Too Much

Words & Photography
by Caroline Snider



Some time around the 10th week of my pregnancy I told Brett that I didn’t think I could do it anymore. That I didn’t want to. That I had made a horrible mistake in wanting a second child. That everything that had seemed to make sense before no longer did.

I had hoped for this pregnancy for the best part of a year and now here it was and I wanted it to stop. I lay on the couch all day long trying to stomach sips of water. My energy and enthusiasm for life completely evaporated, and a 2 year old at my feet so desperately in need of his Mother.

I shouted. I lost my cool. I vomited into a collection of bowls that littered the floor. I turned the television on again. And the walls came closing in. That’s the thing about the dark, it wants us to feel like there’s no way forward.

And it feels important to say now that the fog has lifted, it is okay to feel whatever you are feeling. You can feel despair and gratitude all at once. You are not too much for the world. You are safe. You do not have to silence yourself for the comfort of others.

And all the while I thought about how the world tells us to be quiet in these moments. I thought about the woman at the grocery store that told me as I was trying not to pass out, my son in my arms, that I shouldn’t be telling people. Just in case. And I thought what a thing it is to be told to keep your pain to yourself. That it might be too much for others. And I thought about all the ways we tell women that their marker for success for something as life changing as becoming a Mother is to remain quietly unmoved by the process. And then I came here and read the words of women who had lost their babies, whose babies were hooked to tubes and monitors fighting an evil that had found its way inside the purest amongst us. Mothers who were praying a deep and primal prayer for hope, for a future. And I felt the most overwhelming and existential guilt I have ever and will ever know. And I thought about the randomness of fortune. And how impossibly unfair it all is.

And I, just as every Mother who has come before me has done, tried to carry the weight of all of that inside me. And it feels important to say now that the fog has lifted, it is okay to feel whatever you are feeling. You can feel despair and gratitude all at once. You are not too much for the world. You are safe. You do not have to silence yourself for the comfort of others. You are right where you’re supposed to be. You are not too much.