Category Archives: motherhood

Identity, motherhood

Your Strength Comes from Within

Flashback to that time in prenatal yoga. The first time you were pregnant and had no other job, maternally anyway, than growing that tiny human and channeling all your energy into it. When you could go to a class once a week by yourself, surrounded by other expectant mothers. Where you could bask in the beauty of rounded bellies, orbs in profile as your fingertips pointed forward. The potential energy of abdomens and archetypes. Muscles taut and ready to tense, to push a new soul earthward. And while intuition and multigenerational muscle memory take hold in the throes of labor,

it is you

who fire the muscles

who isolate the exact ones at the precise time

who activate the strength within

and gasp the first lung-filling breath.

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motherhood

Growth and Girl Scouts

Any Girl Scout leader will tell you a troop is born of one girl’s total insistence – and that girl is usually her daughter.

That’s how they get you – the girl and the Scouts; they know you are wholly dedicated to her growth and will do anything, including hundreds of volunteer hours, to facilitate that.

So how did that commitment ten years ago land me in the same church hall last night leading a workshop for mothers?

That, too, is all about growth.

When I trained to be a troop leader, I did not know with whom I’d be working. Ironically enough, there was an existing troop at my daughter’s elementary school so both my daughters joined. Fresh-faced and grateful for all the two co-leaders were doing, I eagerly attended each meeting, offering whatever help they needed. I knew these two moms, their oldest girls in the same classes as mine, but not closely. As the girls bonded over ‘Simple Meals’ and ‘First Aid’ badges, I got to know and enjoy crazy times with these women. Overnights and hikes, crafts and camping. When I went to Troop Camping Training with one of them, we found a whole crew of women dedicated to the cause and having a whole lot of fun doing it.

The circle of women I got to know only grew as my girls progressed through the levels. My younger daughter started as a Daisy and a new crop of girls and moms came in. Leader meetings gave us a chance to ease the commitment we’d taken on by sharing ideas and resources and they almost served as a troop meeting for the women themselves. Very often, the speaker had to deal with unruly ‘kids’ just as a leader did. The leaders of the ‘mega troop’ of many levels all three of my girls eventually joined even went on a scavenger hunt scouring three towns.

It all started with a desire to empower our girls. But I wonder what other motivations kept us dedicated. Was it the thrill of recapturing a lost girlhood? Carefree and fun and sequestered? Or did it speak to a longing that grown women, especially mothers, don’t often find fulfilled? Companionship, camaraderie? And was it also a safe way to seek this out, without guilt, within an activity that also served our children?

Even though I took on a troop when my fourth was a newborn, I eventually ‘retired’ from leadership. I remained a registered member and assisted with my youngest’s troop, but I was too tired to lead. Still, there are times I miss the sisterhood of women bonded by the girls they serve.

Now that newborn is old enough to insist I bring her to Girl Scouts. I did. Our service unit hosted a ‘Learn about Girl Scouts’ series for parents and girls. Over the course of three meetings, girls experienced troop-like activities while parents learned all the stuff I already knew. My former service-unit manager outed me to the Council member running it, saying ‘she’d be a good leader’ with an elbow to my side. I admitted I was a ‘recovering leader’. But as she explained to parents how leading her troop for thirteen years gave her her own set of friendships with women as they nurtured the girls, I was wistful.

A mother seated next to me, who may indeed end up being the leader for her daughter’s troop, said, “I want to do Girl Scouts! Can there be a Girl Scouts for adults?”

I think it’s safe to say that most adults yearn for the simpler days of their childhood. Not the growing up all over again, but the chance to do things just for the fun of it. To play with friends. To not have to be the one in charge. To feed our soul with things that feel good and light us up – not alienate us and drag us down.

As I packed my things last night in preparation for the workshop, it didn’t escape me that it was same as setting things down into the tote bag I used to haul Scout supplies. I loaded the trunk and drove the same route. I parked by the ramp and unlocked the door with the same key I borrowed for meetings. As I set up in the rosy glow of sunset slanting through the blinds, the quiet excitement with which I laid items out on tables, shifted chairs into place, had the same feel as preparing for a troop meeting all that time ago. It was oddly satisfying and soothing to be preparing for this new type of meeting in that same place. It was like coming home.

