I was married this past weekend. Did you see my vows? It tells you something about the sensitivity of my husband or perhaps his skills as an orator to say that his vows barely left a dry eye in the house while mine got our teary guests laughing (not only because I had no voice and sounded like a B-grade sex line).
Now I have never believed that love was blind, but my fortnight of hell – the two weeks leading up to the wedding – and the 3 days since has clearly shown me something all together different. Love is stupid.
Love is stupid AND blind. Love is actually borderline insane. Love cannot read the writing on the wall. Even if it wanted to.
Before the wedding my body began a revolt. I got a cold. The glands in my throat began to swell, swallowing became difficult. In the final days when I should have been organizing final details (like my now non-existent guest book) I was curled up in bed trying to convince a snotty toddler than ‘Mummy sleeping’ was a fun game. I trod on a rusty thumbtack. I pulled a chunk of glass from that same foot a few days later. My chin broke out in pimples two days before the wedding and the day before the nuptials, the day my guests arrived, I began to lose my voice.
In addition to this, the recent flooding in Victoria washed away the only thing I had my heart set on – purple hydrangeas. So the décor was changed from mauve to neutral to cover all possibilities. Fantastic thinking too, because we ended up with green flowers. Yes, Green! They looked fantastic though. Bless our outstanding florist. My parents had their breaks fail on the way to the wedding. No I am not kidding. Oh, and the power went off 30 minutes before I was to walk down the aisle – while I was in the middle of getting my hair done. So my hair was finished off in my parents’ converted bus (it was stationary by now, don’t worry). One of our musicians (a dear friend) dislocated his shoulder. Lucky for us he was staunch enough to drive to the mountains and play guitar all with a shoulder that should have been in a sling!
My point? Yes I do have one – other than to whine about all of the tiny things that drove me insane – is this; if so many things were to go wrong in the lead up to any other event I would have reconsidered. I would have pondered the possibility that the universe/god/whoever was trying to tell me something. I would have read the writing on the wall.
But alas, love is blind and stupid. Instead I had a wonderful wedding. And that night suffered from a gastro bug and since then my cold has only gotten worse, my voice hasn’t returned and I have developed a rash, all over my body. In short – I am allergic to marriage.
If love hadn’t blinded me and robbed me of my intelligence, I would read the writing on the wall.
If you are anything like me when the going gets tough you get tea, ice cream and your favourite song. This song has soothed my frayed nerves as I approached and crossed the boundaries of my comfort zone again and again. So it is no shock to me that I crave it now (along with Magnums and sweet tea) as I am super-fast approaching my nuptials.
The power of lyrics has always moved me. Great lyrics move me as much as Shakespeare and Eliot. The readings at our upcoming wedding are lyrics and my favourite poem by Donne and choosing songs for the ceremony took far more deliberation than my outfit. Such is the importance I place on heartfelt lyrics. I have no idea what inspired Stevie to write Landslide, but I have interpreted it to relate to parenthood, partnership, womanhood, teenage fears, friendship over the course of my love affair with it. Like a pair of comfy jeans or an old friend, it comforts me because we have known each other for the longest time. (I am certain my mother listened to this song when I was in the womb.)
This song, to me, speaks to love. Real love. Deep love. The deepest love. The kind that scares you to your very core. The kind of love that makes you not want to move a muscle in-case you break the spell. The kind of love that threatens to paralyse you. It talks about the complications that love can pose and the difficulties you are bound to face together. It talks about how we define ourselves by who loves us, and how well we love them back. Of the landslide of emotion that threatens to overwhelms us, that we pray we can withstand.
I hope you like it half as much as I do. Landslide, Stevie Nicks.
I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky what is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life
Well, I’ve been afraid of changing ’cause I built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, Children get older
I’m getting older too
Well, I’ve been afraid of changing ’cause I built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, Children get older
I’m getting older, too. Well I’m getting older too
So, take this love and take it down
Year and if you climb a mountain and ya turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well the landslide brought me down
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well maybe, Well maybe
Maybe the landslide will bring you down
I didn’t realise how many erroneous beliefs I had absorbed about motherhood until I had my son. Then suddenly all I felt was guilty for all the things I assumed I was doing ‘wrong’. I felt horribly sub par as a mother every time the baby cried. Every time I winced audibly when he attached to my breast, I felt a failure, despite the fact that my nipples were irritated by a cotton bra only days earlier. Somehow, despite knowing better, I was convinced being hurt my feeding my child was wrong.
