Confessions of a human being

I do maintain that mothering and all that entails, is my job, my occupation, my bread and butter and I love it. But don’t assume that in this case “pleasure in the job equals perfection in the work” because it’s absolutely impossible to be perfect as a mother, or as a human being, for that matter. Yes, I bake these muffins, cakes and other creations on a weekly basis. But that is just one snapshot of an entire week that is filled with mess, mistakes and mayhem. I suppose I just want everyone out there, especially the new mothers, to know that such a keen focus on health and nutrition doesn’t mean that this is another perfect element of my perfect life. While I’m baking muffins, the dishes lay dirty in the sink. While I’m researching gentle parenting methods, my dirty washing pile grows higher. And, while I’m on my hands and knees, pretending to be a crocodile and crawling after my hysterically giggling baby girl, somewhere, in the distance, there is a mouldy bathroom wall that isn’t being scrubbed. So, please, don’t think for a second that clean eating and natural parenting are “added extras” that only the brave can tackle on top of everything else.
What it comes down to is a shift in priorities. I do these things ‘instead-of’, rather than ‘as-well-as’. And, even still I find myself grappling with what looks good in a picture and what really matters. Because I KNOW what is right, but I can’t even be perfect with my imperfection. God knows, I long to be that woman who can let go of her inhibitions and invite friends over to a sink full of dishes, sticky floors and be confident that my worth is not measured by how clean my house is. I can talk the talk, alright. I can tell you that what matters is that my daughter is nourished from the inside out, emotionally and physically. I can tell you that my partner comes home to a happy family who aren’t warped under the weight of the pressure of struggling to be super human and cram in play, and good food and love in between the vacuum and the dish cloth.  And, I can tell you that friends who would come to your house and judge you on its cleanliness alone are not true friends, so you should just let go and live and be and do the best you can. I can say the words, of course I can. But you will still find me before we have guests over, tidying and huffing around in a state of panic and disillusionment about what the word ‘friend’ means in the first place.
Before I became ‘Mum’, I worked as a psychiatric nurse. It was part of my job to assist my patients in carrying out tasks set by their psychiatrists and psychologists. One such task was called ‘shame attacking’ – whereby patients can build their self-esteem and relinquish irrational feelings of shame by running straight at it, so to speak. For example, one might feel that they can’t join in a conversation because they believe that they don’t have anything worthy of contributing, no one would want to hear what they have to say or want to listen to them. And so, the therapist would set them the task of contributing a relevant personal experience to the therapy group so that they can confront their fears head-on and perhaps realise that they were, indeed, unfounded.
It’s funny, because even though I have all of this knowledge in my head about how to change my thinking when it becomes distorted, I still struggle to put it into practice. I log onto Instagram and see this band of mothers who post their “Outfit of the day (#ootd)” in full make-up  as they are headed out the door to shop, or lunch or work. And I think to myself, what the hell is wrong with me? Some days I don’t even get out of my pyjamas, can’t even fathom the thought of leaving the house and, with a teething, squirmy and curious one year old, I certainly don’t “lunch”! I ask myself why they can do it, and I can’t. I feel as though I'm not making enough of an effort, I feel as though I am somehow defective because I just can’t seem to keep a clean house, happy baby, with gourmet meals on the table all in a perfectly chosen, ironed outfit and a full face of make-up.  And then I remember that people lie. They show us only the parts of their lives that are aesthetically beautiful and we make the assumption that this represents them in their entirety. The other women at mothers group smile at their newborns, don’t get frustrated when they cry, are wearing clothes without spew on them and boast about they are loving every sleepless minute. And it’s because in a world full of media who portray new motherhood to be moment after endless moment of slow motioned, soft focussed bliss, we confuse these stories with reality. So, if we aren't always enjoying it, if we just want one moment of peace, if we didn't realise how hard it would be, if we feel a startling rage bubbling up inside of us when its 4 am and we haven’t slept in 36 hours – then we are bad mothers, unworthy mothers and unlovable human beings. Bullshit.
And so, in my efforts to quash this bullshit façade that seems to be floating around in mothering communities of all kinds, I’d like to share some shame with you. I'm giving it away to you, in the hope that you can then pass it along to someone else and the cycle will continue so that we can all be a little lighter, a little more human and a little more real at the end of the day. Our lives as mothers could be so much easier if only we allowed ourselves and each other to be human as messy, "ugly" or confronting as it may be.
The disclosure is that a messy house does not make me a bad mother, bad partner, or bad human being – it makes me a human who is doing my best, trying my hardest to give my daughter a happy, magical and healthy childhood and prioritising my life sensibly, and you know what? I think that’s good enough.

Part of my Kitchen, in its natural state.