Putting the 'I' back into 'ME'

Becoming a mother presents lots of challenges, but the biggest for most people is the change in identity. For me at least it took at least 6 months before i could get used to understanding myself under the lable mum, and then another few months to get used to my daughter and the rest of my family using the dreded term too. Suddenly my name had been erased from everybody's vocabluary and replaced with a rather generic term that really didn't feel like me.

Well, it's been 2 1/2 years since then and in hindsight the change has been even more momentus that i originally thought. For years (prior) to having children i had contemplated my identity, wondering what it was that was me. I used to draw spiral drawings starting with the things that i thought were most essentially me. They went something like this: reading, philosophy, writing, daughter, sister, girlfriend, student, but somehow i never felt that these things were me. The vague conclusion that i came to was that identity was something that is not stable or something that can be labelled. It is just the sum at any particular moment of my feelings, values, beliefs and relationships. But even that didn't seem right.

It is only recently that i have had the feeling that my sense of self was making an appearance that i have begun to explore the subject again. This new sense of self has kindly brought back with it some confidence, something else that has been missing for a while. I'm not to sure why this has happened but i have a feeling that it's something to do with contemplating my life's purpose; another thing that seems to 'come up' for us mothers.

I mean becoming a mother on the material level means that we have a new little bundle of joy to nurture but on the less considered emtoional level (where most of the changes take place) it means we have to re-define our whole approach to life, how we feel about literally everything. Our priorities change, for example, i now value emotional development over material gain; serving someones elses needs before my own (selflessness has led me to a understanding of self); and getting a career that fulfils me on a level that is not just material. Yes i have bills to pay but the most important thing that has changed for me is that i realise the value of life itself, it's gift is not to be wasted.

In my humble opinion we all have something that we can do that we feel passionate about, and in my experience this is something that contributes to humanity in a positive way whether it be the beauty that art adds to life (music, art, literature), or just helping to making the world a better place in some way, such as assisting a charity or raising awareness on a particular issue. In fact helping people in anyway as long as it's not making money for money's sake. To me a job should be something that adds to your sense of self.

I guess what i've realised is that the self is defined by what you do with your life, not who you think you are, and that if you are doing something that doesn't make you happy in anyway, your sense of self is going to be compromised, however, if you can be determined enough to find a career in something you believe in whole heartedly, something you believe to be good, then your sense of self will shine through in all it's glory and blow away all the labels that society seems to stick on top of you and that can sometimes act as plasters, covering up the true light of self.

The Secret Garden

Smile on my face
and love in my heart,
the spring of content
pours forth it's treasure.
The secret garden,
Deep within.

Getting to the Heart of Unconscious Thought Patterns

Since becoming a mother i have noticed that sometimes when i open my mouth, out pops something that i remember being told when i was a child. At first i thought that this was just a little quirk of parenting, but on giving this a bit more thought, promted by the book i'm currently reading "The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud and the Search for Hidden Universes" By Richard Panek i realised that, "our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas. Only they are unconscious preconceived ideas, which are a thousand times the most dangerous of all". (The quote is actually by Henry Poincare on page 72).

Now, i've come across the idea that ideas can be dangerous but i normally equate this with large political ideologies and have never given thought to the fact that just a small phrase repeated enough times could have a profoundly negative impact on someones life, well not until i became a mother that was. So, most recently i have been listening to myself repeating phrases like, 'well, that's life' and 'life is tough', 'life is hard' and 'you'll have to learn the hard way', and suddenly the impact that these words could have on my children dawned on me, like a rock falling out of the sky. What i realised is that yes, life is hard, but it's even harder if you believe it to be hard.

In fact i have found being a parent so damn hard that it has forced me to seek a different path through life. I have done a lot of soul searching and realised that i was fighting all the time. Everything was an effort to me, and with the extra pressure of caring for two small people it was not possible for me to continue with the way in which i was living.