Shorty after a baby is delivered (which is a misnomer too, by the way) the hoards of guests arrived. The good ones made the visit short and sweet, offering assistance, but I felt obliged to politely decline any help feeling I ‘should’ be able to breastfeed around the clock and and keep the house in order. Then came the questions of whether he was a ‘good sleeper’ and the implication that if he was I was, by extension, a good mother. Unfortunately, for the first 8 weeks before I began co-sleeping, my baby was a terrible sleeper.
As he settled and I felt like I had moved on from drowning in nappies, breast-pads and sleep that came in 40 minute stretches, the ‘wrongs’ increased. I was wrong to co-sleep, wrong to feed on demand, wrong to rock my baby to sleep, wrong to respond to his cries immediately, wrong to fall asleep mid breastfeed despite not physically being able to keep my eyes open and wrong to drink coffee. And all this in the first 3 months.
I felt I should instantly know what the baby needed, immediately respond putting his needs first without a second thought. Bliss, happy cuddles, contentment and ease where the fantasy I had come to expect when the reality was was filled more with resentment, frustration, guilt and exhaustion. And that was a good day. There were times when I put the baby on the floor for his requisite ‘tummy time’ and rushed quickly from the room to slam doors, punch pillows and cry burning tears of furious frustration. Others where I thrust the baby into his father’s arms and balled myself up sobbing from failure. The days were many where I barely hugged my partner because the idea of touching another person for another minute drove me beyond breaking point. Who knew one could be ‘touched out’?
I relish motherhood. Genuinely so. But I also ball my hands into fists and screech at my toddler when, after a sleepless night he will do nothing but grizzle ‘mummy’. (When you child says ‘mama’ for the first time you never expect to cringe at the word a year later). Just 5 minutes to myself will make all the difference, I tell myself while he clings to my leg as a try to make a cup of tea. And the times you awake without a child beside you and, for the most fleeting moment, forget that you are a parent – only to remember a moment later; it hurts to feel a twinge of sadness with the happiness.
I love my son more than words can say. I love watching him grow and learn. I feel privileged when he brings his bumped knee to me to kiss better and every time he cries it is a dagger through my heart. But without the darker side of motherhood these moments wouldn’t be as meaningful. The potential our children have to stretch us to breaking point is born out of our pure love for them. Our total dedication. Dedication that comes at a price. Unless we openly discuss the price of motherhood in the same breath as the rewards of motherhood, I feel, we devalue ourselves as women and as mothers.
I hate it. You probably do too. I think I hate the wait more than the requisite pissing on the stick. You know the wait I am talking about. It is the oh-god-I-think-my-life-might-change-in-a-millisecond-once-this-5-minute-wait-is-up wait. If you are a sexually active woman, you have probably experienced this wait at least once. I mean, no contraception is foolproof, right?
Patience really isn’t one of my virtues. Dealing with whatever happens, when it happens I’m great at. It is the damned limbo style wait between the ‘Hmmm something isn’t right here’ feeling and the little blue line appearing, or not, that I don’t cope well with. I find this wait utterly excruciating. I mean I only ever experience this wait IF:
Worse than the list of crap that actually goes into making you consider the possibility that you might be pregnant (whether this is a shocking surprise or eagerly awaited news) your life flashes before your eyes in those 5 minutes in a way that the potential baby-daddy can never imagine. He doesn’t think about stretch marks and mentally say goodbye to his body ( a survey found that 86% of new mums felt more attractive before pregnancy than after), he doesn’t immediately panic about his career, cringe at the thousands of nappies he might have to change or lament the nights out he will miss and the alcohol he will have to abstain from. His life gets more complicated but, generally, also more respected. Other than the potential changes to his sex life (which I guarantee you he isn’t thinking about yet) he skips out on most of the sacrifice.
Being that I am one child down and one child to go in my childbearing plans, I expect that I will experience this wait again many a time. (A prospect I am only willing to face because I know how amazing motherhood can be.) To those who experience the dreaded wait only to find the test negative, my advice is to have a drink. Have a few actually to wash down the sushi and soft cheese you will be eating before you do something physical like paint-ball or rock-climbing, then have a great nights sleep and a sleep-in followed by a double espresso. You may not know it yet, but you will miss these when the line does go blue.
I know in my bones that nothing life will ever offer me will be as fearsome as my worries are. Not because my worries are terrible, horrifying or gruesome, but because in my worries I underestimate myself.
As a teenager, and even in my early 20′s my greatest fear wasn’t losing my job, being physically attacked walking home in the dark or getting food poisoning from eating a bad kebab after a big night out. My greatest fear was losing my identity to ‘Wife and Mother’. This, I worried, would be a fate worse than death.
