It’s a very moving thing to begin a piece about beginnings & to so deeply struggle with where, let alone how, to begin.
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My wee one started preschool a few weeks ago, and—although it has been a tricky journey, I have found myself, on four days a week—with six whole hours to myself.
It feels wild.
It feels unreal in ways I can’t quite put into words.
The whole thing feels like it is beyond words, actually.
I’ve spent three and a half years—aside from a wee while when my son went to an outdoor farm / forest kindie—at home with him by my side.
Moving at his pace; going where he wanted to wander; trying my best to give him all I so desperately wanted him to have in those early years.
And it was what I wanted, too, albeit in a slightly altered state to what I’d imagined. Instead of being a stay at home mama, I was a stay at home mama who worked more than full time hours from home, alongside mothering.
A mama who often had to leave their beautiful wee one for days at a time.
Days can feel much more than the sum of their hours, sometimes, and even an overnight, at times, felt cruel to all involved.
But I had to work.
This past year has been the year of our life as a family I have needed to work the most. We are trying to make a derelict stone cottage into a home, and my role in our family has been to try to fund that so my partner can do all the solid building work.
It has felt heavy and hard.
I have felt shame and guilt beyond all measure even feeling this way as I watch babies pulled from the rubble of their homes, bombed during a genocide that has changed the way I view my own privilege forever.
We are so lucky, every single one of us, who has the chance of getting to make a home. And to have the knowledge, in whatever way we can say such things, that we will be safe there.
But it is also a process that is far from easy , for many of us, that making of a home.
I’m not wanting to go into that here, only to note that this can be a sad, triggering thing to do sometimes.
I’ve kept promising myself that once we are in our home, once it is liveable, everything will be easier, lighter, for us three.
I understood the other day though that I’d been using this vast change, this huge occurrence in my life, as a place to hunker down into.
A place I could hide inside, and remain there. A space in which I could justify my remaining stagnant.
I’ve been telling myself that once winter comes, I’ll be able to do my daily pages daily again.
I’ve struggled for the best part of half a year to get even two lines down, daily, let alone three pages, and this is really hard for me. Heartbreaking in quite a specific, tricky way.
The way I make sense of the world, of grief and of love and of loss— of my place as part of the many varied constellations I am a part— is through journaling.
When I’m not allowing myself this essential window in my day, what else am I withholding from my own self?
And actually, how realistic is it to place the blame on my day to day circumstances for my not giving myself this thing, this time, this moment of stillness in my day? A moment I so desperately need.
Yes it is busy being with a wild toddler all day, but is it really truthful of me to say I can’t find the 45 minutes, spread out over a whole day, in which to sit with my journal?
I can find the time to mindlessly scroll on here and instagram, so why have I felt journaling to be out of my reach?
It’s about beginning , really.
It’s about stepping out of the mire, that boggy underground I’ve known as my life since I became a mother, and pushing back up towards the light.
And so I began.
I sat at the kitchen table, after a night of far too little sleep as per usual with a wee one that wakes for the day long before the larks, and I wrote my daily pages to the soundtrack of morning Lego building—all it’s annoying, won’t go how he wants it—painful joy.
And when I realised I was struggling to turn up to myself on the page the next day, and the next day — because I was carrying grief and anxiety associated with my wee one starting preschool— I decided, after a moment alone outside with cacao— to set up OAK MOTHER: a free writing circle for mothers.
We’ve met the last two out of three Thursday mornings, and we share where our hearts are, before getting down to some writing. It’s been a kind of bliss beyond my comprehension, this time with other mothers.
I’ve felt like, in so many ways, I’m back at the very beginning of my writing journey.
But this time, on this beginning: I don’t have to go it alone. Between OAK MOTHER, Rebeccca Schiller’s MOTHERS WHO WRITE,
CO-WRITING sessions & MYCELIAL MOTHERS, I can write alongside other women almost any day I choose.How lucky we are.
The next gathering of OAK MOTHER will be this coming Thursday the 3rd of October, 10-11 am BST.
Email me to book your free slot—
inchwhooperswan@gmail.com
There has been another vast change,
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