“I don’t know how you do it!”
“I couldn’t do what you do”
“You make it look so easy!”
1. Because there isn’t any other choice.
2. I hope you never have to.
3. I certainly don’t mean to.
In fact, I WANT to make it look hard.
This life. This middle age. This motherhood.
And I think I’m achieving that aim…
The other day the Small Small said to me, after a particularly trying evening, that she didn’t think she wanted to be a Mum anymore because it looked like a lot of work.
She’s not wrong.
But I think in that very moment I realised that this is EXACTLY where WE’VE been going wrong, as women. FOR YEARS.
We’ve been quiet.
We’ve been like these swans on a lake – furiously paddling beneath the surface, looking all put together and serene on top.
Like it’s effortless. Like it’s not costing us.
And it’s not done us any favours.
Being cool and collected just means people pile more crap on.
We should have dumped swanning years ago and instead channelled the energy of pondweed – visibly hanging on by a murky thread, not going anywhere – and just managing to crest the surface occasionally.
We shouldn’t be Keeping Calm and Carrying On, like good girls/swans.
(I mean, we DO have to carry on – see point 1. Quitting isn’t actually an option. However much you wish to curl up in a ball and stay there forever, as a woman and mother whenever you try it a dependent wants feeding and you have to get up again and make snacks).
But instead of Keep Calm and Carry On, we should change the script:
We should Lose Our Ever-Living ShEEt and Carry On.
We should Scream Our Pain Out Loud – and Carry On.
We should Complain – and Carry On.
We should Make Noise – and Carry On.
We should Be Real – and Carry On.
This expectation we feel, this need to pretend everything is okay, to smile love it might never happen, to grit our teeth and bear it, to suck it up, to not make a fuss, to not rock the boat, to take it on the chin, to endure – is just another way we are being silenced. Another way we don’t matter.
And it is another way we’re showing the generation coming up behind us that they won’t matter either, that their emotions won’t matter, and their pain won’t matter. That sacrifice is sacrosanct, stoicism is dignity – that being phlegmatic and unproblematic are qualities to be prized. That this is what being good girls and women and mothers should look like. Quiet. Pliant. ABSORBENT.
We teach them by example that when things are hard, we don’t say so, for fear of being branded ungrateful.
That when men are awful to us, we rise above it, for fear of being called a psycho if we react.
That when we hurt, we pretend not to, for fear of being dismissed as over-emotional, irrational, hysterical.
That when we stumble, we fail.
That when we cry, we lose.
Well no more.
Let’s make it look HARD, when it is.
Let’s stamp our feet when things aren’t fair.
Let’s howl at the bloody moon!
Let’s not care who hears us, who sees, what they think.
Let’s tell each other, and ourselves, the truth.
Let’s be AUTHENTIC.
Because maybe if we do, maybe if we stop the swan act, the next generation of girls won’t be in the same position – or at least won’t be so bloody surprised when they get here. (And maybe the next generation of boys will have more realistic expectations).
Maybe they won’t have to don a mask everyday, wonder how everyone else is doing it all, why they’re struggling so much, if they’re normal.
Maybe they won’t pretend they’re okay when they’re not – to make everyone else around them feel more comfortable.
Maybe they won’t feel ashamed if they need to ask for help.
And maybe creating all the oxygen for everyone else and being the bedrock of the entire pond ecosystem will get just a little bit easier.
XXX
PS. If you still insist on being a swan instead of pondweed, please be the sort that starts breaking freaking arms if someone looks at you funny.
Mumonthenetheredge 