I didn’t intend to treat motherhood as a marathon. To be a great marathon runner, it helps to have a developed anterior mid-cingulate cortex.
For those long miles (days and nights) with no end in sight.
Of course, I understood the path of motherhood was no bed of roses. In fact, the bed was often rumpled, sticky with poor sleep (usually mine, a worthy sacrifice), and other human liquids.
But my intention was to ensure the most loving, beautiful, and calm space for my daughter to grow well. Surely that meant me getting to be loving, beautiful, and calm too.
Dreamy. Half true.
It started tough with a pregnancy with severe nausea and health sensitivities. And I had to work when the going when going got tough to model the dream I had.
I haven’t heard of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex then. But I was face to face with the absolute rock-bottom baseline possibilities of my higher-level functions such as how I harness my focus, attention, emotions.
Things got low.
This work trained me up the way I ought to grow as a mother.
It Will Get Better
During the haze of newborn breastfeeding, many offered their stories from the trenches.
I already knew motherhood was something special.
Because unlike other advice I got in other areas of life — work, sports, love, money, the motherhood advice I got was always accompanied by this soothsayer of a phrase — “it will get better”.
Ah, the toughest months. You’ve no time for the toilet or your hair. Babies cry. Mothers are sometimes miserable. All normal. Goodbye to your old life! It’ll get better.
Sometimes —
an understanding smile, and It’ll get better.
I drank it all up.
My mother was not able to birth or nurse me, as a working single mother. Her hurts were my motivation to ensure we did everything right. It was a rocky pregnancy and labour.
Then baby had a tongue tie, (Google didn’t seem to prioritise “feeling stabbing electrocuting pain while breastfeeding” at that time?) but we persisted for months with painful breastfeeding, figured it out.
Does baby ever stick out her tongue?
Are they supposed to do?
It’ll get better.
Dreamy. Half true.
I was grateful for every encouragement and every word of wisdom. Every mother was a fractal of my experience that I wanted to learn from.
Some parts do get better. Other parts seem to get absolutely worse.
What got better is me.
I Did Everything Uncomfortable
Every woman has a particular point where they start to feel things are now really getting hard. It feels like the maternal equivalent of SHTF.
For some it begins earlier before baby even arrives.
For me, it was after the “trench days”, when things were supposed to be smoother.
My heart fills now as I recall those times. But in those times, was I ever rage and helplessness personified.
When all the children won’t sleep and they’re in various stages of crying. Did you know houses with kids that echo can be a special kind of torture chamber?
Other times were more abstract. When we moved and friends were few. Do I keep struggling to continue my work identities as a stay-at-home mother?
Wasn’t this supposed to be a beautiful phase of blossoming and blooming?
I’d go for long cycles and walks around what felt like an increasingly mundane suburbian scene with my children.
I’d do deep breaths, measure my voice, tone, pace, and even my aching diaphragm — like how my voice teacher taught me in school, and speak calm to them. To myself. To the universe.
When I stuck out the uncomfortable moments, things got better.
I Embraced The Suck
The suck started to come to the fore as the children got older and I questioned the results of my madness. It was everything that I’d chosen to do differently.
When I decided on no screentime, the benefits were immediate and observable.
Other decisions such as homeschooling brought other problems to solve.
Such as letting all of my old identities go, as well as its attachments: friends, money, reputation.
Accidental Intermittent Fasting
Things get hectic on some days.
We tried some rounds of mashed carrots and things unless I decided I didn’t like finishing up their mashes. I also found Weston A Price and nourishing foods for motherhood.
I decided my babies eat what I eat.
Yet most of the day could go by before I could eat a meal in.
I got hungry. And sorry for myself.
Until I realised I was feeling OK most days extending my breakfast until later.
I was actually feeling great! My mind was clear and my energy high despite broken sleep and hectic tasks that demanded multi-tasking.
I accidentally intermittent fasted.
I Built Calluses on My Body
I saw my grandmother naked a few times. She was changing into her going-out shirts.
She was all rail thin and flat breast. Papery thin skin, and toughened fingers and feet. She was the strongest person I knew at six years old, because she was over 80 years old and hauled several litres of water over a mile to my uncle’s house. Daily.
