Saturday, 05 December 2009

• What to Do After Motherhood

  Guest Post by Mama True

  

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  Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or are working outside of the house and coming home to take care of kids, it’s easy to lose yourself. My long time friend Estelle Marchasin wrote this great article on how she’s finding her identity again after five years staying home with her kids.

  The following article is a guest post on Writing After Kids. Estelle is a stay-at-home mother of two, and wife to one. She is developing her novel, The Lost Angels, with the help of published author and poet, Sharon Darrow.  She currently lives in New Jersey; but Taos, New Mexico will always be home.
  

  Writing After Babies

  I have never identified myself as a writer, though if I think about it, I have been writing all my life.  When I was a little girl I used to write fantasy stories called “The Happy Family.”  I filled notebooks with them and then destroyed them because I thought, even at eight, that they were terrible.  A friend of mine reminded me recently that I used to do people’s English papers in high school.  This was certainly not due to any superior literacy, but rather in response to a burning need to be liked in combination with the deep lethargy of a few of my friends.  Whatever the reason, it hardly seemed a burden.  Later I put forth a number of melodramatic poems, a few erotic stories (mostly because the ones I found failed to get me off), and finally an aborted novel that didn’t have all that much to it.
  

  I was always distracted, mostly by boys.  All I wanted was a beautiful romance, a man who would die for me, and lots and lots of sweaty, forget-the-world sex.  I met the man, had the sex, the wedding, and finally the babies. Time sped up.  Now when I think about those years, I hear that zip-zippy fast forward sound. I hardly remember any of it. All I know is that I was planning a wedding, saying vows and then pregnant or lactating for five years.

  Then one day, sleep deprived, shell shocked and scarred, I landed back in my body.  Writing had faded out completely; along with showers, shaving, exercise and what little self esteem I had, which you know wasn’t so much to begin with.  Being a generally proactive person, I tried to shake myself out of the depressive daze I was in.  It took so much effort just to give my kids what they needed that everything else felt like marrow suck age, like walking through concrete, like suffocation.

  In an effort to improve myself, I bought a book called All About Me . It was filled with questions such as “How do you like your eggs?” and “What country do you most want to visit?”.  I remember so clearly sitting in sweat pants as my daughter, then a baby took her nap.  I stared at page after page of questions.  Beyond my name and my incomplete family tree, I couldn’t answer a single one.  I wondered if I had ever known who I was, or anything about myself for that matter. I was so disturbed that I filled in all the blanks and now when I look at it, I know I faked every answer and almost none of it rings true. That was how far away from myself I got.  I had nothing.

  I agonized.  I had to do something to shock myself out of my paralysis. What would I do? What could I do? Maybe I should be an acupuncturist, a florist, or perhaps being a stay at home mom was my lot and I should be happy with that.  Okay.  I could be a mommy who really sucked at housework. Why not?

  Then about a year ago, I had a dream about a boy and two angels. Throughout the day, a story followed.  I felt like it was downloading from heaven.  Every day that it didn’t fade, that it took on new shades, I literally thanked the universe.  Out loud. My brain was doing something.  Hallelujah!

  A month later I started to write. My son went down for his nap everyday and I wrote; tired, no exhausted, sleep deprived, crazy, desperate, whatever.  I had to do it.  It felt like a gift and I was afraid if I squandered it, it would go away.

  Everything got bigger.  Magical things started to happen.  I met writers, and talked to new people on the phone. I had insane, synchronistic accidents take me down unfamiliar and unexpected paths. I unfolded and expanded.  I had ideas. I had become so small, so faded, and once the writing started, I felt myself unfurling into my own shadowy corners.

  I would say it’s because of my kids that all of this has happened.  I lost myself when I got married and had children.  They took everything.  They gave everything, too, but I had to start over. I had a clean slate, a chance to be different and better and wiser at things, including writing.   Thanks to the responsibilities of running my family, my days are divided, hour by hour, minute by minute.  My life is disciplined in a whole new way (breakfast, brush teeth, clothes on, bath, tantrum, art projects, park, so many kisses, and on and on),and begins at an hour I could never have conceived of before kids.

  Writing is a blessed relief.  It is the only place that my kids and my husband can’t touch, and after the daily six hour breast exam administered by my two year old; sometimes I just don’t want to be touched at all. And after my daughter has been talking for nine hours in a row, a moment spent in the company of the friends living in my head is a sweet reward.  I don’t want to make it sound like I’m not infinitely grateful for my life.  I am.  My babies and my man are my soul, my light, my life.  It just wouldn’t be right to paint a false picture.  It has all been extremely trying, the best and most difficult years so far.

  But now, no matter what, there’s more than a mommy in me.  There’s the story too, and that belongs to me alone.  I don’t knit, or climb mountains, or paint.  I write. The characters of my own creation are the best and most exciting companions I have when I need to get away.

  Without my babies, there is no doubt I would still be tooling around, wasting my days pondering my own bullshit.  Who would stop me? Who would need so much from me that a whole new sub-me had to invent itself? Thanks to them, if I can eke out some time for myself, it is spent visiting that internal life that has become so true, and so necessary. They are the catalysts for my mandatory illumination.  My head isn’t going in the oven, you know? Thanks to them, this time I am on the third re-write of my novel, and I think it might be okay.  They gave me that for sure. But thanks to writing, I also shower, shave, and run once more.

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