Idealism, Motherhood and Being a Rooster

Well. As often happens when I am gnawing on a particularly meaty problem, wisdom pops up and bites me on the ass whilst I'm driving. In this case, the biter was the lovely Wayne Dyer, of whom I am a big fan. I know he's not everyone's cuppa but I like him because he's very Zen about everything. Being present is so not a skill I possess yet and I therefore admire it greatly in others. Like my darling hubble.

Anyway, as also often happens, I digress. So there I was - daughter sleeping gently in the car seat, on my way home with a Mocca and a sarnie, when it hits me (a realisation, not a car), I have been idealising motherhood. (Was that a resounding 'Duh!' I hear?). This is an interesting revelation because for a lot of my life I saw only the drudgery of motherhood. My mum was a slave to a demanding, violent bully of a husband and four kids and she had to try and fit a job in around all this chaos. Not my idea of happiness I have to say. Not many people's I would think. So the sudden realisation that I had idealised motherhood to the extent that I was now driving myself completely insane with trying to achieve impossible dreams, was nothing short of shocking. Yet it makes sense of so many things that I've had trouble understanding recently.

Firstly - I don't idealise ALL motherhood - just the type of motherhood in which i believe. Hence the ability to both loathe it (because of the drudgery and demands) and idealise it (because of what is possible) at the same time. It's not that on an intellectual level I honestly think that motherhood is all roses, kittens and sunny days spent cooing at a smiling, impossibly good natured baby. I don't. I'm nuts but I'm not that nuts. It's more that I have this idea of myself as a mother and I am falling miserably short of it. This ideal can do all of the things that I have often talked about on this blog. She can cook wonderful nurturing wholefoods for her family, she can play for hours without boredom or a stiff gin, she can raise a happy, well- adjusted little camper without Ritalin and she can make stuff by hand. Well, that's all fine and dandy but it's not me. At least, not right now.


Idealism is one of those strange things. It seems like a good idea at the time, to imagine a wonderful, better future for ourselves (and it is - but within certain parameters). But it is also a constant source of frustration and misery because we put off everything waiting for those idealised 'magical moments'. It doesn't matter if it's a new job, a promotion, achieving a certain level of financial security, a new house, a bigger car, a family, a relationship or whatever, if you are always waiting to reach that goal then you are simply not 'living' now. You are quietly existing and waiting for that moment to arrive and THEN you can be happy, be content, be relaxed. It never comes. I'll repeat that in big letters for emphasis, IT NEVER COMES. There is no magical day when everything will be better, there are just more days like today. The trick is to make the absolute best of these days, in the here and now, living them fully even if not always happily. Otherwise, you are stuck in a constant cycle of Idealism followed by Frustration/Anger (as you fail to meet your own ideals), followed by Depression/Inertia (as in, 'what's the frigging point anyway') followed by Apathy ('I give up!') followed by a new idea of what is right, what will makes things all better again, which leads to Idealism again and so on...

A beautiful and wise woman wrote me an email in response to my last posts and she said basically the same thing to me. I know. It takes me a while to 'realise' things as opposed to understanding them intellectually. She reminded me that who I am is enough. Even when it feels like anything but. Even when I'm crazy and resentful and bored and disinterested and reluctant. Even though I am the very definition of a messy mother (psychologically at least), it's still ok that this is who I am. And, more to the point, it's ok that this is who I am for Lily. On some level she chose me precisely because I would make a hack of these early years, (more or less), and she would get to learn about anger and how to make rude suggestions to motorists who drive up one's bottom on swervy bendy roads. That is who I am. I'm a mess sometimes. I'm a control freak at others, (which is interesting because I have been gifted with the world's grubbiest little girl. I kid you not, there are boys who are more fastidious about their clothing and person than my little grubnut - Ah, the letting go. The letting go.).

This wonderful woman, who has so often been an inspiration to me because she is such a kind and gentle and amazing mother, reminded me that I don't have to be something else. If I can't nurture, if I can't play, if I am angry sometimes and wildly happy at others, if I'm inappropriately humorous, it's all the same. I am the mother I am and that has to be enough. Has to be because to try to squeeze myself into even my own wide definitions of motherhood, is to try and fit myself into a shape that is not my own. Of course, I can want to be better. I can want to find better avenues for my aggression and my anger. I can want to nurture and to play. But it's ok if I don't. Maybe, despite my beliefs to the contrary, what my daughter needs from me is not excessive amounts of play-time or country soups, but the drama, the poetry, the love of literature of reading and dance and magic and imagination. That I can give to her in spades. I can give her an opportunity to be herself only if I am truly myself around her. Myself around everyone. It doesn't give me cart blanche to be a crap mother but it does give me room to make mistakes and not give myself blunt force trauma when I fuck up. Which I will.


