The Unholy Mother

         My name is Pilar Parnell, I am 27 years old, and I am a new mom. I lead a typically normal life, with one exception, my husband and I are both ordained priests in the Episcopal Church. While not the strangest thing in the world, our vocations have made our lives very public in the rural setting of our communities in the Northern Neck of Virginia. This past June, two weeks shy of our first anniversary, my husband Scott and I welcomed our first child, a daughter, into the world. After a long and difficult labor, we welcomed Miss Charlene Marie into the world on June 25^th and while she has been an absolute blessing, motherhood has not come as easy to me as I hoped it would. As I enter into my fourteenth week postpartum, I am officially back at work full time and while I am feeling more myself with each day, I have found that my postpartum soul desperately needs a creative outlet. With that I have begun “The Unholy Mother”. The name came to me a few weeks after I gave birth when I was reflecting on how this experience of motherhood was nothing like I had imagined. I expected a “blessed Virgin Mary, crowned in glory” experience. I expected to be sipping on tea while my body produced milk and my husband cradled a child that was always peaceful. I expected to shower every day and dry my hair into a perfectly coiffed bob. I expected to be reading books while I nursed and stepping back into the world stronger than ever. What I got was not that. And while not unholy (I find the process of creation and birth deeply holy), I have never been able to identify with the experience of feeling “good as new” just days after delivery. I was never robed in white and gold nursing the man child that is often depicted in icons of Mother Mary with baby Jesus. My “icon of motherhood”, as my dear husband described it, was me nursing a child in one arm while I ate a breakfast taco with the other hand, and egg fell all over my chest and chin. Instead of peace and quiet confidence, I dealt with thrush and painful nursing for 8 weeks, postpartum anxiety and depression, crying for weeks after delivery thanks to hormonal shifts, and struggling to feel confident in this new journey. The feeling that I was not good enough and that I had done something wrong because I wasn’t my old self started to take over. All too often I gave that inner voice telling me I wasn’t good enough a place in my life and that started to make me feel extremely isolated.

       I know what you must be thinking, “Oh great, another female priest in the Episcopal Church talking about inner demons and shame”. This isn’t that kind of blog. I will leave that to Brené Brown and people with more experience with psychology. This is instead a place for women, men, parents, priests, and anyone who may just be curious or bored to come and feel less alone. I don’t plan on this becoming another place for religion to become the focus, although my posts will often have a spiritual bend, but rather I need this blog for me as a place to write and share my experiences about motherhood, being a working mom, living in community, etc.  I don’t want to be anyone’s inspiration, I too, just desire to feel like what I am feeling and experiencing is an experience that others have had. I plan on writing as often as the mood strikes me and sharing with you those experiences and reflections on motherhood and the spirituality of motherhood that I think are relatable. Here’s to 14 weeks post-partum. May this space be somewhere, where you can feel less alone in the holy and what feels like the unholy moments of life.