Re: your appraisal is due

I often talk about how much I love motherhood on here and how fulfilling it is but what about the hard stuff? The stuff that other parents egging you on to have your first try to gloss over and keep to themselves? 

Motherhood can feel isolating and lonely at times. You pour all that energy in and wholeheartedly devote your attention, sacrifice your needs and sleep and friendships and don't exactly get much feedback or see results, at least not when the kids are still very young, not when you still can't have a conversation with them, not when you're observing them on such a macro level day in and day out that you can't see the bigger picture. Months and years of invisible work go into motherhood before you can see results. So I wonder sometimes...

Wouldn't it be nice to have a sit-down performance review every now and then as a mother? 

There is of course the risk of getting a grilling of your lifetime for your lost temper, for meals that weren't nourishing enough, for a bruise or a scratch that you didn't jump in fast enough to prevent and for your general lack of patience. I can go on...

But really what the eager A student in me wishes for is a constructive appraisal where you discuss your progress and set objectives and appreciate what you've done and how far you've come. Maybe get a little raise too while you're at it! Mum guilt has told us all enough about the things we've done wrong. They key word in appraisal is praise, isn't it?

The thing is society doesn't seem to put much value on mothers who choose to dedicate all or the majority of their time to their children beyond the first year of life. At least that's been my impression. Full-time mothers often seem to exist in some parallel universe to the rest of society. All this is exacerbated by the fact that the friends you make and bond with in the early baby months soon return to the workforce (by choice or out of necessity and I absolutely get it!) and friends of old are often just no longer interested in spending time together. Or is it the other way around? Mothers loose focus and capacity for former friendships? Either way such are the seasons of life and of friendships.  

Perhaps the reason society doesn't put so much value on full-time mothers is because it makes no difference to their life, they don't benefit from it until much later too when they get to know the people we’ve nurtured. It's a very delayed investment in the future generation as is everything with kids in any scenario I suppose. Every parent genuinely wants to do their best job. 

The issue with full-time mothering is that after what's often years or more than a decade of work, where we constantly try to grow and prove ourselves on par with men and the rest of our diversely gendered society, women are suddenly left in a feedback vacuum at a time when they're often performing harder and with more authenticity than ever before, often even overperforming and functioning at the limit of their abilities. Not to mention the times when according to your toddler everything you do is just *scream scream* wrong!! Finding ways to stay motivated is key!

What makes me feel empowered and reenergises me to keep pursuing my conservative motherhood journey is actually often not so much a break or a personal creative project but quality time spent with other mothers and people who aren't necessarily mothers themselves but value my full-time job because, well, it makes me feel seen, rooted and understood.

So yeah... Motherhood is a lonely path in any scenario, even with the proverbial village of helpers, neighbours, grandparents and doulas, even with help of childcare. So, even if I say so myself, to mother full-time and pursue personal career ambitions is a bold choice. I have the most demanding boss and work way way outside my contracted hours! Parenthood stretches the abilities of your nervous system in ways you could have never imagined. The discomforts you’ve learnt to live with, the chronic fatigue and the emotional demands of dealing with a little person's growing personality whilst constantly being triggered to self reflect and question your own childhood. It's a lot! 

But I also find the time to read, write, edit, do yoga, run and fulfill my private ambitions (sometimes!). It makes creative work and projects and rest all the more valuable. The rare pockets of time that I get have to really count, they have to either light a fire in my belly or calm my nervous system down, the spaces of time in between motherhood are very special indeed and that's strangely exactly the discipline and the catalyst I always needed as a serial procrastinator.

Keeping my children close for as long as possible under my wing is how I've always wanted to parent. It's a personal choice. Thankfully, my partner agrees. 

It does however come with a caveat. Limited perspective because you rarely zoom out far enough to appreciate your own work. Like a painter who might find it beneficial to stand back from his canvas or even look at it in the mirror, mothers could do with a fresh perspective every now and again. When so much of your life is unpredictable flux curated by an immature brain and its wants and needs, when so much of your life is spent in discomfort of bursting for a pee or hunger or of needing to keep going despite being sick or knackered, or of being covered in sick and other bodily fluids, when so much of your life is spent nap trapped or napless and submerged in tantrums, it's hard to track progress, it's hard to zoom out.

As a parent you often don't notice how suddenly your child can communicate so much more, how their hair has turned a whole different colour or how they suddenly learn the lyrics to their favourite song. You're too busy doing the invisible work. However the invisible work always matters!

So yeah give us that medal for being a good mum from some non-existent academy or, better still, give a mother you know a compliment, tell her she's doing a great job when they least expect it! We need it!!