Down the River With Nothing but an ore and the Truth
When my baby first crawled up onto my breasts, I was terrified that something would harm her. The moment I first held her I was transported back to my childhood bedroom, in particular, the shelf above my desk. Perched on the smooth wood under the sun was my favourite ornament. A glass swan. I loved to play with the pink crystal swan, but I was always so worried I would do something wrong and accidentally break it. This worry turned into anxiety and as time went on I eventually left the swan on the shelf, never to pick it up again. I loved it, but my fear was greater than my love. My fear won. This has been a shamefully large theme of my life.
So decades later when my fingers delicately brushed Frankie’s brow for the first time, I was flooded with a conviction that with any wrong moves from me, she too could break. In those early days she felt like a glass ornament under inexperienced hands. I loved her with a wildness I had never before experienced and yet I feverishly feared that she would be harmed. I look back now and can see that my obsession with everything around her being completely 100% all-natural was rooted in that fear of anything unnatural hurting her. I remember sitting in the corner of the room and staring at her while she slept, my face was streaked with tears and I genuinely questioned if I would be a good enough mother for her. To her.
When she eventually met our family and friends, I made everyone sanitise their hands before I allowed them to hold her (a decision I am still deeply embarrassed about). I was terrified that the most precious human in my life would be harmed. I was scared that I would fail at looking after her, that I’d forget her fragility and she’d shatter under the weight of my neglect. The early days of my motherhood was a maze of triggers and flashbacks, I was acutely aware that if I didn’t manage those feelings correctly, I could drown in them. Where I went wrong in all of this is not talking about my true feelings with anyone. Instead, I slipped back into my size six jeans, put a fresh lick of mascara on and made sure the house was immaculately clean. No one in my village was invited in to see the concoction of fear and anxiety swirling around my body. In fact, I didn’t let anybody outside of my immediate family visit us - visit her - until she was six weeks old, because I didn’t want anybody to see the level of fear I was operating with. So my husband - my strongest supporter - became the keeper of my secret;
That i was barely holding it together.
Over the years, I have thought a great deal about this and I have come to the conclusion that although there’s a plethora of books out there on the logistics of those early days, there’s next to no preparation for the merky underbelly of motherhood. However, we all bleed the same at 2am when our children need us and those fears creep in that maybe this will be the morning we don’t have the goods. We still show up, don’t we? Day after day. Loving as a verb, a doing word, a tangible action. Moving from maiden to mother was the sharpest transformation I have ever encountered. In my life, my transformative seasons (and there have been many) have often been an ugly wrestle. So there I stood - INSIDE MY FIRST YEAR OF MOTHERHOOD - on the edge of insanity. I realised that there was a dominant culture of mothers pretending not to struggle. I knew the rules of engagement, I played it very well so as not to feel ostracised from the mum club. I saw fear in other mothers and then I watched them panic under my gaze as they said “everything is just so perfect” punctuated with a “I am just loving this season!” I have been in this deep well of a lie, I know how it looks and I know how it sounds. I was complicit in this toxic game of pretence. By my forth child, I was no longer a part of this game and I made sure mothers knew this. Not because I thought I was better than them in any way, far from it. I spoke truth because I watched how my honesty freed others to speak with the same language. I do think we all still need the kind of honesty that cracks open the heart and admits the shame in the struggle, the days when we get it oh so wrong, the days when we feel like we could crack under the weight of a bull-shit expectation that was never ours to begin with.
Be kind to yourself, Mama. Oh if I could go back in time, I would say that to myself also. I would write it on my mirror, and on stickey notes that I’d place over every surface of my home. By the time Frankie was six months old, I had whittled an ore from the timber of my old life. I then sewed together a life jacket from scraps of Grace and Compassion. I wrapped that vest permanently around my chest and have never taken it off. I made the ore and the vest myself with blood, sweat and a determination to survive. I made it the day I realised that no-one was coming to save me from my own transformation. However, I knew I could save myself from drowning - by talking. I now take it as my responsibility to show up and be honest about this journey, for I know this season doesn’t last. Even though my heart will miss the baby-days when my children are grown, I won’t miss how unkind I was to myself during those newborn years. My beautiful and unbreakable body has grown love and produced blossoms.