If you could give any gift in the world, what would you give and to whom? And why?
Archive for April, 2009
Developing a philosophy of mothering
I’ve never received more comments or email than I did for the On Being a Mother entry. I wrote it quickly, without much revision, as a way to affirm to myself the value I felt in being a mom despite all its obvious hardships. That piece drew a lot of support. Loved hearing from all of you.
There were comments and emails too, though, from those who are on the outside looking in, feeling that mothering really is a hardship, that they don’t enjoy the company of their children, and worse, feel guilty about it. Guilt for something you can’t control is the worst feeling you can possibly have. I have no intention ever of adding to anyone’s guilt! Sorry for that unintended side-effect.
I’m all about nurturing ourselves and our kids
through our pain to health and vitality.
That’s the whole Brave Writer modus operandi! Moms who struggle are certainly as invested in their children, love them as much, yet feel they are missing the genetic material to help them have that energy and joy in mothering that they hear about from their friends.
Their experience is a bit like never having had an orgasm and having to hear how great sex is! You feel instantly shut out from the “universally glorious experience” and you can’t imagine what you’d have to do differently to get to that blissful state of being. Believe me, I get it. (More than you know!) All of us have had that “outside-looking-in” feeling in some area of our lives.
In no way do I want to minimize the pain and bewilderment that women feel when they are handed an 8 lb. bundle of limbs and told “Go, therefore, and mother.” The crucible of total responsibility up against very real human limitations drives most of us into an emotional collapse at some point in our children’s lives (and more than once!). That’s why it’s so important to embrace this “more than full-time” job with the expectation that you can find tenderness, connection and love, or you won’t make it! Chronic stress and disappointment in your life is the stuff of which midlife crisis is made.
My goal in the parenting journey is to experience pleasure with my children. In other words (and here, the sex metaphor really is apt!), I’ve deliberately cultivated happiness as the chief aim of parenting. Not discipline. Not character-building. Not training. Not even education. My main concern for my kids and for our family has been to create a happy, peaceful, honest, nurturing, attentive-to-each-person’s-peculiarities environment so that our relationships with each other would be about connection, not about tolerating or managing each other.
It’s my belief that in a space of joy, humor and kindness, education, love, and satisfaction thrive. Relationships become a source of strength and refuge from which to live the rest of our lives rather than an obstacle filled with frustration and pain. I’ve often said, “Joy is the best teacher.” I’d add, “Peaceful relationships are the foundation of a joyful life.”
Lizzy asked in the comments:
I wonder, Julie, what or who it was that helped you develop your perspective. Was it your own mother? Was mothering a dream you’ve had since you were a little girl? Are you one of those folks who has read ‘all the books’ for inspiration?
These are great questions with longer answers than I can do justice to here. But let me tackle it this way. I never thought about having kids (didn’t like babysitting, couldn’t figure out why babies were “cute”). I come by my passion for children through mothering, not through any inherent maternal drive. My mother is incredible, though. She was the one who threw “back-to-school brunch” parties for my friends in 7th grade. She’s the one who patiently typed my essays in high school. She’s the one who has shared her very real self with me and has always listened to my pain without editing it. She’s also the one who lost her marriage to an affair and checked out emotionally for several years of my young adult life. Her deliberate recovery and prioritizing of emotional health has had a huge impact on me as an adult.
I also had the privilege of being mentored in homeschooling by an utterly free spirit of creativity who showed me the value of picnics over math pages, and dress up clothes with face paints at 10:00 in the morning on a Tuesday. As I’ve given myself to mothering and have paid attention to the writing process as it’s worked out in parent-child relationships, I’ve discovered that people thrive when they have space to be who they are, when their pain is taken seriously and when both are addressed with compassion and creativity.
That goes for both moms and kids. If we get too lost in our children, we become withered, unhappy, grouchy adults. If we are too consumed with our adult selves, we lose sight of our kids and overlook their needs for devoted attention.
Between these extremes is an awesome middle ground;
it’s the space where what you do as an adult
can be shared with your children and vice versa!
It’s the space where you tune into your own needs (I have to get out for a haircut or I’ll scream) and also keep an eye on what’s happening with your children (they need naps). If you love Mary Cassatt, you share her paintings with your kids. If they love Wii Dance Revolution, they get you to compete. There’s a give and take that includes touching, eye contact, sharing interests and problem solving. It’s a mutual admiration society that is fed by time together where all members get something from the shared experience.
In other words: joy in mothering is directly related to ensuring that you do things with and for your kids that make you all happy. Really.
Tuesday Teatime: Twiss Family
Hi Julie,
I was interested in your appeal for Poetry Teatime pictures. We don’t actually use any Brave Writer materials yet but I do enjoy reading your blog. So, here are some pictures from our teatime…
“Who wants to have Poetry Teatime?” asks Mom.
“Me!” responds everyone.
Caleb (8) gets out the poetry books.
Ethan (6) gets out the tablecloth.
Adam (5) and his friend, Omari (5), drool on the brownies.
Mom gets out the dishes and puts the water on for tea.
Abby Jane (2) sits there looking cute.
On Being a Mother
Oprah featured moms on her show a couple weeks ago. The two “experts” who “wrote the book” were bubbly, sharp, blond business-type women who wore chic outfits that had never seen spit up or spaghetti sauce stains. They rallied the audience into a frenzy of confessions about motherhood which variously decried the hardships of this “first order of creation” occupations.