I was plagued by images of an unhappy me. I would be balancing budgets, changing nappies, cooking daily and not working outside the family home. I imagined that this suburban hell would repress my unrepressable spirit. I was sure that if I was to dedicate myself to the role and responsibility of a householder that there would be no return, and my soul would be crushed.
It sounds dramatic, I know, but I would still argue realistic. Girls of my generation were pushed hard as children, told that our brains and careers would be our salvation, our ticket out of domestic subservience. Well, maybe it was worded more like ‘If you work hard you can do anything you want. You could be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a nurse or even an engineer. You have so much potential. Don’t waste it.’ Waste our potential on what? The roles not listed, like wife and mother perhaps?
It turns out though that suburban wife and mother was not enough to repress my spirit. I know that now because I am there. It is no walk in the park either. My fears about the never-ending list of tasks to complete and the remarkably short time to actually do them was spot on. As was my fear that the needs of my partner and especially a small child can at times feel suffocating. What my fears didn’t account for was the strength of my spirit. My spirit is still strong enough to fight for time and space to express my individuality.
I am convinced that this unaccounted for ingredient, my real potential, will bode me well in all of life’s ‘hells’. Because I can’t imagine how high my spirit will fly in the face of adversity, but I can’t help but live it.
I HATE bugs. You may have picked up on that, since they led to my downfall in the hornet incident. I understand that insects, in general, are the basis of all ecosystems and that life on earth would grind to a halt without them. I just don’t want them in my house!!!
I lose all sense of rationality and common sense in the presence of 6 legged foes. I have been known to vacuum up ants, concoct herbal pesticides for fleas, leave out vinegar for flies, rub window sills with tea tree oil and sprinkle doorways with cinnamon. All the while chanting, mentally or aloud, “Die, little demons, DIE!” I guess I understand why I have been called a ‘White Witch’.
In light of my passionate hate for creepy crawlies, living squarely in the heart of cockroach territory only one solitary block from the beach wasn’t the best decision I ever made. I love the lifestyle but HATE the neighbours, so this week this natural earth mother threw up her arms in surrender and called the fumigators. I simply cannot let the neighbours become housemates.
Fumigation to me has always seemed the expensive and easy route. You go out and let the professional take care of it. The most you need to do is sweep up the carnage in the days afterwards. Except the customer service professional told me I must empty all cupboards, expose all the skirting boards & clear all the benches. In short, I am packing up my living room, bathroom and kitchen into boxes. A daunting task. Especially 1 week out from Christmas when there is 2 batches of gingerbread dough in the fridge waiting to be baked. Doh!
If something comes between me and baking it must have a silver lining. So I am looking on this as a clean out of the old in preparation for the new. A delayed spring clean and hopefully a beginning to my minimalist lifestyle. Bring on 2010.
It is your day off. You have been looking forward to this time for weeks. You have a list as long as your arm of relaxing things that you will spend these precious hours doing. You realise half way through the day that it is not possible to get everything done and your day will be anything but relaxing. You rush from errand to appointment and back again ending at home utterly exhausted, wishing that you had just picked up take away on your way home from work, because that (or getting a root canal) would have been less stressful. Does this ever happen to you?
This phenomena is born of two things:
I often plan to do something before I go to bed, like have a cup of tea and some chocolate or give myself a mini facial or read or write a blog or whatever. Two nights a week, if I am absolutely on fire, I will do one of those things before I go to bed. Instead I usually pack up the baby’s toys, pack the dishwasher and clean the kitchen benches, organise lunches for tomorrow, write my other half a lovely note for him to wake up to, put a load of washing on, balance the budget or any of the millions of mundane necessary things that I never include in my schedule.
This isn’t simply a Mum thing either. I know I used to plan meetings back to back when I worked in finance, giving myself 5 minutes to go to the bathroom and re-fill the water jug, only to find that the clients were early, my staff needed to run some issues past me, the printer was stuffed and the documents hadn’t printed and that I had a million emails to address.
Planning and scheduling is important. I think it is impossible minimise stress without knowing, for the most part, what needs to be done and allocating time for it. But so many of us don’t schedule to our priorities and only schedule a fraction of our tasks, but allocate them the majority of our time.
I am fiercely independent and stubborn to a fault, but I have been supportable in the past. Currently though, I would say I am definitely difficult (near on impossible) to support.
I have willing and prepared family and friends, who would probably never say ‘No’ if I asked for help – so many of us do – but I rarely articulate what exactly they could do to help. When asked how I am doing my default response is ‘I’m fine’ which roughly translates to “I actually need support, but am too stubborn to ask for it”.
One of my goals for 2010 is to feel totally supported. So I will be changing a few things, from priorities to how I run my household and how I manage relationships to achieve that. (Friends and family that read this blog are broadly smiling or cringing in anticipation, depending on who they are as they read this, I am sure.)
