Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It Read Free Page B

the send-off—my baby boy with his legs wrapped around my waist like a fleshy horseshoe, my four-year-old daughter clinging to my leg like a little chimp, giving one last wave before the bird in the Beamer flew away.
    But part of me resented that he was free and I was left to tend to the nest. For more than a decade, I had flown away like that, too, and put in a long day managing a budget and babysitting a crew of a hundred or more. Now my crew was much smaller but, surprisingly, harder to manage. I had been paid well to make important decisions and negotiate deals. Now my only decisions were about where to walk the dog, what to make for dinner and which load to do first, colors or whites. My only negotiations were with little people, small animals and the voices ricocheting in my head.
This is what you wanted
, they chanted,
and you’re so lucky to stay home with your babies.
I agreed with the voices and felt the shame rise and the guilt flood over me when I responded,
But it’s not enough
. I missed working. I missed being around adults, and I really missed earning a paycheck. I was never ambivalent about wanting a baby; I just hadn’t gauged the impact it would have on my life until I was smack-dab in the middle of the motherhood epicenter. How does any woman know how she’s going to tackle motherhood until she’s put in the game? The thing I’d wanted most in life, what I’d dreamed about for years, had brought me to my knees and made me question my very identity. How could I raise my kids if I was a guilty, spun-out, conflicted mess of a mother?
    My husband, who lives by the motto
Happy wife, happy life
, encouraged me to go back to work part-time. But the film industry is an all-or-nothing kind of business. It’s not like I could shutmy office door and pump. And I was paranoid that my breast milk would end up in the producer’s coffee. Still, despite my anxieties, I tried to return to work. But my phone didn’t ring and my e-mails weren’t returned. I knew what they were thinking; she’s a mom now . . . a distracted, hormonal, sleep-deprived shell of her former hardworking, deal-making, whip-cracking self. We like her, but we can get someone who is more focused and won’t have to leave early because her kid is sick or her breasts are about to burst.
    Like Liz, I had shed many tears in my bathroom in the middle of the night. I was also suffering from postpartum depression. One night, after a three a.m. feeding, I stumbled into the bathroom and began to weep again. I looked in the mirror and saw a depressed, exasperated woman looking back at me. She had oozing watermelon breasts, hair that hadn’t been washed in days, teeth that hadn’t been brushed and twenty extra pounds clinging to her belly and thighs. Her eyes had big bags and were red and swollen.
“I surrender,”
I sobbed to her.
“I surrender,”
I repeated, this time apologetically.
“I surrender to God. I surrender to motherhood. I surrender the control. I surrender. I surrender. I surrender.”
She looked back at me with a steady stare and responded calmly,
“Thank you.”
    With my moviemaking career on hold, I started writing again, as a way to unpack the mess in my mind. If chaos is the road to transformation, then I was well on my way. I admitted to myself that I’d been a workaholic and that most of my identity had been wrapped up in my job. If I wasn’t working and earning money, then I was pond scum. My career-driven girlfriends confessed to me all the time that they would trade it all for a good man and a baby. In the meantime, they worked nonstop, droveexpensive cars, bought designer shoes and slept with their pedigreed dogs. Earning money had made me feel in control of my life, and being financially dependent on my husband had completely spun me out. It had triggered fears and anxieties that dated back to my childhood and were robbing me of my