am grateful that my friends and family are such good parents around me. They make it seem so easy and fun, but even as somebody who doesn’t have a child of her own, I know it’s a challenge and a struggle for everyone in different ways.
Very thoughtful. I wish her the best, and I hope her kids, all kids, stay safe.
While I never had the slightest thought about hurting my kid as a means of measuring the absolute power and responsibility that comes with parenthood, I completely emphasize with the terror. My son spent a horryfying four days in NICU when we thought we were going to lose him. It terrified me, and made me so paranoid that I spent the next year in a state of utter terror and depression. I couldn’t bear to put him down and not hold on to him. Obviously, that has gotten better with time, but I still do worry about him almost very day. You learn to live with it because you don’t want your kids to grow up little worry worts, they need to become independent and act without fear, but boy is it tough. And then whenever you read about selfish, uncaring parents who fail their kids, or hurt them, or abandon them, you just feel like doing them violence. Because if you don’t want the responsibility, damn it, don’t bring a child into the world.
This disturbing thought she described in the first paragraph usually comes to my mind, and I hate it.
She could be Fiona Apple’s younger sister, with regards to looks and deepness. Love both.
Love how the understated elegance of her prose and its ring of profoundly personal truth lead the reader clearly through deeply disturbing thoughts… especially those that are usually so difficult to logically string together and communicate. Thank you for pointing out such a well-written and thoughtful essay.
Did anyone else see the thumbnail pic and think Dakota Johnson? Anyone??
I’m sorry I find her way of thinking weird.
I felt pretty powerful when I thought it’s my task to turn this 100% dependent on me Baby (both of them) into 100% Independent, walking, talking thinking individual. That is up to me to shape them body and soul.
I don’t get why I have to imagine death to feel my responsibility.
You don’t have to. But I think it’s good that women talk more about the weird/unpopulalr feelings and thoughts they have about their babies.
The women with a postnatal depression get all my sympaties. I think their struggles to come to term with motherhood, baby, family at once is the most difficult and trying time for the whole family. I have heard (one time) not simply worring but actually terrifying admissions from a woman, who was fighting for self control. In these terms I’m not against anyone expressing negative feelings.
In this case however the line …”the only thing between the life and death of my child was a moment’s impulse. I was more powerful than I ever wanted to be…” ….worries me. She may turn into a heli mum in a blink of an eye.
The source of her power-the life and death of her child makes me shudder. If all it takes is a “moment’s Impulse” I hope she can master her Impulses superbly.
I think she is very pretty and natural looking. I have the same “raccoon eyes” going on and it makes me feel better that their are celebrities out there that have the same problem and aren’t going full on concealer. I’ve tried that route but I end up looking even worse. I’m not even comparing myself to her gorgeousness, just refreshed to see a non-conforming celebrity.
I can completely relate to what she is saying. It can be terrifying to be a parent at times. I almost went into the throes of depression when my daughter broke her wrist (I never let her see me crying my eyes out, except after I yelled at the pharmacist for getting her pain Rx wrong). I felt faint at the hospital. It was such an overreaction, but it was so difficult for me to see her in pain. That is the one thing I loathe about being a parent..the worrying.
We can only do our best. We raise them and spend the rest of our lives hearing the reviews.
This essay is everything…. literally EVERYTHING….. that I feel about potentially becoming a parent….. from the push on to the tracks to the how will I protect this little human from evil unspeakable, to how do I halt coincidence and tragedy from affecting them…. to omg my old body…to I cant do what I want when I want and damn everything else ?!?!?….
all selfish and yet selfless…. this essay its just …. EVERYTHING
As someone who has battled it myself, this entire essay speaks volumes about post-partum ANXIETY. It’s talked about so much less than post-partum depression, but it can be just as debilitating. Her intro about the train situation was not her saying ‘I wanted to push her in front of the train,’ it was about the realization that she was so wholly responsible for another life that she COULD. For some of us, that realization is crippling.
She talks about reading morbid stories as well, another thing I related to very much. When my daughter was 5 months old, there was a mass tragedy in my area (a landslide) that killed many, including a baby born the same week as she was, in the same hospital, and sharing her same pediatrician. I cried for weeks about this (to be fair, they searched for the bodies for weeks as well). The ‘what if’ scenarios. My husband eventually made me stop watching the news.
I’m a great mother. I know that in my heart, but sometimes my head says otherwise. Reading this essay made me feel less alone.
I also completely get what she’s saying. It was terrifying that this small, amazing creature was completely at my mercy. It shook me to the core that this was the case millions of times over in the world. Crouched in the vulnerability of the defenseless innocents are nightmares of what can happen to them. I also found the whole idea of war and killing of any kind boundlessly disrespectful to what it takes to push forth a new life. These feelings and fears short circuited any real feeling for my son for his first 3-6 months. I loved him… But the feeling of love had to work hard to break thru the wall of anxiety.
Oh my gosh! I know exactly what she is talking about!! I have never suffered PPD and am generally an optimistic person but my mind will, at times, go to worst-case scenario accidents. Like, when I am going down stairs carrying my baby- what if I trip? If I am giving him a bath- what if I have a freak premature heart attack and I lose consciousness while he is in the tub? Stuff like that where you just feel the extreme weight of your responsibility for somebody who relies 100% on you.