For the record! I would actually really love to hear about your opinion the various absurdities of modern parenting. Thanks for keeping it real Rosie!!
I am having similar feelings now! I have never had many girlfriends and since becoming a mom (my oldest is 3) I find myself yearning for mom friends. Friends that can understand the pain I feel when I can’t find the words to express it. What has helped me actually is to write and share my silly and annoying and frustrating moments with the world, if for the very least to put my thoughts down into words. Mothering is hard, there is nothing more about it. It’s just hard. ❤️❤️
When my first child was born, twenty-seven years ago, the greatest gift I was given were the following words of wisdom by a dear friend, “Caring for a child and still finding ways to nurture myself was the hardest thing I have ever done. I mean if this was college and I could add/drop becoming a mother? I definitely would have dropped for sure.”
Having someone admit that gave me the strength to know I was not alone. As mothers we are never alone, but we societally we are still siloed into aloneness with the overwhelm of everything in our known lives now new.
The Baby on the Fire Escape is one of the best books I’ve read this year ~thank you for highlighting!
I have just been reading Clover Stroud’s wild & sleepless nights and it is the first book I have read that so beautifully articulates those first few months of motherhood, the rawness the wildness and the mess of it all.
Happy birth day to you! When my child was a young toddler, I found a lot of solace in Lydia Kiesling's book The Golden State (http://www.lydiakiesling.com/the-golden-state). Her writing on parenthood, in general, is so honest and cathartic.
I remember observing how cliquey mothers could be, then I had my daughter and I understood, and was so grateful for it. Suddenly it really did feel like this special club that no one else could possibly understand and although it wasn’t meant to be exclusive, it couldn’t help but be.
Another woman I knew, who’d had her first baby six weeks before me, asked me in the early days if I was “enjoying it”. I said yes because it felt like the right thing to say and I didn’t feel like I knew her well enough to say any different.
I was very glad for a WhatsApp group of women I’d cobbled together whilst we were all pregnant but it was still so hard, and harder than I shared to anyone before finally breaking down to a nurse at a smear appointment 2.5 years in.
My daughter has just turned 4 and it definitely got noticeably easier (emotionally) soon after she turned 3, and continues to. I totally understand why the Scandinavian countries have two year mat leaves (I think???). Sorry if that feels far away now, but I mean to say that you’re not alone in feeling like it isn’t just the “fourth trimester” that’s hard.
And I definitely feel you on the feminist paradox. I still feel that now as I’m back to doing very little paid work. Trying to work full time and parent led to my house almost literally falling down. Redressing the balance was essential but it’s very hard to adjust a sense of self worth away from £££ you being in. Societal values have become so f’d up.
Mom friends
For the record! I would actually really love to hear about your opinion the various absurdities of modern parenting. Thanks for keeping it real Rosie!!
I am having similar feelings now! I have never had many girlfriends and since becoming a mom (my oldest is 3) I find myself yearning for mom friends. Friends that can understand the pain I feel when I can’t find the words to express it. What has helped me actually is to write and share my silly and annoying and frustrating moments with the world, if for the very least to put my thoughts down into words. Mothering is hard, there is nothing more about it. It’s just hard. ❤️❤️
When my first child was born, twenty-seven years ago, the greatest gift I was given were the following words of wisdom by a dear friend, “Caring for a child and still finding ways to nurture myself was the hardest thing I have ever done. I mean if this was college and I could add/drop becoming a mother? I definitely would have dropped for sure.”
Having someone admit that gave me the strength to know I was not alone. As mothers we are never alone, but we societally we are still siloed into aloneness with the overwhelm of everything in our known lives now new.
The Baby on the Fire Escape is one of the best books I’ve read this year ~thank you for highlighting!
I have just been reading Clover Stroud’s wild & sleepless nights and it is the first book I have read that so beautifully articulates those first few months of motherhood, the rawness the wildness and the mess of it all.
Yes, yes, yes.
This was beautifully expressed. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for your writing, Rosie (as always)! I could never gather my thoughts on motherhood myself so reading this has been a real pleasure. <3
Happy birth day to you! When my child was a young toddler, I found a lot of solace in Lydia Kiesling's book The Golden State (http://www.lydiakiesling.com/the-golden-state). Her writing on parenthood, in general, is so honest and cathartic.
I remember observing how cliquey mothers could be, then I had my daughter and I understood, and was so grateful for it. Suddenly it really did feel like this special club that no one else could possibly understand and although it wasn’t meant to be exclusive, it couldn’t help but be.
Another woman I knew, who’d had her first baby six weeks before me, asked me in the early days if I was “enjoying it”. I said yes because it felt like the right thing to say and I didn’t feel like I knew her well enough to say any different.
I was very glad for a WhatsApp group of women I’d cobbled together whilst we were all pregnant but it was still so hard, and harder than I shared to anyone before finally breaking down to a nurse at a smear appointment 2.5 years in.
My daughter has just turned 4 and it definitely got noticeably easier (emotionally) soon after she turned 3, and continues to. I totally understand why the Scandinavian countries have two year mat leaves (I think???). Sorry if that feels far away now, but I mean to say that you’re not alone in feeling like it isn’t just the “fourth trimester” that’s hard.
And I definitely feel you on the feminist paradox. I still feel that now as I’m back to doing very little paid work. Trying to work full time and parent led to my house almost literally falling down. Redressing the balance was essential but it’s very hard to adjust a sense of self worth away from £££ you being in. Societal values have become so f’d up.