But this time, it was for the moms.

A meeting to discuss putting ourselves on the schedule. Where our motherhood ends and our self begins. Or the jumbled up place in the middle where they intertwine. About taking care of others and ourselves.

I’m not saying my meeting was Girl Scouts for Adults, but it was a chance to sit uninterrupted and think about what we, as women, as individuals, want from our lives. With like-minded people experiencing the same things, facing the same struggles.

Because no one wants to be lost in the shuffle – girl or woman.

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Identity, motherhood

Balance the Equation

I think I know why mothers put themselves last. The one thing they can unequivocally control, with no x-factors or unknown variables, is themselves. In a world of crushing responsibility and swirling chaos – with them at its center – it is easier to remove oneself from the equation than adjust other unwieldy elements to make room for themselves.

When my now six year-old was a SCREECHING toddler-preschooler (and yes, it was in all caps and a continual hybrid of those two phases), many freak shows occurred in the tinny tube of a well-sealed minivan. When we had no choice but to hurtle through the tunnel of terror, my husband would often turn up the volume of the music. With all the children, we’ve always joked that music calms the savage beast, but if that didn’t work, I believe his secondary goal was to at least drown out some of the noise with more pleasant ones. But music – no matter how soothing it was – was just another layer of auditory assault on top of her banshee screams and the increasingly agitated protests of her sisters, who had a front row seat in the fallout zone. At some point, all the windows would be shooshed open, adding full-blast high-velocity wind to the affront. With something in my head about to twist in upon itself and either roll out my ears or burst out my forehead, I would lean forward and snap off the radio. Which inevitably would anger my already wound-tight husband at the wheel. I think his reasoning was to have some say in the cacophony, a pleasant personal addition to counteract all the negative auditory input over which we had no control. Mine was: the one thing I have control over and can remove from the untenable equation needs to be gone before I go out of my ever-living mind.

And that is much how I’ve operated these last several years. In the midst of pick-ups and drop-offs, errands to run and food to buy, kids who don’t nap and others who stay up too late – it was easier not to dream. It was easier to not start a project than be interrupted and watch it languish in the corner for months, years. It was easier to not even entertain the thought than watch it drift away on a sea of to-dos on scraps of paper.

It was certainly easier than fighting.

The amount of fighting it takes for modern mothers to get validation not awash in guilt and judgement is ridiculous. Unconscionable. Borderline criminal.

I’ve been trying to leave that combative quality out of my more recent mathematics. For I feel it just feeds into the idea that I’m doing something abnormal.

I want feeding my true authentic self to be as natural as the air I breathe, we all breathe.

Hopefully not as it’s whooshing past us in an attempt to drown out one (or more) of our screaming offspring.

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motherhood

Stop Gaps on the road to Self Care

My last post, The Kids are All Right, elicited a lot of feelings and reactions. More than I expected actually.

I always view difficulties through the lens of mental illness vs health, but those I outlined last Tuesday struck a chord with many moms across the spectrum.

That doesn’t mean there is an epidemic of maternal mental illness – though there is an underreported and underserved population for sure. It only underscores what every mother already knows: motherhood is extremely trying.

Every age and every stage has its challenges, which usually present themselves directly after one set has been deciphered and conquered. But add in a post-pandemic, high-inflation, middle-age slump (at least for me and my contemporaries) and even getting out of bed seems like a monumental feat.

There are many systemic and cultural constructs that make up the fabric of our current constraints – and yes, there needs to be change at those levels. But what can one mother do as she looks at her own face in the mirror?

She needs to be clear on what motherhood means to her. What it looks like. What is non-negotiable and what falls under should. What has to occur/or not for her to be able to rest her head on her pillow at night and not toss and turn.

This does not preclude those around her from supportive responsibility. But the reality is, she likely will have to recruit this, too.

Self-care has been co-opted as a concept by the those who can make money off face masks and body poufs, candles and cocoa butter. But taken at its literal meaning, mothers need stop gaps to release the daily pressure of motherhood.

Mothers need stop gaps to release the daily pressure of motherhood.

