#38 The 5 things I did that helped me find happiness in motherhood
(and no, it didn't come naturally to me)
This article comes with a trigger warning for those of you who did find happiness in motherhood from the get-go and believe that it’s their place to judge another woman’s experience of motherhood. It comes with a trigger warning for anyone who believes they have an inalienable right to call someone a horrible mother, or a selfish b*tch, because their experience of motherhood didn’t match their own. It comes with a trigger warning to all those women who, throughout the last ten years, have made me feel less than, defective, useless, callous and cold-hearted because you felt the need to call me a number of horrific names after I spoke up about finding motherhood hard. I get it - hurt people, hurt people - but if you only want to read about the shiny, aspirational versions of motherhood then this is not the place for you.
However…if you want to hear an honest and, at times, uncomfortable version of motherhood according to me then welcome. Make yourself a cuppa, grab a couple of biscuits and settle in.
I hated being a mother for the first two years. Note that I didn’t say, I hated my kids, I said I hated being a mother and that’s the first important distinction that transformed my experience of motherhood: you can love your kids to the moon and back but not love the job of motherhood…and that’s ok. But here’s the thing: I hated that I hated it. I hated myself for hating it. The pain didn’t come from a resentment of having to look after a baby - sure, that wasn’t fun but that wasn’t the problem; the pain came from the resentment I held against myself…that I was some how broken, wrong, useless because I wasn’t glowing in the golden haze of motherhood, that hoofing a human out of my love tunnel hadn’t levelled me up to the dizzy heights of earth-motherdom, that despite being in charge of keeping an actual human alive, I was still woefully lacking in the ‘you’re good enough department’.
In short, becoming a mother didn’t fix me. And that came as a shock.
But of course, I felt I had to pretend that it had levelled-me up. I pretended that I was never happier than left alone with my baby to coo and gurgle. I told myself that this was my life’s work - this baby would be my ticket to redemption in the eyes of my worst critic: myself. And for a while, I think I believed it or, if I didn’t believe it, then I certainly didn’t allow myself to entertain the idea that it might not be true. And so, I trudged through the days, plastering a smile on my face and leaning into conversations about baby-led weaning, baby music groups and the best fitness classes for new mums.
But here are the facts of my transition into motherhood that no one cared to mention may have legitimately had a significant impact on my mental health.
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