Not the Bitter Baby Mama

I believe the purpose of my human experience is to encourage strength in using our voice and spreading the message that our personal narrative is our greatest asset. I believe our truth is the most authentic power we could offer the world, and I want to be a vessel for those narratives to be heard.

Eight-year-old me would be shookth that I dare write those words and expect to share them with the world. Eight-year-old me was a scared little girl who had no idea how to express what was going on in her headspace. Instead, she uncovered destructive ways of trying to be heard that carried with her into young adulthood.

Eight-year-old me did not know truth of voice.

Throughout my life, feeling silenced led to escapism.

Feeling like I couldn't speak my truth evoked the creation of a world I conjured to live in that felt more comfortable than my reality. I wrote a false narrative because an alternate realm I could shout in felt better than the one I could not speak up in.

In that world, I glorified the ones who kept me quiet.

I designed the shell of who I was based on what I thought would be more digestible for the people around me. I clung to every sighting of a blooming flower while turning a blind eye to the weeds that kept growing around it. I knew no other way than to sweep the dust under a rug I’d still have to walk over, even though I just wanted it all out of my home. Grab the broom to rake it in the shadows or keep that shit to yourself. No one taught me to take out the trash. They just taught me how to bury it. So, I grabbed the shovel and tried to dig.

But dust still piles under those rugs despite how much you think you’re sweeping it away. The space is still cluttered no matter how much you try and hide the mess. There is no use in digging holes for things that know how to crawl their way out at night. If you don’t take that shit to the curb, it’s not going anywhere.

When I found out my boyfriend was leaving me for another woman while I was pregnant back in 2018, it was safe to say my house had officially reached the maximum capacity of mess it could keep under wraps. I had no place for it. I tried to keep it to myself. I attempted to fill the truth in any crevice of my home I could so as not to face it. But there was no room left for messes to be stashed, not when I was about to be a mother. My child would not enter a hoarded home.

So, I cleaned the house.

I stripped its insides of everything that caused it to be so damn confining in the first place. I purged it until it was left at bare-bones and I could see right through it. I took my shit to the curb and I lit a match to it for everyone to see the flames. And girl, did they flock to the fire.

That was okay because I was not concealing anymore. I wanted to draw a crowd. The more it caused a stir the more I hung my mess from every street light along every road I had ever traveled while I had been running from my reality. I could not spin narratives that did not tell my truth anymore. I would not go to bed with mayhem. I would be the poster child for its demolition.

And I did it for my daughter.

I did it because I would not be the bitter baby mama who let her daughter watch love decay in the cracks of her walls where no one else could see. I would not have my daughter see the putrefying effects of a silenced woman. My daughter would know how to sweep things into the light, not out of it. She would not live tiptoeing around shadows. She would never know a world of breaking herself down for others to digest. She’d sooner watch them choke.

It’s been three years of me talking about my journey from that point, in any format I can, to anyone who’ll listen. I’m all over Instagram sharing the overwhelm and the mishaps of trying to embrace the duality of life as a single mother and a free woman. They’ve been made to feel like binaries in a stigmatized society. But instead of accumulating clutter in the darkness while telling fallacy tales in the spotlight, I’m recording exactly what I see and letting that be enough--no matter how it looks when I write it out and hit that share button.

Social media has a way of creating unrealistic expectations for women and mothers, pushing a visual narrative that both of those roles have an aesthetic.

It’s literally the broom of all brooms, a super sweeper of everything that does not look pretty in the light. There’s been so much pressure on us to be the head of the village that raises our children while also walking an unspoken straight line that leads to outdated doctrines most of us don’t align with and are tired of pretending we do.

Now, we’re out here bringing our messes to the curb, lighting a match to it, video recording that shit on Instagram Live with messy buns and a toddler on our hip who’s eating Cheez-Its at 9 in the morning--and having no qualms about it. That’s fucking beautiful to me. We’re getting honest with ourselves, and when we do, we start to realize there’s a lot more of us than we thought who are trying to do the same.