In the everyday rush of responsibility and running on empty, however, caring for oneself can be just one more item on an already too-long-list.

Sometimes it is quiet and solitude. Sometimes it is community. Sometimes it is rest. Sometimes it is activity.

Surviving motherhood is a constant balancing act. Hopefully we don’t get turned around in the process.

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motherhood

The Kids are All Right

When I saw this image as part of an Instagram post shared by The Blue Dot Project, my mind did the mental equivalent of a fist pump. I’d uttered a very close variation of this to my own father during my own bout with postpartum depression.

“The kids will be fine.  They will always be fine.  Me on the other hand . . .”  I twisted my face into a questionable shrug.  I’m not sure I actually said it, but what I meant was: it was me it was killing.

I wasn’t failing on some self care front. I was totally consumed by the day-to-day care of (at the time) three littles. After that, there was little time or energy left – and all of that went to me keeping it together. Not thriving, not growing, not healing – keeping the fucking lid on.

And I think that’s the irony of preparing mothers for motherhood. And the way we support mothers after birth.

Yes, you should swaddle. Yes, you should lay them on their backs to sleep. Yes, you must wake them for feedings.

No, you can’t take them to bed. No, you don’t need more than an inch or two of water in the bath.

Is there ANY mention of how to care for mother?

The ways that women take care of the themselves before baby don’t necessarily work afterward. Schedules and responsibilities shift. Existences shift. Hell, even space and time shift.

The reality of motherhood is that most women will grind themselves into the ground to provide for the ‘thrive’ of their child.

And that has propagated the species. It has kept generations of us alive and marching forward. It often gives us the fierce, yet tender protection of her love.

But we cannot set mothers up for this. We cannot send them into self-sacrifice unwittingly. No matter how ready they are to swipe tiny bums with warm wipes, they stand the chance of losing themselves and their mental health if we do not support them.

The kids usually are all right. It’s the moms for whom we have to watch out.

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
And I know if I don't, I'll go out of my mind
Better leave her behind with the kids, they're alright
The kids are alright, the kids are alright, the kids are alright

Pete Townsend wrote the above lyrics to the song whose title inspired that of this blog post. And it was going to be just the title that inspired it – until I looked closely at the lyrics.

We cannot leave moms to be swallowed up by the all-encompassing duties of caring for and growing humans. Yes, the kids will be all right – but moms should be, too.

  • quoted text Jennifer Butler Basile, memoir
  • song lyrics “The Kids are Alright” The Who
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motherhood

The Lost Daughter

People who read voraciously will tell you the book is always better than the movie. 

I take it one step further by requiring my children to read the book before they watch the film adaptation, a rule I usually follow myself.  But when I watched The Lost Daughter on Netflix, I did not realize the story came from a novel of the same name by Italian author, Elena Ferrante.  Fascinated, if slightly unsettled by the film, I did some research after viewing it and obtained the book. 

The Lost Daughter
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
The Lost Daughter Netflix

The movie touches on nearly every single note of the book, something that cannot be said for most film adaptations.  Even nuanced subtleties are included.  It is a book lover’s dream. 

Both are a conflicted mother’s nightmare. 

The main character, Leda, is a conflicted mother. 

With the main line of the plot centering on Leda’s solo beach holiday, one might assume that’s all behind her – but as Ferrante so deftly proves, the mother/child bond is one that pulls a thread through lives, years, generations. 

Leda’s holiday at the shore is a celebration; not of her daughters’ departure, but of her independence, of the absence of obligation.  Yes, she brings a bag of books to the beach to prepare for the upcoming year’s classes, but she “carried a wicker chair out to the terrace, and sat for a while to watch the evening descend on the sea” as her first act upon arrival, something she never would have been able to do when “for years every vacation had revolved around the two children.”

Leda enjoys one supremely relaxing day at the beach – before her past, in the form of a large Neapolitan clan, blocks her path to the water.  The group, both large in size and attitude, whose continual return to this same spot inspires a sense of ownership in them, reminds Leda of the extended family of her childhood from which she fled.  She remembers her mother’s abhorrence and yet ultimate adoption of their crude and violent ways.  The interactions of a young mother and daughter make Leda reassess the bonds she had with her own daughters. 

