RMC: Reluctant Mothers Club

Motherhood has been the single most challenging, self-altering, life-hijacking metamorphosis of my life.   I'm not saying it hasn't been worth it. It has. It is.  I am saying to the people who sell motherhood from conception as a joyful life of blue skies and a cure all for sad days to shove it.  You are not doing anyone any favours.  Let's get real, folks.

1.  Pregnancy isn't that much fun!

The Glow. I actually had a colleague tell me I was blossoming. I had my boss tell me that I looked incredibly peaceful and relaxed.  People are full of shit.  I have felt hungover for 6 and a half weeks.  Not even MacDonald's helps.  (Though, these did.) And I keep not being able to do the things I want to do (ie. eat raw salmon, play roller derby, see friends, drink a large glass of sav. on a Friday). Anything after 8pm is a bust.  Annoying.

As a friend of mine said recently, "It's hard to connect with something that makes you feel tired and ill, right?" 

After being a super independent kind of person, being hijacked by a fig-size human was a rude limitation on my life. MY life. (Of course, now I'm pretty happy to have created one of my favourite human beings to hang out with and force her to do things I like to do with me.)

Then the biological sexism kicks in.  Me and my partner are having a kid.  His life didn't seem to change at all at first.  My job, boobs, exercise, sleep patterns, cheese habits, morning coffees, friendships, clothing, favourite foods and ability to not cry during bad movies all changed.

“A woman becomes a mother when she becomes pregnant. A man becomes a father when he first holds his child.”


The Upside:
Pregnancy, I found, was like a really long, strict training schedule. It's tiring, uncomfortable, it is so so so long but it changed how I felt about my body for the better. Healthier.  Look at what it can do! Look at what it made!

2.  Child birth. Nuff said.

The most natural thing a woman can do...Really?! It wasn't for me.  And when the tie comes for me to do it again, I'm going to do whatever is in my power to get ALL THE DRUGS ready for my arrival next time. (I'd love the woman from Hyperbole and a Half to illustrate that for me.)

The Upside:
It's only a day.  Or two. Seriously not worth stressing about.

3. Feeding your baby is a fulltime job that doesn't pay very well.

Sitting on your ass for hours and hours a day.  Get some boxset dvds. And a bottle of water.  If you're breastfeeding, this means you literally have a being suckling at your body (YOUR body) for hours a day. Breast or bottle, your arms will get tired.

The Upside:
I kept a human being alive. That's pretty cool.

4. As it turns out, not every mother is really a baby person.

Cute but that doesn't fill a day

I wasn't.  This shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did.  I like conversation.  Babies don't talk much.  I like sleep. Babies don't respect adult sleep patterns much.

The Upside:
Babies aren't babies for long. Babies turn into interesting, bossy little two year olds with opinions about food, what they should wear and the weather. And while they are babies, you can pretty much strap them in/on and go anywhere.



5. Hormones + Being put in charge of a human life + Forever = Stressful


Emotional wrecked.  I, before my first pregnancy, prided myself on being a rational and intelligent being (I have since managed to reclaim some but not all of this former sense).  The following quote pretty much sums it up:

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

The Upside:
If my heart is walking around, then I am EVERYWHERE!  I always wanted to be everywhere!  This new vulnerability means I'm also a much less judgemental, less selfish, less restless person.  Peaceful, even?? Well, maybe for a moment after the kids are in bed.

5. Change is hard.

Pregnancy, babies and children are a moveable feast.  Anytime I feel I've nailed a routine or understand a phase...there's it goes.

The Upside:
Life is a moveable feast. Better to have more guests at the table.

x

Photo by Thomas

The Derby-Life Metaphor

I've learned a few things about life from the mighty sport of Roller Derby. I'm a sharing kind of person:



1. Tap into your inner mongrel to protect the people you love

On the track, this is your jammer. In life, this is your partner, your family, your friends; the-rock-solid-been-through-thick-and-thin-friends, not-your-have-a-laugh-over-a-beer friends. That's an important bit, you can't protect everyone in derby or life. Prioritise.

I was taught to be a nice girl. In fact, my mother taught me that being nice and being considerate of others was the single most important quality I could embody as a child.
I agree that this is true most of the time, in most situations, and old habits are hard to break.  However,  I'm never going to be a decent player if I'm worried about the other team liking me. And leaving my team-mates open to be smashed isn't a very nice thing to do. So I'm learning how to not be nice, to hit back- legally, at the right time, and with calculated outcomes.  Never in anger ('cause that ain't nice).

I'm in the pink!

*NB I have a wee theory about derby girls: the hardest hitters have the biggest hearts. I'm trying to grow my heart.

2. Get happy. No one wants to hang out with a downer.

Some days we skate better than others but let us try to cut down on the audio-version of our miserable, self-deprecating inner monologues. Please.  Rumination isn't healthy for anyone.