It reminds me, strangely, of my primary school nativity. I was a pretty precocious little kid (I was the kid who wrote and staged and acted in a play at the age of 10. You know, the annoying one) and i was good at two things English and Acting. I longed for the part of Mary in the nativity - not because she was cool but because she was the LEAD. I so wanted that part. Anyway, I didn't get it. Nope. I didn't even get to be one of the Angels or the Shepherds or anything. No. I got to be...The Rooster. Yes, I know. It's like that moment in 'Love Actually' when Emma Thompsons' (love her SO much), daughter proudly reveals that she is the 'Second Lobster' in her school nativity and Emma incredulously replies, 'There were TWO lobsters at the birth of Baby Jesus?'. Well, yes. I was the Rooster whose gift to Baby Jesus was not to crow on his first morning and wake him up. However, I did get to sing a song which, from memory, had the lines 'Cockadoodle do' repeated a lot. My mum made me a stunning jumper full of crepe paper feathers and I donned my red tights and sang with all my heart. And I stole the show. Everybody remembered my part. Partly because it was so bloody ridiculous and partly because I was doing what I do best - being me. Annoying, precocious and pretty bloody interesting for the most part.

And so, this well warm groove slides around me again. It's not the first time I have realised this little message, but it is the first time that I have gotten it so fully. I expect I will be back here again. Wisdom is a bit like an onion, it has many layers and as you peel back each one it is likely to make you cry. There are evidently levels of understanding about the same situations, the same processes, that we come back to again and again until they are fully realised and we are healed of the need to tread that little groove again. We then move on to the next and the next. Is there a place of no groove? Possibly. (I think its called 'middle-aged white people dancing - particularly men'). But I'm don't think I'm anywhere near ready to go there yet. In fact, I think I'm like that Goldfish that Billy Connolly sings about, going 'Round and round and round. And round. And round.'

So this is where I'm at right now. Not bouncing off the walls with happiness but not drowning in a pool of my own anxiety either. I'm sort of quiet, if that's possible for me. And listening. And learning to be okay with the accepting and the not accepting, the struggle and the ease. I expect that it will take me quite some time to really stop the striving to be something different, to let go of the idea of perfection in motherhood. More importantly, it will take time to let go of the idea that if I am less than perfect my daughter can still turn out to be a strong, confident and amazing woman. I mean, half of my friends had less than perfect starts in life and have continued to have interesting dynamics within their families and they are some of the most amazing women I've ever met. I'm proud to know them.

And I expect it will take me longer still to really understand who and what I am as a mother. In the meantime, I guess I'll just stay here until something moves me in a different direction. Sitting with the 'what is' instead of trying to get to the 'what may be'.

This is me, signing out.

Cockadoodle Doo!

"There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one” Jill Churchill

The Challenge of Acceptance, The Art of Nourishing

Storms

Have this playing as you read this.

I would love to come to you healed and say that all of your words had made a difference. They did. They do. But they do not undo, unknot, unravel the many shields of my self. I am deeply grateful for such kindness as has been shown to me and ever humbled that people whom I will most likely never meet, have taken the time to share their experiences, offer wisdom and advice (all of it good, sound advice) or to simply 'be' with me for a moment. It has been unexpected.

I am feeling a little less 'Noir'. There are moments of light, laughter and happiness - of course there are. It's just impossible at this point to tell what is going to happen next. I am, for once, not anxious to 'fix it'. I am allowing the 'what is' to visit and not feel like I have to escape from it. I know that I have been touched by some sort of sadness that goes very deep and that will not let me loose just yet. No matter how much I struggle against its silky grip.

I'm so tired and so weary to my bones of trying and getting nowhere. I'm so tired of never living up to my own expectations. So tired of always falling short and getting up and trying all over again. And so I have decided to stop. Not stop living obviously, that would be stupid. Just stop striving all the time. Stop trying to sit on my anger at the expense of my passion, my joi de vivre, my soul's yearning to be heard, to be free. Of course, it is easy to say and not so easy to do. Not so easy to 'surrender' when one does not know how to bend to the prevailing winds. How do you describe the act of surrender? What does letting go look like? Feel like? How do you know when you have achieved it? And what of anger? My anger is a part of it all too. I have yet to learn how to express my anger in more appropriate and manageable ways. I have sat on it for so long, all of my life really, and now it wells up at the slightest provocation and is destructive to the one person I want to protect from it more than any other. And yet. I don’t know how to let go and it’s not something anyone else can tell me how to do. How do you explain the process, the art, of surrender to someone who does not know what surrender feels like, what being empty feels like?

I have always known what I have to do. (Have to?) I have been searching for a way but seem incapable of actually doing it. Incapable of finding that middle pathway between self-loathing and self-love, between anger and passion, between nurturing others and nurturing myself. It was quite the revelation to discover that I don't trust myself. I don't think that I know how to.