In an expert weaving of past and present, one mother/daughter pairing to another, Ferrante explores how polarity and magnetism can exist at the same time within maternal bonds: motherhood vs. selfhood, generational transference and connection, love vs. duty. 

A bedraggled doll covered in beach sand becomes a character as real and large as any of the humans.  She is the love Leda needs from her childhood, she is the care Leda aches to give her own children freely, she is the unquestioning fragility of the mother/child bond. 

Conflicted mothers want to know that walking away, that tending to their own needs and desires, though viewed as monstrous by the outside world, is worth the internal validation.  Leda’s mother threatened to do so many times (“You will never ever ever see me again”) yet never followed through.  Leda made a point to never utter those words, but actually did walk away.  Now the young mother Nina laments how “your heart shatters: you can’t bear staying together with yourself and you have certain thoughts you can’t say.”  She believes it will pass, comforted by the fact that Leda returned.  Yet, Leda answers, “With my mother it became a sort of sickness.  But that was another time.  Today you can live perfectly well even if it doesn’t pass.”  Ultimately, Leda cannot offer young mothers a satisfying response.  

Leda herself hasn’t found a solution.  Years after her own disjointed upbringing, a strangled happiness in motherhood and a thwarted success in academia – she finds herself drawn to the very things from which she was running.  Closing herself off ultimately opens her to the dangers of these present-day manifestations. 

Both the novel and film treatments of The Lost Daughter come across as haunting and unnerving.  There is an undercurrent of threat throughout: of loved ones leaving, of missed opportunities, of loss and bodily harm.  Sometimes the threat isn’t even apparent; there is just the feeling of dread.  There is a meditative melancholy to this story, much in keeping with the heavy machinations of life and communion Leda carries with her. 

At times, this story is even esoteric.  Given the central question at its heart – can a woman attain selfhood and motherhood in the same lifetime – this is the perfect paradigm.   It has haunted three generations in just this story and countless women throughout the world.  There is no clear answer.  There are many iterations of the lost daughter. 

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motherhood

Shadow Work

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

My twelve year-old often asks me this as we bid each other good night. 

After years of staying home amidst the push and pull of patriarchy vs feminism, I instantly sense a trap. 

Why do you ask?  Why do you need to know?  Who put you up to this?  What do you want me to do?  Are you insinuating that I do nothing with my day?  Do I need to account for all my time?

Her reaction the first time I came back at her made me realize, that while her query had triggered me, my tone was not meant for her.  She was simply wondering what mom was going to do while she spent the day at school.  She knew how her day would go, but not mine.  Perhaps it was also an acknowledgment of how much I do to take care of her and her sisters – so what did that entail when I wasn’t physically with them?  Maybe, hope of all hopes, she was actually wishing for/validating some sort of relaxation from or reward for my toils.  That’s most likely reaching, but she is empathetic for her age. . .

I chose to leave the workforce when my first children were small, when they needed full-time care.  Having four children, that time stretched to encompass the younger ones as they came along.  As they all began to spend more time out of the house, I remained at home because there were always varied schedules, sick days, afterschool obligations – and that was before the inconsistencies of COVID life.    

But as they get older, and I angle myself toward both personal and professional pursuits – though none as of yet in a structured or official capacity – I wonder if the assumption that I will always be there is stunting the growth of all of us.

I wonder if we (mothers, women, parents) set ourselves up for more work and less appreciation by being available to our children.  By being there every afternoon after school, do they assume we’re the snack purveyor, chauffeur, laundry service, backpack picker-upper?  By doing less – or by being home less, as in working – would they appreciate us and what we do more?  The only time they usually acknowledge what I do is when it’s not done.  So if they are left to do more things for themselves, would they appreciate when I do complete a task for them more?  Because of its special quality, its novelty, or unexpectedness? 

In supporting our children and being there for them, are we making them less able to actualize themselves? 

Don’t get me wrong, I feel the heft of the unloading of a day’s troubles in a walk home from the bus stop.  I cherish the teachable moments that occur as we unpack their belongings and experiences.  I revel in the jokes and laughter as we all come together again at the end of a long stretch of separation.  These are valuable moments – for me and, I hope, for them. 

