Featured Essays
Personal essays exploring motherhood, creativity, identity, relationships and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. Honest reflections on the messier, stranger and often more interesting parts of being human.
I Thought I Was Good at Receiving. Then I Became a Mother.
Spoiler: I wasn’t
For years, I thought I’d cracked it: this whole receiving thing.
I could let money land in my bank account. I could take compliments without deflecting. I could lie in a patch of sun with my cup of tea and feel worthy of the pleasure. I’d done the inner work. I'd taught this stuff.
And then I gave birth. That’s when I realised: I’d been good at receiving… in contexts that still felt relatively safe. Contexts where I was still, on some level, performing.
Motherhood stripped that scaffolding fast. Suddenly, I wasn’t just receiving praise or money or nice moments in my nervous system-friendly business bubble. I was receiving care. Constantly. Repeatedly. In very raw, often unceremonious, sometimes humiliating ways. Or, more often, I was needing to receive care I wasn’t getting.
Birth was my first initiation.
There were midwives. Charts. Procedures. Monitors. And me, contracting, trying to stay tethered to my body while wailing, “They lied to me! The hypno-birthing people lied to me!” (because sorry hypno-birthing gang, but labour is painful. It’s not “intense” or a “surge”, it’s the most painful thing I have ever experienced and no amount of room spray or soothing music will change that).
What I needed to receive most during that experience was care from the people around me. I needed calm, kindness, holding. But what I got instead were policies, protocols, and disapproving glances. I got brushed off and told to wait. I got the sense I was a burden. I received so many subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues that it wasn’t safe to need so much to that my body went into fight or flight.
Until, in the middle of what felt like endless waves of pain, one of the midwives looked down at me and said:
"You have really lovely hair."
And for a moment, just a flicker, I felt seen as a real person. I softened and so the baby just slipped right out. I’m joking, I still had to push his giant head out, but at least I didn’t feel like a mama bear ready to bite.
It took becoming a mother to realise how confronting it can feel to receive.
Not just in birth, but in the endless days and nights that followed. I needed help with food, with rest, with holding the baby so I could shower. I needed to ask and ask again, often with cracked nipples and no sleep and tears I didn’t want to admit were there.
Sometimes I got what I asked for. Sometimes I didn’t. Both were hard. Getting what I needed brought up guilt, shame, the fear I was too much, or taking too much. Not getting my needs met brought up disappointment so ancient it surprised me, like all the times I’d learned as a child or a young woman that my needs were inconvenient, unimportant, not quite valid.
What I’d actually been good at, before, was working really bloody hard to receive.
Launching offers, asking for lovely testimonials, staying regulated on sales calls. I could do that! I basically delivered the masterclass in receiving within the container of productivity. Urgh.
But allowing care in when I was crying in the car, convinced I wasn’t producing enough milk for my baby? When I was swimming in shame and desperately Googling lactation consultants at 2am? That was fucking horrible. Because somewhere in my bones, I’d absorbed the message that I should be able to do this naturally. That if I were a real mother (an earth goddess type in linen with wild hair and overflowing breasts) I wouldn’t be struggling. That asking for more than a teeny, tiny, convenient bit of help made me a weak, needy “wet rag” (real words from one of my pregnancy books about how others may perceive me).
I wanted to be soft, sacred, and self-sufficient all at once. I wanted to birth my baby on a lily pad, being fed chocolate-covered strawberries by my adoring partner. I wanted to simply breathe through every challenge motherhood presented to me. But then I couldn’t reach my phone during the baby’s many, many contact naps and I wanted to scream. And I needed a sandwich to be fed into my mouth as I sat in the dark with a tiny infant. And I so desperately needed someone to take the baby out of the house so I could sleep without the torture of listening out for his cries.
I’d never needed this level of support before. Not so constantly, so vulnerably and all while wearing a Superwoman cape and pretending I had it all together (because the house was SO tidy so I must be ok, right!?).
I’m two years into mothering now and I still, sometimes, find myself trying to do it all myself. Technically, the laundry is my partner’s responsibility. Do I micromanage her and do three loads on my “day off” from parenting? Yes, yes I do. But you know what, last week she took Leo to the park and I watched two episodes of Gilmore Girls without getting up to unload the dishwasher. I’m a work-in-progress ok!?