Next time I hear a girl say, "I'm soooo bad today.", I'm going to tell her to stop criticizing my friend. And hopefully next time I get sent to the penalty box, the cloud of shame will only last the minute that the refs have given me.  Sport and life are punishing enough without you ganging up on yourself.

Let it go and try to have a good time! And if you're not having a good time, try to fake it 'til you make it.

3. Ground compliments reality

Everyone likes to be told that they are awesome but I think it's important to qualify that kind of comment.  To qualify it sets up realistic expectations, realistic egos and proves that the praise isn't just lip-service.

At training the other night, Ana Phylaxis of Dunedin Derby was teaching me how to surge. She swept in front of me, sat on my quad and forced me, seemingly effortlessly, off the track. Then it was my turn.

Phlax is second from the left

I awkwardly veered towards her, kinda got in front of her, made contact and tried to herd her out of bounds. I knew it was nothing like she'd done to me and it would have been insulting/a boldfaced lie if she'd said, "That was great."

She didn't.

Phlax said, "That was alright for a first time, you just gotta get the timing. It took me ages to get the timing.  You'll get there."

Phlax was positive, accurate, trustworthy, forward focused and most importantly, I believed her.

It reminded me of my 7 year old who often says something like, "8 plus 4 is 12. I'm so right. Am I a genius?"

"No," I chose to pop the bubble, "but you're very clever and if you keep practising you might be one day."

It is important that I'm honest, so he trusts my compliments now and in the future.

Derby is bruising me up, giving me a break from parenting, and teaching me how to parent better.

4. Talent = Time Spent

May Maim, Primm Reaper, Rocket Queen

No one expects Freshmeat to be an expert at derby. League Girls just expect some effort and some improvement.   I've been told that I'll probably play 100 games before I even know what's happening on the track (only 94 to go...).  I have made peace with the fact that I'm not very good...yet.

When I was at school, I thought I was good at some subjects and bad at others.  And I was. Somethings are and somethings aren't. Very philosophical but I didn't recognise why.

The key is that I spent a lot more time on some subjects than others.  I read novels, watched movies, aruged with my parents, spent hours talking to my friends on the phone (whoa- showing my age there!).  This time spent on my hobbies all honed my skills for the lucrative subjects of English Literature and undergraduate Psychology.

"Time on skates" is the advice every League Girl will pass on to Freshmeat.  I'm starting to take this pretty seriously.  I put my skates on to make a salad.  I do 20 squats every time I brush my teeth.  I go to training two nights a week and then play around on the court on a Sunday afternoon. I watch youtube clips.  I practice "opening the buffet" on the fence at the park.  Little things but something is better than nothing.

Malcolm Gladwell coined the 10, 000 hours first but here I am finding myself trying to execute it.  Derby is so cool, it has made me a total geek. Top tip: Life is more fun when you're a geek.

5. Ah, the endorphins!

That's it. Life is better with exercise. It alarms me how often I have to rediscover this.

So, a big THANK YOU to the sport of Roller Derby!

Take the victim hat off

Don't be the victim. Even if you are a victim, don't accept to play the role of victim. Or at least, don't be one for long.  While there are some advantages to allowing yourself to be the victim, in the long term there is one indisputable disadvantage:


Helplessness.


Helplessness is a deplorable and harmful quality.  A sense of helplessness is the seed of a lot of bad choices (while simultaneously believing there was no choice).  What was I supposed to... I can't... You made me... Well, that's just how I feel... No... No... No... I didn't mean... It just that always...


Helplessness is not going to help you to get the good stuff out of life.  Not in the slightest (and yes, it is your job to get the goods out of life). When engaged with being the victim, a certain power is relinquished.  The power to change your outcome; change how you choose to react.  And I get that sometimes it is easier to surrender to victim-hood than try to reconcile the mucky world we live in and the darkness of the human heart with our tv and moral expectations of how it should have been. Easier but not a better way to live.


A lot of workplaces are stressful. Many relationships end badly.  People do shitty things. Sometimes people do shitty things to you (more often with a self-involved attempt to meet their own needs and insecurities without considering the unintended consequences rather than malicious intent). The best thing for you to do is to enable an ability to enjoy life again anyway; despite the crap.  In order to do that, you have to decide you don't want to be the victim any more. 


If what has happened to you is so colossally bad you cannot get past it (which is not really what I'm talking about* but fair enough, we know all the 6 o'clock horror stories), then choose what you will be a victim about and when, and don't allow the role to seep into your good relationships or the attitude with which you approach the world. You need to compartmentalise the fuck out of that victim hat.


If a label doesn't make you happy or at least put you on the road to happy, don't wear it.

We have all been victims to varying degrees. We are not all victims. You don't have to be one any more if you don't want to be.

