23. to have and to be everything
resisting, surrendering, happiness, thanks ♡
Raphy is one, which means I’ve been a mum for a year, which means we’ve been a family for a year, which means it’s been a year since I had an unbroken night’s sleep. A year and nine months since my body was my own. It’s been a brutal year, and beautiful too. I thought giving birth was hard - lol. Motherhood is relentless and lonely and it has utterly broken me, but also pieced me together anew. Repeatedly. I keep thinking of the pattern Chloe Coles, one of the mums I occasionally talk to on Instagram, wrote about: Resisting, surrendering, happiness.
Sometimes it feels like motherhood has taken everything from me. My body, my freedom, my identity. My ignorance of loss. But I got Raphael. I love Raphy more than I ever thought it was possible to love. The world is a strange and unsettling place these days but it’s better with him in it.
~
I posted those two paragraphs in an Instagram caption the day after R’s first birthday, underneath a photo of our hands holding a corner each of a Polaroid I took of the two of us, self-timer on the bathroom shelf after a post-mango shower. Our jaws are set; expressions vague. I tried to smile the way a mother would.
I left out most of a petulant list I’d started keeping a few days earlier, titled Things Motherhood Took From Me. I kept another, shorter, even brattier one: Things It Gave Me (1. my son, 2. an ever-present awareness and anticipation of loss).
I love my son. He’s the best. He plays games with me now, pretending to sleep or fall flat on the floor, his ruse betrayed by a gap-toothed smile. He says cat (‘gat’) and Dad (‘gad’) and loves zucchini as much as he loves chocolate (so I baked them together into his birthday cake). The problem is I don’t love myself.
It’s the most shocking part of parenthood: the undoing. I expected the experience to grant some kind of absolution from myself, a cell-by-cell regeneration; instant and irrevocable. So far I think every difficulty I’ve come across has been caused by the horror of remaining, essentially, myself.
I keep joking that birth was a walk in the park compared to parenting. It’s true, because birth ends. To be a parent is to reckon relentlessly with your whole self. Every part of you. Especially the parts you consider the most rotten. Even the most placid, charming child will dredge up the worst of you and shove your face in it. It’s messy, myopic and ugly. Most importantly: it’s necessary. Sometimes gently, sometimes not, my son is forcing me to become the parent he needs. The person I need to be.
If you’re on the brink of parenthood, or have freshly found yourself here, I don’t have any advice. Only this: I wish I learned how to love myself before I became a mother.
But: I’m grateful to finally be learning how.
Since it’s the end of the year I’m counting gratitudes. (Better than a balance sheet of losses and gains.) Something huge I’m grateful for, and only just realising: getting to see myself through my child’s eyes. To be made both soft and strong by his gaze. To be vital.
To be the first and last thing he sees every day. To have him: my waking thought, the thought that sees me to sleep, and every other thought in between.
To be a family, three in the bed from the day he was born.
How lucky we are, to have and to be everything.
Thank you for reading Dear Shrimp this year. It became something to do when everything else seemed to be slipping away. Every comment and email back was a thrill to read. ♡
I made an end-of-year playlist of songs I’ve been listening to with R lately. Nothing better than funny baby dancing imo. You can listen to it here.
Also, Julian’s new album is out! It’s called House Hymns and I painted the cover art (with a new baby! A miracle). You can download it for free here and listen on Spotify/etc soon.
I’ll be back in January sometime, maybe with a regular schedule, maybe not. Who knows! Anything could happen.
Happy new year x