Motherhood did not come easily.
An infinite story on how interpersonal grief (losses of Motherhood) initiated a witnessing of the deepest grief of all, the loss of Mother Earth.
Dear family,
Motherhood did not come easily for me. I handed my children over to childcare within the first year of their lives. This isn't where the loss of Motherhood began, but it was a door to autonomy where I've realised I need to breathe deep into dysregulation and witness the root cause of overstimulation and inadequacy when with my boys.
I didn't know anything about autonomy before having children, or that having them would strip me of it because the only way Mom's are supported in civilisation is by enlisting childcare at extortionate prices due to the fragmentation of our family's and community. And this is a grief, handing them over. And the loss of autonomy is a grief. Who I was before birth was gone; I had evolved, yet I had no space to witness this under the cloud of grief from losing babies, learning to Mother without familial support, having to make a living, and more insidiously, wanting be more than just a Mother, and this too is a grief, as is the ‘being’ Mother, the ‘role’ Mother isn't respected. I felt worthless as a Mother.
Where did Motherhood not coming easily to me begin?
I thought it began with having children, but that was a door to overwhelm.
I thought it began with giving birth, but that was a door to grief.
I thought it began with losing a child, but that was a door to longing.
I thought it began with miscarriage, but that was a door to guilt.
I thought it began with abortion, but that was a door to choice.
Maybe it started with my disobedience in adolescence, or perhaps my Mom's lack of patience born from an urgency to provide and, in productivity, be as free as any man in a career alongside a tight house with clean kids, a full fridge and washed sheets.
If I go further into my life, the beginning of Motherhood not coming easily would be my Mom's loss of her Mom when she needed her the most, her initiation into Motherhood via the early years of my life, and brother's birth.
Then there is an inner child in me who lost a dedicated Nan. A grieving Mother in me who had no space to grieve her Mom in tending to the survival of her baby and child. A Grandmother in me who reluctantly left her daughter and Grandchildren in a too-soon-to-die illness. But this isn't the truth of the beginning either.
It started with my Nan losing babies - as I have in this life - and all the women who came before me losing babies. It began in a new England, when Nan left her truest Mother, Ireland, for the promise of a better life. Then it begins with Mother Ireland reluctantly letting its children go after religion instilled shame on Motherhood out of wedlock. Then it starts with her Mom, then her Mom's Mom, the siblings and the neighbours who had to go into hiding and come back with their own blood tied to them in adoption. Then it begins with the fear of catching pregnant through the experience of love and pleasure. Then it's the Magdelene laundry's insidious theft of carrying women in the name of reformation.
Let's go further than that.
Perhaps during the mass migration or potato famine, where Mothers walked with babies on their backs, not wanting to leave the land that made them. Then it begins with unemployment reaching record heights with barely a way to make an income. Or maybe it started with the call to war, when mothers waited for the losses of husbands and sons. No, it begins when our daughters ran into the arms of sailors, of soldiers, of farmers in desire of a more comfortable life. Then it begins with resentment, with the lives of those ungrateful daughters wanting more than their Mothers had sacrificed for their lives.
No it wasn't then, it was when men were stolen to fight for the wishes of men they'd never met in the name of freedom, when Mothers had to work as well as raise as well as tend in the absence of fathers and here was instilled a need to produce instead of be. It starts with the enlistment of women in industry. It begins then, with the stolen men. Yes, there, right there, when men were taken from the land to be sailors or soldiers or miners or farmers for more than the land could take.
What is Motherhood without sons or fathers?
It doesn't begin there at all, it begins with the sale of daughters, first for less of a mouth to feed, not for the dowry of the wealthy, but for one less mouth to feed, or cover a debt, or keep hold of the land with child bearing genes as the call to action. What if it starts with our villages exchanging daughters for earth?
Then I believe it starts with the installation of churches under Yew trees.
It started when they caught us travelling, taking only what we could before moving on through the seasons to the next abundance the land gifted. It began when we had to settle. It began when our breathing with the cran, abhainn, móinéir and séasúr became witchcraft, and our nature rebranded savage. It started with colonising the land and, subsequently, the colonisation of Motherhood, the abandonment of community and the high-jacking of our nervous systems for the benefit of commerce.
It began when we were stolen from Mother Earth.
It began when we were stolen from Mother Nature.
It began when we were stolen from our Nature.
It began when we were stolen from the cran, abhainn, móinéir and séasúr.
We've been stolen, over and over again, first from our land, then from each other. Our truest mother is the land. As our land is taken from us, a lineage of Motherhood is lost in a societal chain reaction generation after generation after generation. Our interpersonal grief is a door to a much greater connection with each-other, but we need the space and support to honour our interpersonal grief, the grief of our family lines, and the grief within our community in order to understand the origin of our depression, stress, addiction and dissolution.
How would Motherhood come easily with so much loss?
I found it really hard to get started writing this. It took me three hours of faffing around the house, repeating the opening line in my head so I wouldn't forget it. Then, when I sat to start I felt nauseous with nerves, a fearfulness of displeasing whoever reads it as if writing about Motherhood requires a long life of experience or some qualification or for me to be with my children all the time rather than co-parenting, that fundamentally, I am not worthy of writing about Motherhood, and this is the colonisation of the soul, that Mom, Mother, Mamma, Mam, Mum, and Ma should question themselves to the point of in-expression.
I came to this awakening through the gentle community mothers Nici Harrison (founder of the Grief Space) and Veronica Stanwell (founder of Rooted Healing), during an Earth Medicine Grief Tending retreat.
Beautiful. Thanks for bringing me back to this thought - mother noun vs mother verb xx
Such powerful writing Hayley. I'm not a mother but recognise all those experiences in my ancestors, women who lived through displacement, loss and trauma. Thank you for expressing these griefs so coherently, giving sorrow words. Vicky