One of the most fundamental ways in which i am beginning to change my approach to life is to try and understand my perception of life. How do i view life? Because perception is the structure within which we base all our ideas, opinions, values and beliefs. What i found was this is a very hard question to answer. It's also the main point of the book: that both Einstein and Freud were able to do to solve their own problems (the intellectual problems of their generation) by approaching their respective subjects in a different way to their contemporaries.

So i'm trying bit by bit (through careful observation of my thoughts, actions and words) to uncover a few of these preconceived ideas. And today i realised that if i keep telling my girls how hard life is they too will find themselves struggling and fighting their way through life, and that's just not what i want for them.

From what i have found there is a path of least reistance, which involves just listening to your heart every moment and hearing what it has to say; it will tell you what your next move should be, and the answer will always be the most harmonious, and more intelligent decision. And it means that you have a constant stream of reliable information at your hand 24 hours a day!

Children's Song by R.S. Thomas

We live in our own world.
A World that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

Quote of the day:

"There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun" Sir Thomas Browne.

Parenting Blunder No 1: The rule of no SHOUTING

Because parenting isn't all sweetness and light today i'm serving up a slice of reality pie: the shitty end of the stick so to speak. Not that i really want to air my mistakes for all and sundry but i hope by doing so i (and others) will be less likely to make the mistake again.

Things started well. I was organised, managed to do ironing before we left the house at 10.30. Went to playgroup and the girls got to run free for an hour, everyone was happy. We came home, Anona went to bed for an hour and Gwen was relatively well behaved...until, the carrot incident.

Gwen helped me to peel carrots but then decided to trail the peelings over the floor. (Nothing to get upset about you think, but how easy it is to let yourself get wound up.) On asking her to pick them up i got a loud and very decicive "NO". This is the first time she's ever raised her voice to me so being quite shocked I did what i imagine every mum has done once or twice, I shouted back, "OH YES YOU WILL. YOU WILL LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AND YOU WILL DO WHAT I TELL YOU, OR ELSE YOU CAN GO TO YOUR NAUGHTY STEP". How cliched and ugly this sounds now that it is written down.

"OK" she said casually. Result i thought! But i thought to soon, her response was not in agreement with me but was actually opting to sit on the naughty step (the easier option). What choice did i have here? My threat of punishment was taken up thankfully, so while she sits happily on the naughty step i begin to stew.

The two minutes is up so i ask nicely again, "now please can you clean up your mess?"
The response again, "But i don't want to", and by this time it's too late for me and i see red and pick her up and deposit her in her cot telling her that she can stay there until she learns her lesson.

At this point i should have realised that i had a choice about how to deal with the situation. I let my anger carry me and take control even though i knew in my heart that I was wrong. The anger said, she's got one over on you, she's dictating to you and she needs to be punished. My heart said, you're upsetting her, she looks up to you and learns how to act from the way you act. But i didn't listen, i was too angry.

How sad i am to have treated my daughter in this way. In hindsight i can see that my thinking at the time was probably due to some non-sensical common sense which told me that if i let her speak to me in that way and not clean up after herself then she would grow up thinking that she can shout at people and not clean up after herself, and ironically that's exactly what my actions reinforced.

By shouting at children they learn to shout. By getting angry they learn to get angry. When children are punished they learn to punish. If i truly think about what message i wanted to get across and the best way to do it i could have done without all the angry words, tears and the upset and confusion they caused. Even if it meant cleaning up the said carrot myself (which i did in the end anyway).

What i have learned today is it that children don't need acoustics to understand something. They are emotionally intelligent and can feel when they have done wrong or upset someone. My shouting today was probably the result of learned behaviour that has been passed down from generation to generation. It is scary how easy it is to follow these unconscious thought patterns, and so today i made the choice to break that cycle. From now on every action i take will be the result of conscious and considered thought. I am so sorry Gwen, I won't let it happen again xxx

Wordsworth

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the man;
And I wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

I love this poem and it encapsulates how i'm feeling today: joy at being alive and having the responsibility of creating the next generation!