My acupuncturist, Aisla, is an amazing and intuitive woman. Today, as I dissolved into tears in her office (yet again), grateful for just a moment when I could be 'me' and let the overwhelm come and not pretend to be on top of it all, to be coping, I realised that this is who I really am. This tear streaked, overwhelmed, oh so tired mummy who wants so desperately to be a good mummy and not a bad mummy all the time, who wants so much to be all that she hoped she would be as a parent, but isn't. This is it. This is as good as it gets. At least for now. And in her office, for those few moments, it's ok. Or at least, if not ok, ok that its not ok.

She sits her needles into my skin and they crawl or throb or itch and then she asks me what I think that I do well. I am quiet for a long time. Then I realise that I can offer her nothing. I can say nothing good about myself. Find nothing good to bring forward for us to talk about. 'That's very telling.' She says in her quiet way. 'Your inner critic is dominating. You need to bring out your inner encourager.' Yes. I'm sure I do. But what I need most of all is to let it go. Let go of the striving for constant perfection (especially when I don't know that this is what I am doing). I was moulded for the challenge, for the winning of battles, for being the best at stuff and honestly, it pretty much came easily to me. I didn't fail that much. But I did get scared of making mistakes. I don't know how else to play. So now I sit with the knowledge that this parenting, nurturing thing may be one battle that I cannot win. And why is it a battle anyway? Surely these things should be soft edged and soft focused and easy, not iron and unyeilding and frosty. If the way is hard, if the road you are on constantly brings you back to the same stiff, cold place of hatred and angst, then you are on the wrong frigging road. You'd think that would be obvious wouldn't you?

But its not. It never is. We can never see the beauty that stares us in the face or the courage we have in the face of adversity, when we are the ones doing the looking. I am well aware that this applies to me, of course I'm too busy looking at you.

It's not that I want to be someone else. I don't. I do sometimes entertain wild fantasies about being somewhere else, but I don't actually want to be someone else. Unless that someone is Cate Blanchett perhaps or Kate Bush. I'd trade lives with them for a day. But then I'd want to come back here and be me again and cuddle my girl and hug my man. So no. It's not about that. It's about not knowing who I am. It's about not being able to find something lovable, something bright and good and inspiring about myself to offer up to this life. It's about truly not understanding what about me makes this path so bloody hard when I have so much love to give to it.

If I abandon everthing to a single moment,
then I reach you.
O light-hearted beautiful of the world,
give me that heavy cup.

Give it,
and then I'll be saved
from sorrow and helplessness both.
I'm so tired of feeling oppressed by anxiety
and all of anxiety's troublesome friends.

give it to me,
for then I'll be drunk with God's glass
and be annihilated completely.
I'll open my wings in absence and fly away to the placeless place.
RUMI

I have spoken before about the process of 'becoming'. And it is to this that I want to surrender. I have no choice really because what I am doing is breaking me into a million tiny little pieces. But how? How do I reach into the deepest still beating part of my heart and bring it forth into the light? How do we touch that little part of ourselves that is Divine and allow it to lead? I am so used to putting my intellect before my heart. My mind over my body. But thinking has brought me to here. Again and again. There is no thinking my way out of this.

Nurturing
And what is nurturing?
I can tell you what it is not. It is not driving yourself daily to accomplish the impossible. It is not running like a greyhound around the same well worn track after the same scabby rabbit who is always out of the reach of your snapping jaws. It is not trying to make yourself something that you aren't and never were. But I cannot tell you what it is. I could reel off some trite magazine worthy observations about 'time for you' like having a long soak in a hot bath (my bath isn't long enough to lie down in - why do they not build them with a sodding head rest for Gods sake?), or taking a mini-break (not when you are mini-broke), eating well and getting enough rest. But then what if you don't cook well or just simply don't enjoy cooking? What if your rest is held entirely in two chubby little hands over which your deepest desire to get a full 8 hours have no dominion? What if you truly don't know what nourishes your deepest self? What then?

Nurturing does not come naturally to me. I've said this before. I can't tell if its because I'm lazy (as I sometimes am) or because I am just lacking in energy and inclination (does that class as lazyness?). Right now, with so little time and energy and freedom, it feels like I have nothing left to give. I am having to learn about nurturing myself and my family one day at a time when I thought that it would all come so easily to me. I realise now that I simply don’t trust myself to be a good parent. I believe in instincts, just not mine.

* Sadness & Light

Acceptance.
So in this place of 'no trust' I sit. In this place of 'self-loathing' I wait. Inbetween these moments of sadness and light, I open. I wait to accept myself and this and it. And I know that nothing can truly change until acceptance seeps as deeply into my skin as the striving I wear like a tribal tattoo. I am unravelling and it feels raw and frightening and my skin feels blistered with all my shattered hopes and dreams. What comes out of this blistering darkness I wonder? I guess there's only one way to find out.

'Some hearts are ghosts and they drown in dark waters,
just as silt grows heavy and drowns with the stone.'