How are you focusing more on yourself in 2010?
If you are female aged between 21 and 50 I would bet my last TimTam (Amazing Australian biscuit) that you know the feeling well. Overwhelm, yuck!
It usually goes something like this – Work is hectic or the baby is teething, or both. AND you are stressed about one or more of the following; buying a house, planning a wedding, coping with a pregnancy, studying, planning an event, paying the bills, cleaning the house, making it to the gym, navigating family issues, launching your company, keeping in touch with friends and getting more than 5 hours sleep a night.
The more you do the more rest you need and the less time you have to get it. Usual rest periods like the commute or having a coffee we are ‘plugged in’ with the iphone making us contactable and on 24/7.
With the festive season just around the corner, the craziness will only get worse. Much worse. To the usual overwhelm we can add; double the social engagements, hangovers, present shopping, credit card debt, the mad rush at work to get everything done, being short-staffed as people take holidays, the final 4 weeks to achieve our goals for 2009.
Try these this silly season, to reduce stress, keep calm and enjoy your friends and family:
What do you do to beat overwhelm?
One of the feelings that I hate is failure. I don’t think I am alone here. Nobody wants to feel as though they failed. My distaste for the feeling has another level to it though. My every failure is somehow turbo-charged. I feel like a failure for feeling the emotion failure.
You see I should know better. I know that there is no such thing as failure.
So not only do I feel crap for not succeeding, I feel even worse for feeling that way. Because, drum roll please, failure doesn’t exist, everything is simply feedback. Feedback to show you how prepared (or not) you were, how skilled (or not) you are, how on track (or not) you are, how well (or not so well) you handled the situation. Failure is asking you to honestly re-evaluate the situation, to debrief and to consciously learn the lesson.
Call me lazy, but sometimes I just don’t have the fortitude to do it. It is so hard to look the feeling of failure in the face and consider it logically. It is harder still to identify my misconceptions, re-arrange the plan that got me here and decide on a new course. But you know what? When I have the courage, and can dredge up enough emotional energy to do it, things get better – FAST. The added bonus is that lessons learned via an uncomfortable feeling, like say failure, tend to stick with us so we make the mistake fewer times before really getting it.
I have had a roll of ‘epic failures’ the past 6 months, possibly more than ever before. I have been getting feedback left right and centre telling me I was off course, I was ignoring my intuition and that I had my priorities way out of whack. But I hadn’t stopped to debrief until this weekend. I was too busy, too run down, too unsupported too [insert excuse here] to look at what was going on, and so I kept ‘failing’.
The lesson I have been afraid of facing is that I am not paying enough attention to my intuition. I have been feeling dread and doing it anyway, I have put others needs before mine and my babies, I have taken what others say as gospel and ignored my own feelings, I have supported my partner without question. Each time the feedback was clear; dreaded feelings and crappy results flashing like the proverbial neon sign telling me to listen to my inner voice.
Lesson: Listen closely to your so-called failures. Heed what they are telling you. There is nothing worse than waking up and realising that you have lived a shitty groundhog day every day for 6 months.
Ask the question. Know the goal posts. It’s not just wise in business it’s essential for harmonious personal relationships to set boundaries, guidelines, to be clear on what is expected.
How do you know your relationship is healthy? How do you know your friend is living up to their role? How do you know you are delivering at work? How do you know what you can expect from family? Where does the obligation start and stop? How far are you ‘supposed’ to go? According to whom? Who drew these arbitrary lines?
Know what you need. Ask for what you want. Be clear on your deal breakers and enforce your boundaries. If you don’t know what the goal posts are, you will always be disappointed.
Sweet gets you nowhere, because life takes guts.
Love, real love takes courage. The kind of love where you would crawl over broken glass for your beloved isn’t the result of sickly sweet SMS’s and bedroom eyes. Love is the result of accepting each other warts, skeletons, flaws and all. Warts and skeletons are gory things to witness and overwhelm sweet dispositions.
The career of your dreams won’t be granted to you with the puff of glittery Jeanie smoke. The career of your dreams stems from you being good at what you do. Natural talent or not, being really good takes practice and work.
Family, like everything else takes work. Ideally they will support you through think and thin and presumably you will do the same for them. This is work. Thin ain’t much fun. Sweet just won’t cut it.
Don’t misunderstand. Grace, being personable, being compassionate and composure are all qualities I aspire to. But unless our sweetness is based in a foundation of strength, tenacity and courage it is mearely a glamour. So if where you are going involves love, family or career sweet will get you no where,
