by Anne Malatt, Australia
I have always been ‘good’ at anything I put effort into. If I wasn’t ‘good’ at it (riding a bicycle, for example) I would stop trying and refuse to do it any more. This way, I stayed good at everything I did!
I never thought I would be a ‘good’ mother. My own mother was a professional woman who worked hard all day, then came home and cooked all the meals and did all the household and garden chores. This was not a job I wanted for myself!
The only time I saw her sitting down was in the evenings, with a drink. I never saw her doing anything just for herself and remember her telling me that her own mother always called her ‘selfish’ if she tried to read a book or do anything just for her.
As we children grew older, we would help her around the house, but my father felt able to just sit and do nothing after work and on weekends, albeit with the aid of a drink, too. This was not a recipe for a great relationship, and my parents fought a lot. This was not something I wanted for myself either!
As I grew older I was not ‘good’ at relationships – with my parents, and later with the men in my life. I did not think I would be a ‘good’ parent. How could I develop a loving relationship in which to raise and nurture children? I did not yet have a loving relationship with myself.
Despite all this, I have borne two beautiful children. Very early on, I realised I was not ‘good’ at being a mother, but I could hardly stop doing it! So I struggled on for years, doing the best I could, and secretly resenting the fact that I felt forced to do something I did not do well, and so did not want to do.
Yet, somewhere deep inside me, I knew what it would feel like to be and to have a great mother. When my children were first born, I felt full of love for them. When I did not have to ‘do’ anything but ‘be’ with them, I felt great. I felt able to do this and loved it. I loved how I felt when I just allowed myself to be.
For financial reasons, I went back to work when my children were very young. This was a difficult time. I found it very painful to leave them in the care of others, and felt exhausted trying to juggle the demands of work and home life. I had to do a great deal when I was at home to fit in the chores of the day, and that did not leave any time for ‘being’. I got caught up in the ‘doing’ and forgot the loveliness and the grace of just ‘being’. And I had not yet learnt that if I focussed on and practised ‘being’ first, the ‘doing’ would follow naturally, and it would be filled with the ‘being-ness’.
In all this ‘doing’ I lost myself. I started drinking again, having stopped many years before (for good reasons), as it was the only way I could give myself permission to stop and just be. So I lost my way completely, as even when I did stop, I was no longer just being, just me. I was either in motion, or clocked off, checked out, with a drink in my hand, no longer fully me.
I found my way back with the great help of a dear friend of mine. It was a long hard road back to claiming myself as the true and lovely woman I am. It took me years, with his great help, to stop drinking, and then to look at my habits of eating, sleeping, driving myself to exhaustion… everything, really!
Gradually I have learned to re-claim my stillness, my femaleness. I finally feel like a true woman. I still get caught up in motion, but now I feel it, now I know when I have lost myself, and it takes but a moment to bring myself back to the living stillness that I am.
I have come to realise that mothering is not what we may think it is.
It is not about ownership, control, meeting needs, satisfying expectations, creating something to satisfy ourselves or others, looking good, grades at school, sporting achievements, dance concerts, birthday parties, clean ironed uniforms, good manners, high-achieving, happy, drug-free kids, who grow up and get married to give you grandchildren.
Mothering is a state of doing, of trying, of setting yourself up to fail, of never being enough.
Motherhood is a state of being.
Being a mother is all about being yourself, being true to who you are.
It is about raising yourself, learning to love and nurture yourself, no matter what has happened in the past, what is happening now, and what may happen in the future. When we develop the loveliness that we truly are, that love pours forth from us and we cannot help but share that love with others. It does not come from an emptiness, from a need to be loved, but from the fullness of who we are. And even if we have not felt this before, we can always start now. It is never too late to be love.
And there is nothing more beautiful than feeling the love that we are and sharing that love with everyone.