On Motherhood
Today I am going to talk about motherhood.
As we grow alongside our children we reach new chapters of negotiation.
(Content warning: this post may act as a powerful contraceptive, or aphrodisiac.)
This weekend, my kids declared war, and we went into battle.
I would usually say motherhood is a flow state: eat, play, sleep, repeat.
Attunement and riding the waves of growth spurts. An ongoing connection that is whittled into its own shape, day after day.
A few days ago however, my oldest decided that adult-rules cage his little body in unforgiving ways. He rebelled. He grew wings and found his roar.
His little brother colluded with him and joined the frontline because it seemed like a hootenanny.
All boundaries and rules were contested without words.
–
Round 1 begins
Fighting.
Snatching. Biting. Kicking. Pushing.
Poo and wee in inconvenient public places.
Licking the rain drops off the neighbours car mirror. Tasting the world.
I tend to agree, there are too many rules and life can feel sterile, contrived, prepackaged.
My battle strategy was connection. How can I get through to these wild children, seemingly immune to my words and deaf to my voice?
Mud. Ankle deep in it.
Rock piles. Puddles. Trees to climb.
Bush walks and bridge crossings.
We stumble upon a venomous brown snake. Got a little too close to it accidentally.
Face to face with danger.
We jump backwards and embrace each other. Hearts pounding.
A pause and a moment of quiet, snuggling on a high ridge line.
Home through wet grass.
I feel as though my strategy might be working…
–
Round 2
The couch deconstructed.
The water tap knobs removed.
The toys, thrown.
Laughter.
The potted planted, denuded and knocked over.
The dry laundry, scattered recklessly around the house.
Our neighbour left petrol laying around near their shed—that got poured onto the dirt. Petrol stench.
Running. Hiding. Laughing.
Blind and deaf to any hint of containment.
I feel myself hating my children.
The hours of effort.
The thrown food.
Then, I’m hating myself.
Becoming the monster with more rules.
Shame comes to join the battle ground.
My mind starts to search for external answers, losing confidence.
–
Round 3
Wrestling. Crying.
Laughing.
Tumbling. Tickling. Rolling.
Jumping. Swooping.
Charging like a bull.
Becoming rhinos.
I begin to trust my raw wild instincts.
Suddenly I am myself.
swooping, rough tumbling, and dodging the rhinos.
I enter the battle with my whole body. Heavy against them. With them. I am pulled into the play. Playing.
A relentless assault on my senses.
And, the only way to speak their language.
Where are the high energy kids ready to scramble and roam with them? I grieve for the absence of thick vigorous play in their lives, not realising that maybe this is my job—I’m the battle opponent.
–
Round 4
Climbing the kitchen bench.
Kitchen knives being run around the house.
The laundry cupboard pulled apart, linen and towels run around the house, more laughter.
It’s not so funny.
The fridge being raided.
Milk poured two-year-old style onto a puddle in the kitchen floor.
Chairs relocated and formed into an obstacle course.
All bedding covers and pillows taken to create a jumping crash pile.
I’m riding the waves of my own powerlessness and power.
Their energy and creativity in how they are unleashing their wild bodies is quite frankly, stunning.
I love them and I hate them all at once.
Shame. I feel so far removed from the idea of motherly material.
I am part frustrated Monster and part deeply caring Mother.
I recognise that my boys want to feel the world organically enter them. They want rough, hard, heavy, deep play. They want to taste, smell and feel everything.
“Don’t touch! Stop! No, not that!”
And every day they are confronted with ‘nice’ play that follows all the social niceness.
I hate myself for being so nice.
I hate myself for beginning to enjoy this tough play.
I surrender into the mud, rocks and rumbles.
And, I love myself for my nice, my mud, my ugly rough edges.
Compassion. Love. Wholeness.
The edges of the edges.
Staying with it. Always searching for a crack between us where connection might lie. Feeling my way through my senses.
What does my body know here in this liminal space? How can I follow my animal instincts in war zone?
Listening. Responding. Feeling.
Firmness. Wild chaos.
The laughter.
Adults are so serious with so many rules. It is true.
My kids want to massage cheese into feet and mud into wrists.
Meeting them in their wildness and moving into the mess is the way.
Getting rough and rumbling.
Edging in toward very precarious boundaries.
Navigating a sense of questionable safety for all of us.
I join the fun: alive, panting with breathlessness.
Going against my ‘nice’ training.
Being impulsive. Allowing my inner instincts to take over and move for me.
Impulse driven play and connection that is somehow rough and laughing.
Beyond the comfort zone of what mothering apparently should look like.
I felt battle-trained like a warrioress at peak fitness. Flying alongside my preschoolers, jumping from edge to edge, running and grabbing, hooking and hoisting. Tickling with ferocity.
All breath. Instantaneous processing through felt sense. There were no words or internal scripts. Just pure movement between our three bodies. A union.
Pure attunement to who I was and who my children needed me to be in that moment.
The intensity of this play felt like giving birth. Deeply intimate and spontaneous. Alive, together, inside each other and touched firmly by one another.
Wild. Animal. Impulsive.
It wasn’t nice. It was more muddy.
Not the soft, gentle mother of the media.
I did and said a lot during that war that I am not proud of.
Rupture and repair has an intimacy to it that we traversed repeatedly.
I kept looking for the cracks where new roots could grow connections between us.
And this feels enough.
Motherhood is learning to love the mess, the hate, the wild, the broken and the venomous.
–
Round 5
Books. Cooking. Cleaning the mess together. Lego movies and snuggles in bed.
They’re so cute when they sleep.
–
As this mammoth weekend of boundary exploration came to a close, I felt invigorated.
The kids returned to their usual eat-play-sleep rhythm.
People asked me after I posted about this: “Why weren’t you exhausted?”
The answer is this; “Because I was Sensing Ground. I was in my body, breathing through each moment and connected to my senses. I was alive with presence, attuned to myself and my children. I was opening up, not shutting down.”
To join me in Sensing Ground, sign up to be notified when the community opens here.
This way of life gives us the resilience to meet any challenge that comes our way.
We ride the waves and we maintain perspective. Above all else, we trust our body as our compass and we look within to find our own answers.
We know that in each moment, we have all the information that we need to navigate here and now. Always arrived. Eternally connected and reconnecting.
I’d love to share the Sensing Ground journey of discovery with you and to see you in my upcoming monthly Sensing Ground Calls.
