All is not what it seems …

I was talking to a friend yesterday and she asked me how I was. “You seem really calm and relaxed and on top of things”, she said! She’s a good friend, so she knows a fair bit about how I’ve been feeling with all this postnatal illness malarkey. And I realised once again that there can be this huge gulf between what something looks like on the surface … and what’s actually going on underneath! How many mums out there are putting on a brave face along with their lipstick and pretending that everything’s fine, when actually it isn’t? Alternatively, how many mums have developed a coping strategy that involves switching off a certain part of their brain (and identity?) until the time comes when they can start to live their own lives again? Because a big part of motherhood, it seems to me, is about giving yourself up to these little people you’ve spawned! There’s a great quote by the American feminist thinker and writer, Elizabeth Stone:

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

I wish I’d read that before I’d had children, it might have given me a bit more insight into what it’d really be like. Because that sums it up for me. There’s nothing I can ever do now without factoring my children into the equation. They matter more than me, and that’s the top and bottom of it. Yet coming to terms with that, after all those years of freedom and fun, has been a struggle to put it mildly. Throw hormones and chemical imbalances into the mix and … aaaaagh!

I guess what I’m really saying is that it’s important for all of us to go beyond face value and tune into what might be going on under the surface. So many people these day seem to put on a front … and no-one knows that anything’s wrong until they have a major meltdown. I wonder why it still seems to be so difficult to admit weakness and show vulnerability? The first time I admitted to postnatal illness, I was terrified. But you wouldn’t believe how it’s opened the floodgates. It’s as if, once one person stops pretending, it becomes easier for other people to do the same. And, when you see each other clearly, that’s when you can really begin to connect, communicate and experience compassion. I hope that people feel they can be honest on Mummo.

Yet, there is definitely a place for pretence. I’d be one of the first to say “act as if”. If you don’t feel confident, don’t worry, just “act as if” you did! If you don’t feel happy, don’t despair, just “act as if” you did! And I genuinely believe that behaving in a certain way can change how you feel. You know those days when you feel rubbish and don’t want to go out or see anyone, at all, ever again, but you’ve got a commitment so you do … and then you end up having a really good time and coming home feeling a whole lot better. It’s that principle. And it works. Within reason.

So that’s it. End of sermon. Sorry for getting so heavy so early in the week. More ‘froth’ next time, I promise.  For now, I’m off to do my lippie!

Wobbling

Yes, I have to admit that I’m wobbling a bit at the minute. Having spent most of the afternoon in the office, and most of the evening in front of my laptop, I am seriously questioning my mental health! What on earth possessed me to think it was a good idea to start a new business, on this scale at least, whilst my children are still so small?! I came home to find them outside, playing on bikes and trikes in the early evening sunshine, chatting and giggling and looking as if they hadn’t a care in the world. They ran straight over to me … and my littlest gave me a giant hug and said “Mummy, I want you!”. Talk about tugging at the heart strings! And yet, the truth of the matter is that I’m so preoccupied at the moment that I’m not even giving them my full attention when I am with them. I find it really hard to just click out of work mode and into mummy mode … and I sometimes wish I didn’t have to.

And then, of course, there’s the scary fact that we are haemorrhaging money in every direction, with no real prospect of any coming in to Mummo for quite a while. I always knew it was going to be a big, long-term project and that I was going to have to hold my nerve, but some days that’s harder than others. And the hardest days are always the ones, like today, when you have to pay a whole load of bills! So I will have to get round to listening to my Paul McKenna CD. I’ve just finished reading his book ‘I can make you rich‘ which, I have to say, takes a much broader view of what rich means than I was expecting. And it was actually really useful. He talks about “thinking rich” and how, if you do that, you no longer fear being without money because you know you will always find ways to make more. I have my moments of thinking like that (if I didn’t, I definitely wouldn’t be doing this!) but it’s obviously something I still need to work on.

Anyway, enough of the negativity. As the old advertisement used to go, “weebles wobble but they don’t fall down”!