the unseen mother
Sun spills into the window of my tiny kitchen as I sip chai slowly, trying to wake up. From his high chair, my six-month old son throws much of his breakfast onto the patchy linoleum that is as old as me, possibly older. The state of my house is cringeworthy + the state of my head is an emergency.
My baby isn’t one of those babies who sleeps through the night. In actuality, he wakes, almost on the hour, to feed, scream, poo or simply just to stare at me in wonder. For some reason, still unbeknownst to me, I am raising him alone and so, aside from mum visiting on occasion, or good friends who graciously peel him from me when I’m on the precipice of psychosis, it is just him and I. Day in, day out. And I am hands-down fucking exhausted.
Today is my very first Mother’s Day as a mother and I am equal parts nervous + excited. I don’t really know what to expect. Will my baby have miraculously organised a flower arrangement? Will he scribble crayon onto a card that says: “sorry for not letting you sleep ever mum!” Or better yet… will he let me sleep?
My phone vibrates with sweet messages from loved ones that affirm that I am indeed doing a great job; proclamations that my son is lucky to have me for his mama and that I should enjoy a relaxing day. The messages are received with warmth, yet they somehow sprinkle salt into a wound that I do not yet realise I have.
You see, motherhood is fresh to me. Perhaps I look the part with my overpriced nappy bag + wooden toy collection, but underneath, I am yet to fully shed my maiden skin. I still hang in the realm of idealisation + romanticism, yet to fully adapt to the weight + truth of motherhood. I crave ease + reprieve and I’m shocked that ease + reprieve continue to evade me.
If today is a day to honour all mothers, then I want a piece of that. I want to be thanked, I want a break + I want someone to acknowledge the suffering, sleep deprivation, depletion, discomfort, patience, adrenal burnout and crippling fear that I am infused with, mostly arising from the fact that I have no idea how to raise a child alone, yet here I am, doing exactly that.
There is a deeply unmet part of me that yearns for someone, or something, to save me from all that I seemingly cannot handle. There is also my delusion, cleverly disguised as optimism, that suggests that perhaps motherhood will not always feel so hard. And finally there is the desire to run away, tantrum + behave like a toddler. These questionable options bounce around in my brain, but in the end nothing feels right.
And so, I really should know better than to indulge in the cleverly-curated world of social media. But my soul is sketchy and my longing for a salve wildly rages on. The red flags are blinding, but right now, bad choices appear as good ones.
After I log in, I am hit by a tsunami of status updates + photos depicting floral bouquets, dedications, handwritten cards + breakfasts in bed. I am nauseous with envy and feel the void of support, village + reprieve. I want to hide + weep for the shame and unworthiness I had no idea I was carrying.
The loneliness + lack are palpable. It is as if, all of a sudden, our family of two is missing something or someone (with the added irony that we are beyond capacity to fit anyone or anything else into our lives). Through tears, I laugh at the expectations I had of motherhood. I had been conditioned to hold it all together, be a warrior + suck it up. And I did all of that only to land here, broken + bursting at the seams. It is a particular type of pain, induced only by the refusal and resistance of surrender.
In this very humbling moment I can now see, clear as day, the thing that has been tugging at my leg for so long: the small, frail, fearful girl in me who is scared + suffering and in dire need of mothering. And it was time to tend to her.
Here’s the thing.
Babies don’t give a rats ass about Mother’s Day. They do not care. They will not buy you flowers or give you a day off and they will continue to cry + shit and be impossibly cute and unpredictable, just like every other day. They have not yet learned the ways of the material world and instead, embody an entirely different way of existence altogether. They are the closest we’ll ever encounter to beings who have crossed through other-worlds; they hold a deep inherent wisdom that extends beyond words or gestures and they are fluent in the language of unconditional, unwavering + unshakeable LOVE.
As I stare into my baby’s avocado-smeared face, I realise that my quest for external validation was going to end badly. I would not find it in social media, friends, family, books or my kid. It would only be reclaimed when I laid to rest my long list of self-imposed expectations.
Once all that bullshit subsided, the magic could rush in.
I finish the last of my chai and stand up to check the day outside. Fuck it. We will celebrate today, and every other day, in our own way. I wipe the mush off his sweet little face, kiss him until he giggles and then transfer him into the baby carrier.
As we walk towards the beach, I am equal parts raw + content. We follow the track through the forest which eventually spills onto an empty beach. Our beach. I stare down at him in his little pouch, his limbs + eyes now heavy and relaxed. Soon, the waves will lull him into sleep, and I, for a little while, will walk + breathe + piece together my fragmented nervous system as I gaze into the sea.
There is a certain tragedy owed to the fact that much of motherhood goes unseen and the world has much to learn + relearn about honouring mothers, motherhood + matrescence. But perhaps what is more tragic is when we do not see our own magic as mothers. Motherhood is a living, breathing dichotomy: a series of unwitnessed, unexplained + untold stories which, depending on the lens, can be perceived as unseen, or sacred.
To all the mamas.
Your stories are infinite + powerful + magic.
I see you.
❤️
* reflections from mothers day 2012