None of this is to imply women should be banding together through trauma-bonding and unhealthy patterns that reiterate our limiting beliefs about what we’re capable of, but I do think there’s a lot of power in living through our lows just as much as living through our highs. We can’t only show one side. That’s not reality.

Our stories are non-binary.

We are more than just two things--good or bad. Yes, we are both, but together they make up the third part of our existence to which our truth of voice resides. You know that cliche phrase about how there are three sides to every story; yours, mine, and the truth. It’s kind of like that. There’s the good, the bad, but then there’s also the blend of the two, and that is where the truth is heard.

So, yes, I wrote a book about my "baby daddy" who cheated on me while I was pregnant (It’s called Tainted Lionheart and it’s award-winning--go buy that shit).

And, no, I’m not ashamed to say I then fell in love with his best friend shortly after my daughter was born. Spoiler Alert: it turned out to be the messiest and ugliest of ugly messes. But, really, it was a blessing in disguise because it catalyzed the whole next phase of my life. Deciding not to bury that story forced me to sit with myself in a profound way (and helped me write my second book, I Got to Know Nature--go buy that shit, too).

Living through that instead of hiding it in the shadows is what kept me honest. It made me more authentic. I wouldn’t be me without it. It’s not about capitalizing on pain or drama or airing dirty laundry. It’s about connecting with women through exactly what makes me me, without any filters, hoping they’ll feel comfortable enough to do the same.

It is inherently built within us to share stories, evoking emotions that establish a deeper understanding of our human experience.

When did it become the social norm to filter the type of narratives we tell? I blame the patriarchy, but that’s a whole other thread of thoughts.

My point is if we filter our narratives to only the good shit, we’re living inauthentically, isolating ourselves from the truth of who we actually are. We’re just trying to refine something that’s never going to be pure. We’re all fucking contaminated--and that’s the goddamn truth.

That’s why I don’t fear judgment anymore.

Who’s going to say what, and why do I care? You can shrivel me down to the messy woman who had some disarray in her home, or you can think I’m the woman who made space for some incredible things to happen for herself in spite of that disorder. Either way, just know I showed you all sides--not just the pretty one. What you take from that is for you.

And for the record, I know your life isn’t all perfectly posed family photos and weekend road trips with your boyfriend and his French Bulldog. I don’t expect it to be. I mean, I don’t expect anything from you. I just hope you never choose to take a shovel to the things that keep you up at night. There’s a vast world of women who are pacing over the very same things. If we want to believe there’s strength in numbers, let’s also believe the more we share, the more we can change the things we’re all losing sleep over.

So, don’t, figuratively, be the bitter baby mama who manipulates her fate with falsified illusions.

Knock down those walls before you dare hide behind them. You’re going to find your strength there. You’re going to find your truth.

I’m so proud of the woman you’re becoming.

Christine

Christine Weimer is an award-winning author, publisher, creative copywriter, and spoken-word artist from Queens, New York. She is honing all the guts and glory of motherhood while promoting and supporting women writers as the Editor-in-Chief of Our Galaxy Publishing. Christine is the author of three poetry collections; Tainted Lionheart, which won the Gold Medal Poetry Award for Readers’ Favorite 2021, I Got to Know Nature, and Claiming the Throne. Her most recent work is published in The Order of Us and Venus Rising anthologies and Sunflower Station Press literary magazine. She is also the Publishing Advisor for Gearing Towards Engineering Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the importance of STEM education to today's youth.

Our Galaxy Publishing is a New York City-based, women-owned, and operated independent press with a nationwide team serving aspiring authors the tools to write and publish. Our seamless publishing experience focuses on action-based tools and resources to publish, exploration of all core storytelling elements, and empowering an entrepreneurial mindset. Whether seeking to self-publish a book or find a traditional publisher, work with us for book publishing, book editing, book marketing, and writing mentorship to publish a successful book.