You see, I always said that even though I did not want children (I’m so glad I changed my mind), if I were to have them, I would stay at home until they were two. And I have. Eden is 3 and although I have worked it has always been from home. Caleb, however, is only 1 and I am desperate to work. This desperation brings with it guilt. As though spending hour after hour, day after day with my children should be enough. And it’s not. Last year was bloody hard, and stripped me of any inner reserve I had. So here I am, a shell of myself, so tired of simply surviving. And somehow work has become a healing place for me. It breathes life back into me, gives my days a sense of purpose. And when I am gone, I look forward to coming home.

But just as I somehow felt looked down upon when I was “just” a mother, I now feel like I am failing by needing to leave them. Caleb is still so small.

So damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

For once I will heed my own advice and recognise that what my children need most is a happy mother. They need me to be the best me I can be, and it will be then that I can offer them the best childhood I can offer them. Staying home all day with a depressed mother isn’t a way to grow into a confident and adventurous young man,

But these things I know to the very depths of my soul, and not saying them outloud does not keep them from being so very true.

I know the solutions so why am I so paralysed from helping myself?

Eating, sleeping and staring mindlessly at my iPad help me to ignore reality. My children force me to acknowledge it and I find myself resenting them for it. You cannot hide and look after two small children. It is perhaps in them that I will find my salvation.

Self destruction comes so easily. I can escape except for at night. It is in the night that I am haunted.

But maybe my admission can be my first step. I dont want this year to be like the last.

(photo by phil)

I love the golden sun that it brings. The falling leaves. The cool, but not cold, weather. The smells. The scarves and sweaters that re-enter our lives. I l0ve it.

This season change has brought with it great life changes. Unexpected renovations. Unexpected redundancy. Living with the inlaws. A new nursery for Eden.

I love it. I mean, it’s hard –  Eden doesn’t do well with change, and although the nursery is going well, the rest is proving too much. I am constantly met with cries of “I want to go to my house” …and we are living out of suitcases/boxes with all 4 of us in one room…. – but it is as though a breath of renewed life has been blown into Phil & I. Our spare time is split between childcare, job hunting, and working on the house. It feels good to have visible results of the change.

I hope for you that this Fall brings what you are looking for, even if you didn’t know what it was.

House renovations (last check our bottom floor was now one massive room and a kitchen!!!!), uncertain employment, job applications, 4 of us living in one bedroom at my inlaws, no sleep from the small one, the big one starting a new nursery this week…and so on.

This time outside of our normal habitat has its ups and downs, but is good for us. Good for re-evaluation. It provides food for thought. Like that house we stayed in in Bristol for the weekend and became enchanted by – we can use that when decorating our “new” old house. Will I work full time and Phil take over childcare? Will we both work part time? Will we stay or have to leave to find work?

More and more I think to myself “We can do anything – it’s only us in the way.”

This month I want to create more. I’ve seen some great projects to get started on. I’ll show evidence when I get around to it.

This month I want to breathe more. Relaxation doesn’t come naturally to me.

This month I want to love more.

This month I want to adventure more. (And that’s going to happen but my lips are sealed for another week in case Someone is reading this).

This month I want more.

I am capable.

I am strong.

I am intelligent.

If you have seen me in the past 6 months or more, you may have noticed a few things. You may have noticed how I had an excuse for everything – everything was so complicated and too hard. You may have noticed I became more dependent on you and those around me. You may have noticed I was less creative. Less vibrant. Less interested. Less able.

Because believing that I am capable, that I am strong and that I am intelligent are what allow me to live those traits.
Forgetting them was debilitating.

Eden looks like me. In many ways he resembles me. But this morning as I watched my 8 month old happily crawl away from the group into the middle of a massive field of grass and alternately hang out by himself (eating grass) and chasing the older kids I saw echoes of myself. No adventure was too daunting. Staying was what scared me most.

And when I got home from our picnic I realised another thing – a few months ago, a month ago?, you would not have gotten me on that bus with those two kids on my own without a double buggy, to meet those people and experiment skipping naptime by myself. A year ago I would have, but 4 weeks ago I would not have believed that I could.

I can’t afford to forget again.

The rain brings out conflicting desires in me. It makes me want to curl up on the sofa with a really good book or dvd. It makes me want a lovely tea in a hand-thrown mug. It makes me

want crotcheted throws. But it also makes me want to paint. To swirl colour. To be creative.

