I
am a lifelong diary keeper . So forgive that I love the dramatic full confessions approach to writing .
So here it is . My big confession that any woman who has ever had a child knows is no confession whatsoever .
Motherhood kicked my ass .
I saw friends and family members transformed into lionesses by motherhood . People who used to take shit from everyone suddenly standing up and saying “ No ” for what may have been the first times in their lives .
Me ? I went from that woman who flew her motorcycle off of a cliff in Mongolia and kept on riding to being afraid of everything . Suddenly , I was paralyzed with indecision .
Motherhood took me from “ devil may care ” to someone who cared . A LOT .
No longer did I have to worry about me . Because let ’ s face it , me fucking up my life ? I can totally deal with that . Me fucking up the lives of two people I loved more than myself and who were completely innocent ? That terrified me . For the first time in my life I knew what responsibility was .
Before children I always had the fact I could bail in the back of my mind .
“ I can do this . Until it gets too hard . And then I can cut and run .”
And I was Ok with that . Try everything and find out if it was what I wanted or not . Only now there was no backing out .
Almost every mother will talk of the fierce love and devotion they have for their children . How this often conflicts with who she is as a woman however , that is much harder to talk about . How can we talk about our wants and needs and have them separate from the people who started their journey on this planet as part of us ?
And I struggled with this . I wrestled with the mom I wanted to be and the mom I was . The mom who wanted her children near her at all times but only if they were quiet enough to let me work ( Sorry if that comment caused coffee to gush from your nose ). The guilt of yearning for that freedom to be the woman I was before children and the knowledge that I would rather die than not be a mother .
It did my head in . It kicked my ass . And it brought me finally to realizing what I wanted in life and my business . For what saved me was returning to my first love . The blank page .
I have always been a writer . In Kindergarten I “ wrote out ” entire exercise books of stories . The same scribbles that my daughter now does . I still remember getting my first red fake leather diary when I was 8 . My first novel was complete at 11 and in temperamental artist style , I destroyed it when it got too much attention from my classmates .
This was to be a common trait in my life . I would only allow myself so much success . And then sabotage it if I got too close to what I really wanted .
And when it came to motherhood I was not prepared for the love or the need to carve out space for myself . I let myself be swallowed by it and when I came up for air I was surprised to discover a number of things .
I love writing but novel writing is not what I want to do for money .
This was a surprise because I always thought that is what I wanted to do .
And I realized that lying to ourselves is not something that is a sign of an inherent weakness .
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