But the in-between moments. 

The assumption that I will pick up the slack because I don’t answer to a bell-schedule or time-clock.  That the jeans/leggings/sweatshirt they love will always be in the drawer when they reach for it.  That I will unlock the door at the exact moment they reach for the knob even though they have a key hanging from a hook slung over their shoulder. 

Perhaps I am rehashing the existential loop of my own childhood/mother’s experience.  Perhaps I am perpetuating another generation of children who live in a world of the laundry fairy and the fairy godmother, who don’t see the magic beyond the end of their noses because it’s always been there; who don’t sense the wizard behind the curtain because they don’t look long enough to see it ripple – or aren’t allowed to approach and draw it back for themselves. 

Work/life is a balance.  Supporting our children so they can flourish while allowing and urging them to apprentice in their own lives is as well.

It’s ALL in a day’s work. 

https://www.pexels.com/photo/shadow-of-home-plant-on-wall-4207776/
Karolina Grabowska
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Living, motherhood, parenting

A Note to My Children, Aged 43 and 5/12

Disregard my previous missive.

While that advice may have been sound – in a low-level survivalist sort of way – it was ordered toward others rather than centered on you.

Yes, it suggested simple ways to keep the lid on things at home with small children – and you would be the one responsible for completing them – but that’s the only part of YOU that factored into that equation.

It put you at the center of others’ judgment of you – via your home and your housekeeping skills.

Rather than giving you the legacy of neurosis founded on society’s standards of good parenting and homemaking, I challenge you to give yourself the gift of not caring what unexpected guests think of your house; of not deriving your own worth based on how the physical place you share with a slew of other people with their own free wills and sets of hands and collections of things looks.

And if you want to stay in your pajamas all day, please do so without explaining yourself to anyone. You work damn hard and deserve a comfy pair of pants when you want them.

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motherhood, Survival

Mother as Refugee, Part II

Stemming from the author’s note I addended to my last piece, I have some more thoughts to share on the idea of mother as refugee.  I alluded to the fact that my musings obviously came from a very ‘first world problem’ place.  Even had I not used that actual phrase, there were many details in my post that gave me away.

Assumption: access to child care

To escape, i.e. leave one’s home, someone else has to watch the kids.  While many mothers may dream of it, the point is moot if there is no one to care for the children in their absence.

Assumption: a partner in child-rearing

Raising one’s children with a support partner – both emotionally and logistically – frees one to care for oneself, offers the space to do so, validates the importance of . . . an act which is exponentially harder without one.

Assumption: financial solvency

My piece presupposes that there is extra room in one’s budget for such frivolity as a fancy coffee drink.  Buying a coffee I could’ve made at home is a luxury I need to plan for in my first world budget.  It’s also a way to secure space in the establishment.  For mothers with low incomes, buying a drink in exchange for a seat isn’t even an option.  This also assumes that one doesn’t first have to pay for child care in order to get some time to oneself, in which case even an overpriced cup of coffee is a drop in the bucket.

Assumption: local resources/community

A latte at a coffee house as self-care is the ultimate example of white mom privilege.  Coffee shops – one really – are also the only places in my mostly rural town that are open in the evenings.  If the library happens to be open when I get the chance to escape, there isn’t a quiet section for me to hide.  I’ve resorted to sitting in my car in some picturesque spot, but that only works during daylight hours in warm weather.  Winter in the Northeast is not conducive to this.  In other words, place plays a large role in the opportunities available to mothers.  If there is no building, no business with availability that suits her schedule and economic needs, there is no escape.   

Assumption: home as a safe and comforting place

Perhaps home as it exists is a very triggering place.  Some mothers may associate their surroundings with abusive episodes or people who live(d) there.  The emotions elicited may be polar opposite to the relaxation response.  Others may be overwhelmed by the sight of dishes to wash or piles of laundry to process, a very real and overwhelming reminder of her daily duties.  Or perhaps others expect her to perform such duties when at home or consider her time squandered.

I cannot assume that I’ve done any justice to the situations I’ve described above.  I cannot presume what it is like to actually live in such conditions.  I only open them in an attempt to unpack some of my own privilege and honor the experience of every mother.