“I hate the fluids of babies: pee, spit up, spilt milk, snot.”
“I cried the day I drove to the car dealership to buy a mini-van.”
“There were days I wanted to ‘send them back to the hell from whence they came’.”
On and on the tales of woe pored from the mouths of devoted parents. Video clips of small kids on bikes, disastrous laundry rooms, “stuffed to the gills” cars with seats and sippy cups floated by, making one wonder why anyone would sign up for the task of mothering, let alone sustain it for decades. Moms confessed things, too, like the one who said she didn’t want to wake the sleeping baby by stopping the car for a potty break, but she needed to pee so badly, she took a Pampers diaper, stuck it between her legs and let it “go” as she drove. Yeah, I thought that was way more information than I needed to know about her, too.
There was a surprising lack of joy
represented in the discussion of mothering.
Mostly being a mom was held up as the hardest job on earth, the most demanding, the most self-sacrificing, the most misunderstood and overlooked work on the planet. A kind of shared martyrdom, underdog status united everyone and Oprah, never having mothered anyone, had to declare that indeed, they were right. Mothering equalled sainthood (which we all know implies burning at the stake and smiling through it!).
With my kids in the room, listening to the pain of childbirth and engorged breasts, the relentlessness of little voices, the demandingness of the small child’s need for food, sleep and comfort, the annihilation of a woman’s identity and sense of self, I couldn’t take it any more.
After all, far from being the hardest job in the world,
mothering has been the happiest, most satisfying,
life-giving, joyful, rewarding, fulfilling and
(dare I admit it?) easiest job I’ve ever had.
Oh sure, the hours suck, there are anguishes deeper than the ocean, there are seasons (years!) of such utter exhaustion you can’t imagine ever being rested again… but all those discomforts are easily and unequivocally overturned by my children, themselves.
I punched pause on the DVR to set the record straight:
“Being your mother has been the single greatest joy and privilege of my life: not a burden, not a perennial unrelenting source of emotional and physical agony, not the ‘hardest job in the world’, not the knee-capping blow to my ‘adult individuality’ nor has it been the thankless, under-appreciated, most overlooked profession these mothers would have you believe. In fact, my sense of personhood, identity and self-knowledge have grown more through mothering than any business I’ve started, any degree I’ve earned, any relationship I’ve pursued. I thank YOU for being the best people to ever happen to me.”
Then I spewed in bullet style the privileges and unique joys that came with mothering them (all five of them, each one popping into my life like a fresh daisy, every two years for 10 years).
Cuddling:
Being your mom means I got to have someone to cuddle non-stop for 12 years while sleeping with at least one of you at a time, nursing you, carrying you, holding you, helping you in and out of car seats, backpacking you.
Sleeping together:
There is nothing more divine than a baby who falls asleep on your chest while you fall asleep and the whole world stops while mother and tiny child become fused as one content, quiet, shared being. No meditation, yoga, prayer circle, private retreat has ever come close to providing me with the depth of peace, pleasure and abiding hope that sleeping with a baby has given me.
Playing:
Board games and hopscotch, dress-ups, face paint, finger paint, walks in the woods, trips to the zoo, picking up bugs, rolling down hills, blowing bubbles, eating too many cookies, watching Arthur on PBS, rewatching Disney movies, cards, chasing a dog in the backyard, trampoline jumping, creek splashing, snowman building, skiing, middle of the night slumber parties, bike rides, soccer in the backyard, soccer on the official fields, ultimate frisbee… What adult gets to do any of this on his or her 9-5 job? Talk about luxury!
Conversation:
Oh it starts off good – why do bubbles float? How did I get red hair? Why doesn’t Santa Claus visit Moroccans, too? But boy does it keep getting better! I’ve learned about human rights, veganism, Role Playing Games, Shakespeare, Klingon, fashion, exercise, lacrosse, birds, fantasy novels, conspiracy theories, atheism, feminism, linguistics, alternative monetary systems for world peace (serious!) and more by talking to my kids.
Mothering is the job that means:
- taking the dog and kids for a walk in the woods is on task.
- teatimes and picnics are considered achievements worth trumpeting to friends and family
- even on bad days, someone tells you “Hey, I love you Mom” and then hugs you so tightly, you believe it.
There is no comparison to the jobs I’ve had in business and writing. Sure, affirmation and personal achievement are nice… but they are nothing like the bond that comes from the devotion of loving people who live every day looking for you to see them for who they are. I’ve found that the easiest thing in the world is to love my kids. All it takes is entering into their lives on their terms and giving all I’ve got. I get it all back and more.
Yes, there have been nights where I cried myself to sleep over a non-stop crying toddler or a teenager’s emotional pain. There are times when I feel out of control and invisible and fearful for my child’s future or welfare. But the rewards of mothering so far outweigh any of its challenges, I can’t relate to the repeated refrains of “how hard I have it” simply because I chose to have five kids. Instead, I just feel perennially lucky that my lifestyle has included such richness, tenderness and connection to immortality through my children.
I think it’s time we blew the whistle.
Mothering isn’t a job. It’s a privilege.
Follow-Up Thoughts
Friday Freewrite: Friends
What eccentric behaviour in a friend surprises you the most? (Look up eccentric, if you don’t know what it means!)
