There may be manuals, websites and blogs with advice for
motherhood out there, with tips and practical advice and more increasingly with
recognition of the fact that mothers need emotional support. (So do Fathers, of
course, but I can only comment from the first-hand experience of being a
mother, whilst recognising that much of this would be the same for either
parent.) However, all the advice in the world can’t make you ready for the job
and just when you think you’ve cracked the job description and are easing into
some sort of auto pilot state with it, motherhood can throw up an unexpected
moment or two to send you into a tail dive for a while.
Recently I have found myself talking about those days when your body clock starts ticking and telling you that you need to have a baby. That time when you decide to take the big leap and then every month becomes a waiting game to see if all has aligned to create two lines in the window of a pregnancy test. Way back when this was our aim, it seemed like someone had planted a baby at every corner to remind me that it hadn’t yet happened for us. Once you’ve been through that process, the highs and lows of pregnancy and then negotiated childbirth, the true job of motherhood begins. When thinking back to these early days I think now that I probably had some post-natal depression, especially with my first child. Having had him by emergency caesarean I had an irrational belief that I hadn’t done the job properly and so immediately set up thoughts of failure as a Mum. Throw in an inability to breastfeed too, and I really felt like I was incapable of the basic functions required of a mother. When health visitors asked questions and got me to complete forms I knew all the right answers to say. I put on the happy mother mask, because that’s what is expected. I was mostly okay but knowing what I know about depression now, I would have benefited from support with this at the time.
Over the years, I think I have worn many masks as a mother. The mask to hide your disappointment that something that was special or important to you was swept aside or forgotten. Sometimes a small thing, sometimes larger but those moments when what you were hoping for, or what you wanted to do is brushed aside for the greater good - the needs or wishes of the wider family, so you just park your thoughts to one side and move on.
The mask to hide your worries when your children are embarking on something new that you know may not work out for them. You want so much as a mother to have your children succeed and to avoid pain and disappointment that you try to protect them and feel a growing tension when you cannot guarantee an outcome to be the way you would like it to be for them. Of course, we all have to experience failure in order to learn from it and to grow and succeed in the end. Yet when things look bleak, you would willingly suffer yourself in order to see your child achieve and soar.
There is the mask you wear to effectively gag yourself from passing comment when you know that to do so would only push your child further down a negative pathway. You hold it all in and keep worries to yourself about a phase they’re going through or a relationship they’re forming, save the thoughts up so that they play out in disjointed movies in your waking moments in the early hours as sleep evades you.
What about the mask that can become so well worn that it’s
hard to take off sometimes? The “I’ve got this all under control” mask. To many,
that appears as your real face: capable mother, professional and competent
career woman, loving wife and adept homemaker - wow, you’ve got it all in that
multitasking mask. Pity the friend that dares to peek beneath that mask with a
well-timed question or comment that reveals what’s really going on under there.
As I began to write this I started to wonder how it was for my own mother. As a child I cannot recall any obvious problems being in evidence with her doing the job of a mother. Well, more precisely the many jobs of a mother. It all seemed so effortless and without issues. Once you’re in the position yourself you wonder what cues you didn’t pick up on, how difficult was it for your parents as you happily and obliviously got on with the important business of being a child? From my point of view I always had clothes that were clean and ready to wear, a hot meal on the table after school, support with homework or hobbies, like accompanying me to about six dance classes a week! All the mundane routine stuff was taken care of in a smooth fashion so I was left to focus on my own things - toys, TV, records and 80s pin-ups - so I guess I had no need to notice what else might be going on around me, for my parents. Unless all that is breaking down in front of you, I imagine that children just perceive everything to be okay. Perhaps my parents too had a series of masks they chose from to wear?
What is going on now then? How many masks am I wearing lately? I close my eyes and imagine myself at the centre of a masquerade ball where all the participants have their true identity hidden and for one moment, one night of sheer decadence in truly magnificent surroundings, we can all be anyone and do anything we would like. Immediately my poetic and dramatic self, commands my thoughts and paints a picture of the colours and feathers and glitter and I find it hard to move myself beyond this. Is that my subconscious grappling with my ongoing unease about my current position? A writer waiting for the next inspiration, for peer or external approval, for the drive to complete a project and see it succeed at some level, and all the while feeling that it’s all just a mask I have put on to disguise the fact that I am without work, without direction, without purpose?
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