 

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motherhood, Survival

Mother as Refugee

For many reasons, I needed to sit on the couch yesterday and do nothing.  After a short while, it became clear that TV time with the toddler was not going to provide my needed respite.  Even snuggled under the same blanket, I was not providing her with enough [attention/snack food/video selection].   Circle all that apply.

It was just that kind of day.

She continued to want; her sisters added to the cacophony when they got home.  The toddler was a bit extra on the toddler scale, but none of them made outrageous requests.  By the time my husband got home and I stepped into the kitchen seeking an adult conversational release valve, I was all edges.  The last of a staccato flurry of requests nearly made me run screaming from the house.

That’s when an inner alarm went off.  I need a day off.  I need time away.

But the glaring alarm bells weren’t entirely correct.

What I need is time at home, alone.

I need a day off in my house left to my own devices.  To sit on the couch for as long as I want until I want to rise and retrieve a snack.  To watch a British drama until I cry and/or decide I’ve had enough.  To read, to write, to fill some of the pages in those adult coloring books I bought for self-care following the birth of the present toddler.  To sleep.  To stare into space.

But moms are not afforded that luxury.  I am never in my house alone.

In order to get a respite, I need to leave the house.

With respites few and far between, by the time I get one or my mental health sounds the alarm, I am usually in such a state of exhaustion that the ideal break would be crawling under a blanket and ceasing to exist for a while.  Except coffee houses don’t usually have a corner in which to hole up.  Plus, they have people.  To me, people-ing does not constitute a break.  And I can’t bring my own gluten-free vegan snacks to go with the yummy latte.

I encounter this same conundrum when I slip away to write.  Even if I don’t want to crawl under a blanket, there isn’t a quiet corner to be had.  Last weekend, I thought I’d come up with the perfect plan when I dropped off my ten year-old at a two-hour birthday party.  I’d go to the big library four minutes away, spread out all my materials on a big oak table on some deserted level, and get shit done.  Except the big library is closed on Sundays.  The sweet parking spot I snagged right in front should have tipped me off before I got out of the car.

So off to a different coffee house this time for a sweet drink not good for my blood sugar or wallet.  The convivial atmosphere was not good for concentration either.  Apparently 2 PM on a Sunday is the time to get coffee in this town.

If someone could figure out a way to provide moms with a hidey-hole to escape from the circumstances that won’t let them relax at home, it would be a huge success.  And if I can figure out a way to do this, consider this my official claim to the idea.

 

But that excuses the actual problem: that mothers are not allowed to shelter-in-place. 

 

They are forced from the nests of their homes by the demands and responsibilities that weigh on them there.  Not given the chance to breathe, they must take it.  The surface tension of the home, while a thin skin, must be broken through for a gasp of air.

And while the act of taking this time is choosing oneself, showing one’s deserved value – it is undermined by the fact that mothers are ousted from their territory, their home base to get it.

promenade-solitaire--1473171360frf

Richard Revel via publicdomainpictures.net

Should not the pyramid be flipped the other way?

Mothers work hard to make the house a home.  And yet, they don’t get to enjoy the benefits of that.  The soft blanket and pillows that grace the bed.  The way the sunlight spills through the windows casting the white walls a brilliant hue.  A quiet so sound that the click of the boiler can be heard far below.

Even if a step away gives a break, a breather, it is on foreign territory.  Any comfort it gives is not of the ultimate level.  It is not complete because it isn’t home, where one can be completely and totally oneself and off-guard.  Relaxation, yes.  Complete, never.

Mothers are forced to roam, choosing the least off-putting or triggering place to settle for an attempt at realigning and regulating their overwrought senses and psyche; adding one more thing to an already overflowing list of decisions and tasks which elicit the need to escape in the first place.

I don’t know what the solution is.  I don’t know what needs to change to honor mothers and their numerous sacrifices.  All I know is I wish I could just stay home, alone.

Author’s Note: The use of refugee here is as metaphor; it is in no way attempting to compare my ‘first world’ struggles as a mother to the very real and devastating conditions that true refugees face for themselves and their children.

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