So far today I’ve done none of that. I’ve built and taken down a train track twice. I’ve played cars…twice. I’ve baked Oatmeal & Raisin Cookies (yummmmmm, although a bit too crispy). I’ve put one child

down for 2 naps and the other for his first. . .

You know how it is. And now it’s naptime. Around here, naptime is one big inner dilemma. Do I try to catch up on some very overdue sleep? (teeth + digestive issues in a baby = sleeping hell) Do i try to

attack this disaster of a house? Do I relax? Do I create?

Often I lose all track of time. Today I am determined to clean but I can feel my eyelids getting heavy and I know that the small child will wake soon.

Dilemmas Dilemmas.

(I think this is from http://vintagerosegarden.tumblr.com but I can’t find it to verify)

Live performance at The WOW Festival – www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5kxtz9J2hw

WOW!
My body is amazing
I can almost hear her saying it
As she stands naked at the mirror
Hands clapping in applause to it
Naked, bold and proud
Her mouth open wide and round like
Wow
My body is amazing
She is one year’s old and loving it
Full belly sticking out, thighs like mini tyre towers
And when she looks at her reflection she always shouts out loud like
Wow.
This body is so great
Gazing down now
I try to do the same
Ignore the plastic advert spreads
That pass me on the way
I say ‘my body is amazing’
Despite what some might say
I say my body is amazing
Despite the claims you make.
The nip and tuck and cuts and sucks that fill my walk to work each day
Enhancement ads and happiness will only come with curves this way and
if I lay in front of you today
Clothes dropped to the floor
You’d prescribe me what I could have less and what I should want more of
A tick box what could be chopped off with red pen ready hand aside your eyes deciding what to slice from lips and cheeks to bum and thighs
The lines below my eyes you say
I ought to peel or pull away
My breasts will start to sag one day
My breastfed baby there to blame
She came into the world you say
That’s great
but now behold your face
your saggy stomach, baggy eyes
Stretch mark stripes you look and sigh:
My eyes, tighten
My legs, inject
My thighs, cut back
My head, perfect
My stomach, flatten
My breasts, enhance,
Don’t smile, too much
Oh God, don’t laugh.
As you mark me like a canvas page in circled bouts of red
I feel the need to tell you you might praise this skin instead
Cos as you chat about corrections, your plucking cuts and lasers
Briefcase stuffed with time relapses, scalpol led erasers
I take up your red pen to my cheeks and mark two stripes on either side
A naked painted warrior could be a sorer site for eyes cos
I am ready for your battles now
My body’s felt the worst
No scalpol cut intense as that last damn push of birth
And I have learnt with awed amazement what my body brave can do
And now I’m marked like tribal tattoos with the tales my flesh went through
But those stripes that line my saggy stomach mark me like gold
And the folds by my eyes tell a tale just as bold
My laughter lines are deeper now because I smile twice as much
so if you palm read these first ‘wrinkles’ my life would light up.
Your official position is that smoothness is queen
but without any lines there’s no reading between them
A storybook opening
My life’s just begun and
Once upon never plays
If you cling to line one
As you try to cover the living I’ve done
As a human, a woman, and now as a mum
But your red pen can’t rub out the night’s I’ve not slept, the parts that I’ve bled or the laughter I’ve wept, the baby I held in the stomach that stretched, the breasts that got heavy so baby was fed, the parties I’ve had out, the sleep I’ve missed out on, the dinners I’ve stuffed down my throat like a python,
As you pile on the pressure to cover my life
I wonder what on earth is so wrong with your sight.
If my mind and my memory can tell you my tales
Then why can my body not tell them as well?
As our babies lie naked,
Applauding their skin
I can’t wait for their lives and their lines to begin

http://holliemcnish.bandcamp.com/track/wow

So yeah, I may be lower than low, but damnit it I’m pretty freaking grateful for a lot of life.

But there are many things I realise I have been making stupid choices in. I’ve realised that I can go a full day of being thirsty without taking the time to get myself a drink, because it was never convenient. Or have only one pair of pants to wear because the others have holes in indecent places (why do all my jeans get crotch holes?) but I will wait weeks or months before endeavouring to go to a shop to buy a new pair because it’s not a necessity- it’s only for me.

I’m downright useless at making myself a priority. If phil, or one of the kids needs something, I am on it as quick as a flash. When did I decide that I’m not important?

I wonder what stage of development it is that learn to care for ourselves, if I ever learned it, or if I infect untaught myself!

All people should believe themselves to be of enough value Tom take care of. But how many of us do?