I’m still unwinding from all the stories I’ve internalised about what a mother and woman should be. Self-sufficient! Always patient! Ambitious and successful (but not too much). Endlessly caring while still looking effortlessly put-together. It’s insane.
If I’ve previously been good at receiving in contexts where I’m performing and productive, raising my kid is where I (try!) to say “NO MORE”. With another baby on the way and a high likelihood of leaking boobs and contact naps and a toddler who is used to being the centre of my Universe to contend with, I have a feeling that motherhood isn’t here to gently teach me how to receive, It's here to strip away all the ways I've avoided it.
The murky bit before the rainbow (nursery)
Pregnancy news and the complexities of sharing it
“Creativity -- like human life itself -- begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.”
– Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
I just took the best part of six months away from all things work, writing and being in any way “public”.
Was this planned? Not really. Back in January this year, I assumed I’d take one or two months off to get pregnant and be back at work by the Spring. I was going to do it all! Make money! Have a baby! Do yoga every day!
That didn’t happen.
Instead, I’ve been occupied with the wild ride of choosing a sperm donor, dealing with what felt like endless morning sickness, feeling shocked by the price of prams and making a Pinterest board called “Rainbow Nursery”.
Which is my way of sharing the news that I’m expecting a baby next year!
It feels strange to announce this news online. In truth, I’ve avoided doing it for weeks. I wondered what’s appropriate to share, whether it’s really me to do a “We’re expecting!” post accompanied by a photo of me cradling my bump or holding up a picture of the scan. If this is how you choose to share your news, no shade. It’s been curious to me why I don’t want to do that. Why I feel a little bit awkward sharing this news. This is the biggest, most exciting thing for me, and yet you might just shrug and move on with your day. You might feel it’s in bad taste to share joyful personal news when there’s so much suffering in the world right now. You might feel happy for me and want to offer congratulations. Or it might bring up all sorts of complicated emotions for you.
Last year I didn’t love hearing other people’s pregnancy news. I was jealous of women who got pregnant the old-fashioned way and wished I could have a candle-lit conception instead of a cold and clinical one. Partly, it was those uncomfortable feelings when someone shared their pregnancy news that forced me to lean into why I was I prioritising “Getting the business ready for maternity leave” instead of just doing what I really wanted: have a baby.
To do that, I had to embrace the reality of my situation. If I wanted to build a family with the woman I love, it was going to be expensive and involve an alarming number of speculums. While being inseminated with sperm in a clinic wasn’t exactly romantic, I’ll never forget the look on my partner’s face as she watched via a monitor as sperm burst through a catheter into my womb. We even have a photo of the moment on our pregnancy alter! When we have the courage to welcome all our messy emotions, that’s what ultimately moves us forward.
There have been many surprises during this pregnancy so far. One being the intensity of my desire to cocoon at home. My sensitivity has dramatically increased and I’ve become even pickier with what environments, people and energies are welcome as I act as the first home this little human will know. Early on, while one part of me fought to maintain my identity as a business owner and productive human, there was a wise voice that kept reminding me of the sacredness of this moment. While it would have made business sense to post on social media, build this Substack and create an evergreen version of my group program, I just didn’t want to.
Even though I resisted it at times, some part of me knew that surrendering to the void is where my deepest wisdom would be found. It’s not been easy as my mind has tried desperately to find answers about my professional identity and land on something certain. I’ve questioned whether my retreat from business has been linked to a “visibility fear”. The truth is that I’ve simply desired privacy. I suppose I could have repurposed old content and still been “on”, but I didn’t, and that’s ok.
Things change. Now I’m in the second trimester, I’m feeling a gentle opening to share a little of what I’m pondering. Such as all the stories that have emerged as my needs have increased (or perhaps since I simply cannot ignore them as easily). There’s still plenty of murkiness and life is definitely not all rainbows, but I’m starting to feel more comfortable with the idea that I’m in a new season of life. One that is perhaps less outwardly focused and all the badges of “success” that can come with being out in the world but that is just as just as rewarding albeit in a quieter, more interior way.
Prompts you may like to explore:
What happens when we stop forcing?
What happens when identity falls away?
What happens in the murky bit between one chapter and the next?