At night, my grandma might give me a playful prod with her wizened feet. Scratch. Scratch. I’d shriek in half horror.
My aunt, my mom’s older sister, took care of me when I was tiny. I continued to live with her during long school holidays. At the end of long hard days, my aunt would lie back with her newspaper read in hand and offer me an absentminded massage with her rough hands.
It was soothing to my child-like body that craved a mother’s soft touch.
But I was also fascinated by the knobs and bumps of hands and feet. She worked and was also a housewife, cooking square meals daily. Her evening toilet cleaning session was the background comforting noise to me.
Now, I develop the same calluses. Mine are a bit brown and gross thanks to the gardening. Nothing a good tub soak (or three) can’t get out.
Mom, check out your little toe — it’s all hard and knobby. My daughter giggled as she helped me with the castor oil.
My skin carries callouses against the grind of daily life.
I Built Calluses in My Mind
This is a Goggin’s line.
On Saturdays, I’d kiss and say goodbye to my husband, who would go on the road early to beat the traffic and get to business. His workweek was in another country.
I inhaled the peaceful oasis that he left us in.
And I also sighed in exasperation so many times — it was “only” looking a toddler, a dog, and a house.
How can there be so many hard things to do? These aren’t supposed to be hard things, are they?
I sighed having to “fix the garden”, even though I didn’t have to do it.
Some hard things came uninvited — roaches at night, frogs in my laundry that frightened the daylights out of me at night.
Try meeting a frog in your bedroom at night.
I had no sense of humour after 7 p.m.
I regained sanity by listening to podcasts to dig myself out of my own mental hole.
Those callouses became the grit for me to level up how I looked at food, my routine, and myself.
Accidental Truths
Truths are light that become your beacon in life. Once you break out a new one, your life can never be the same.
Of course, you may choose to live the lie, but inside you know the truth.
Once you find out you’re making yourself fat and sick and that keto (insert other healing modality) is helping you out of the situation, you can choose to stick to it or fall back to old eating habits.
Once you learn that you are creating drama in your own relationship, you can change your patterns or keep being an as*.
One truth for me is that anterior mid-cingulate cortex.
This is the part of your brain that grows when you do things that are challenging. The size of it correlates with will and power, even longevity.
The kicker is that it has to be things you feel to be difficult.
It’s not the heroic ice-bath that you whoop with joy sinking into.
It’s more like cleaning poop (not yours) for umpteeth time while you have to soothe the troubles of a little child.
Life can be hard and it is not bad.
Accidental Rhythm-Making
So things seemed to be a perpetual spin on the hamster wheel at home, I decided things had to change, and that meant routines.
If chaos wasn’t contained by 12pm, I exit the scenario with my children. (At smaller ages, they could help somewhat, but the larger heavier tasks of hauling up laundry, “fixing the garden”, and picking up yet another broken glass or thing had to wait.)
I instituted quiet time. The kids went to their jigsaws, legos, etc.
I closed my eyes. And took a breather.
I do this as many times as needed until the quiet times got bigger and the chaotic busy times turned into more productive and pleasant times.
I Began Seeking Out the Suck
At some point past the SHTF moments, the occasional chaos crystallised in my mind as something else.
At first it was — this is your life from now. Not forever. But certainly for now and from now on.
The suck took me to a higher perspective. I felt my self expanding in even more ways. Some days my heart fills so much at the end of what we’ve done together as a family at home that I cry tears.
Tears have been helpful to help wash out my red tired tires, because castor oil was growing old.
Maybe it really is just my anterior mid-cingulate cortex growing.
Part of it was practical systems-oriented:
How do I do my morning routine so that laundry can be done, dishes ready, the garden “continues to be fixed”, and all of us bodies are ready to meet the day?
Part of it was spiritually oriented:
They’re growing. I’m growing. We’re becoming.
The latter helps turn the former from despair to willpower. The line sounded dreamy, but that was true.
…
Thank you for reading.
…
If you enjoyed this read, I appreciate your claps and comments. I’m here to chronicle (with a starry eye) BETTER VIBES how we get into the flow of life.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
Does dating ever feel challenging, awkward or frustrating?
Turn Your Dating Life into a WOW! with our new classes and live coaching.
Click here for more info or to buy with special launch pricing!
***
—–
Photo credit: Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