*Reminder: This is advice for only people who want it. And this is the about victims of everyday work politics, irritating neighbours, bad luck, ancient history and parking enforcement officers. I have no qualifications to advise on the serious stuff.

You are not lost

You're not lost if you don't care where you are.

My mother said this umpteen times when I was growing up.  And now that I find myself living on the other side of the globe in a town I had not even heard of 12 months before embarking on a life here, it makes me smile.

My mother is slightly heartbroken that I broke her only commandment ("Do not get married and have my grandchildren on the other side of the world."). And I am sure she didn't mean for me to interpret her throw-away, flippant idiom quite like this.

But hey!

I had a vision for my life. Lots of people have goals.  Particularly for before they turn 30. I had one:

1. To live in a place where I do not have to leave the building to do laundry.

I had a vague vision of living in a large city, with a very active social life that was based on some bizarre expectations and values as dictated by a combination of "Sex and the City", Lonely Planet and "Bridget Jones' Diary"- the books, not the movie. The best laid plans, eh?

As you can imagine, I was alarmed on my 30th to find myself married, in smalltown 'burbs, with a baby, a step-son and a house that required somebody (me?!? surely not) to weed the gutters. I did not accept my fate gracefully. It was a dark few months and I was lost.

Without going into the details of the drama, I've made peace with my fairly conventional life.

I know this is a phase. It will not last.  The good of it and the bad of it will be unrecognisable in a year or two or five.  So, I am enjoying my visit to the suburban jungle before I go off traipsing around Morocco and Turkey and Bahrain and Paris again.

Just because you aren't where planned, doesn't mean you're lost. 

Top Tip #4: Chill the Fuck Out

When I was living in London, I used this as a mantra:

If you could hear my brain as I was pounding my red Nine Wests up the cobbles streets of London Town, you would have heard a breathless and sometimes aggressive voice repeating: Chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out,chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out, chill the fuck...

London is not an easy place to live. It is a fun place to live, it is a rewarding place to live, it is an exciting place to live but London is not easy.

Late for the tube? Chill the fuck out. 17 quid for an Oyster Card? Chill the fuck out.  3 hour commute? Chill the fuck out. Broke? Chill the fuck out. Crowds of people overwhelming in TopShop? Chill the fuck out.  Random guy shoving me across the pavement on Oxford St? Chill the fuck out.  Hate my job and enraged at  the snotty little criminals I called my students? Chill the fuck out.  Strange man rubbing himself against me on the tube? Chill the fuck up (and elbow him hard).

CTFO became my zen armour for the chaos of the Centre of the Universe.

Why should you just CTFO? Especially when these are valid, upsetting events?

'Cause worrying will probably just make you feel worse about a shitty situation, it doesn't start to fix it and makes you feel like being an asshole. And that's not good for anyone involved.

 So when all else fails, take a deep breath. And you are welcome to borrow my personalised serenity prayer.

Top Tip #3: Don't be an Asshole

Sometimes I have glass half empty days.  I like to think that like Henry Rollins, "my optimism wears heavy boots and is loud" but of course this isn't always true.  Some days, I feel I can't be bothered, have been done wrong and there's no g.d. milk left in the jug. What's the effing point of it all?!

I, like most full grown whiners, call my Mum is hopes of sympathy, consolation and commiseration.  However, what I get is, "Don't be an asshole."

And you what, she's right.  Nobody else should wear my bad day. I need to suck it up, get myself out the door for an endorphin kick or if all else fails throw a pity party with sugary snacks and bad teevee for a sum total of 47 minutes; my bad mood isn't worth more time (is yours?).  I need to remind myself that no one else needs to wear my bad day.

And while we're at it, I'm not going to wear yours either.

I also find to have a tendency to to be an asshole on my really, really good days.  Everything is so effing great and I'm so effing wonderful... I've got to remember not everyone is feeling as awesome as I am. So again if you're awesome, don't be an asshole about that either!

Take note, John McEnroe!

Top Tip # 1: Something is Better than Nothing

I am not talking about abusive relationships here. I am talking about effort:

A walk may not be a marathon but it is better than no exercise. Go on. Get off the couch. Even if it only for 5 minutes or to walk up and down the staircase twice. SOMETHING is better than NOTHING.

A crap paragraph is better than no words written on an essay question.

A late birthday card is better than no gift.

Do something. Anything. It's better than nothing.

And if it's the wrong thing, you can fix that later.

How to Live?

How to live?

It's a big question. Lucky for you, I am opinionated and bossy. Arrogant? Yes. Wrong? Not today.  Also, I am not religious (but it's cool if you are). Let's get started.

Step 1: Find a path.***

Step 2: Go confidently in that direction.

***Not choosing a path, is a path in itself.  However, this can rarely be done with confidence.