Removing the filters
At 8 months postpartum, I’ve found myself calling ‘Cry-sis’, a wonderful charity offering help and support to parents with babies who cry excessively or have sleeping problems. Truth is, I nearly called them 5 months ago when I felt the same level of overwhelm.
I felt compelled to write a blog post on this because I’ve recently launched my website. It contains beautiful professional images of me during my first pregnancy and from a recent photoshoot at ‘Be Still Retreat’, however, this is not my reality. It is curated and beautifully edited.
Context. That’s the key word here. I don’t approach birth and postpartum work from a position of blissful ignorance or blinkered vision.
When I completed my training to become a breastfeeding peer supporter, I was pregnant with my second son and joyfully talked about my wonderfully easy breastfeeding journey with my first born. The reality: yes, the feeding journey was easy but thank goodness it was because I spent the first 2 months of my postpartum by the side of a hospice bed as my mother passed away.
The reality of ‘mothering without a mother’ led me down the path of exploring matrescence- a hugely transformative phase that we don’t acknowledge or honour the way we do adolescence. Through doing so, I felt connected to so many more women than I ever had before. I felt their sorrows and joys and wanted to build them up. When I took a moment to step back from my immediate priorities and see how so many people feel that they’re ‘just surviving’, I felt seen. I truly felt solidarity for the first time in my life.
Loneliness. That’s something I associate with both of my postpartum periods. Yes, I saw other new mums and babies with their mums and that hit me hard- I was alone with my baby, wishing I could share these moments with my own mum. It wasn’t just that though. When I looked closer, I wasn’t the only one alone in their motherhood journey- we all were. My matrescence is mine only and that journey is a journey I will continue to travel alone: my babies, my motherhood.
What makes the journey less lonely is the safety net around us. For some, that is robust and well-established, and for others, there is no such thing. What I want to do is promote the idea of us creating our own safety nets by recognising that we weren’t meant to walk this path without a view of the paths well-trodden before us. Or keep walking whilst wounded and without rest. Or walk through our own puddles of tears without having them wiped away before they land.
I think this has been a journalling opportunity for me!
But opening my heart and removing the filters hopefully makes it a little clearer. The reality is that I’m in the thick of it too.
Cry-sis
Be Still Retreat
https://www.bestillretreat.co.uk/
Photography