I was the perfect mother. It was a Monday, and despite a restless night I treated my sons with impeccable respect and inexhaustible patience; I acknowledged and met their every need for comfort, connection and care. No emotion was too big for me to help them face, no childish desire of theirs was too small for me to acknowledge, there was no compromise I was unwilling to help them reach. I watched them unfurling like flowers, blossoming under this perfect parenting, becoming happier, more cooperative, more patient themselves – faster than I ever could have imagined possible. Finally, there was enough love to go around, enough Mum for everybody.
By Tuesday my body had already started shrinking as I prioritised my burning need to mother perfectly over feeding myself. Soon, I realised to my satisfaction, I would be the perfectly shaped woman as well as the perfect mother. This could only be good news. I stopped sleeping almost entirely, waking with the slightest night-time noise to spring out of bed and check on my brood, three beautiful boys, blissfully asleep and completely unaware of all the dangers lurking in the dark that their watchful mother was ready to defend them from.
Fuelled by half or three quarters of an hour of sleep, I got the kids ready for school on the Wednesday. Uniforms donned, shoes located and breakfasts made, sibling spats mediated and resolved to everybody’s satisfaction; none of it could touch me. Why would it? I’m the perfect mother. Look at me, coping with it all with ease and grace. I don’t even resent it any more.
By Thursday evening I was being forcibly sedated in a psychiatric ward; I hadn’t slept and had barely eaten for five days. It took two men to restrain me so an injection could be administered that would make me rest. As I was being pinned down on the mattress of a hospital bed by men twice my size, I floated gently out of my body and started doing yoga, stretching out my hamstrings in a downward-facing dog, whilst singing a Gaelic lullaby to the newborn baby who had for some reason been given into my care.
That’s it. That’s how long it can take for a woman – a strong, smart and articulate woman like me – to break under the strain of being the perfect mother. About five days, give or take.
Because to be a perfect mother under the expectations of the society we live in, basically demands that you surrender any and all needs of your own, and give yourself over entirely to the service of others, however demanding they may be and whatever limitations of your own may exist. For me, those limitations included a hefty dose of repressed trauma, the precise nature of which is unclear at this time, although apparently clearly recognisable as same by the doctors who sectioned me. Then a perfectionist streak a mile wide. That was all it took to drive me over the edge into what my doctor called “une bouffée de folie” or a “puff of madness”.
Perfectionist as I am, I only spent about a week in hospital. The first third I spent drugged-up and sleeping, waking up every so often confused and vulnerable to receive visitors, and to send terrified text messages to family and friends – “I need to know what the fuck is going on – are you safe??”
By the Friday, I’d come to believe that I was taking part in a huge social experiment to find out if there was any such thing as the perfect mother. Hidden cameras were secreted around the ward, and I walked round and around the U-shaped living area, making gentle eye contact with every patient, and giving them a soft smile if I thought that wouldn’t seem too threatening to them. There was a pregnant woman there, wrapped in a hijab and robes; clearly afraid of giving birth, needing to be mothered and protected from Islamophobia. I was there for her; I skirted around her personal space, giving her an encouraging smile from time to time, and letting her know without saying a word, that I was there to keep her safe. I spent hours pacing the floor, holding the space for everybody in that ward. Nobody, whether staff or patient, was allowed to feel that I wasn’t ready to spring to their service at the slightest indication I might be needed.
Eventually (although stupidly fast according to the expectations of everybody involved, not least my doctor) I improved enough to understand where I was. The woman striding around on her mobile phone wasn’t actually Nicola Sturgeon in disguise, she was Suzanne, another patient with a heart of gold, pathologically unable to express anything but her truth. Living your truth on the outside of a psychiatric ward is life goals for many; but as a patient it leads only to more question marks over your sanity. I liked Suzanne a lot.
As I rested and improved, I started to notice just how fine the lines are between sane and insane; between healthy “normal” people and those who need the state to intervene to keep them, or others, safe. I had been sectioned and described in notes as “clearly psychotic” and yet I had only been staying awake in an effort to keep everybody in and around my family safe. Surely this was just the job of a good mother?
Writing this is part therapy for me, part warning for anybody who feels like reading it. I realised last night as a dear friend gave me some reflexology and a safe space to speak, that presenting myself as sane enough, fast enough to get out of that hospital, simply launched me straight back into the pattern I’ve been following for as long as I can remember – sacrificing my own health, mental and physical to create a display of coping, to reassure everybody around me that I don’t need help.
Because when you’re a perfectionist with low self-esteem, when somebody offers you help, you don’t see the love and care behind the offer, all you hear is the perceived insult “you’re not good enough.”
We need to have a serious think about the expectations we place on ourselves as mothers. The pressure to “have it all” is insidious and fucking terrifying – if we don’t have endless reserves of patience and compassion to lavish on our children, pert breasts and arses clad in expensive active-wear, gleaming show-homes and fulfilling careers, we’re given to believe we’re somehow failing. And no matter how good a game we talk about the number of fucks we give (behold the barren field in which mine ought to grow) I doubt there’s even one of us who can, hand on heart, swear to never having suffered impostor syndrome and anxiety in case the world should discover just how very, very far from perfect we really are.
If anybody is reading this and it rings a bell, let me leave you with the words a few wonderful women engraved on a beautiful silver bracelet for me, to celebrate me getting out of hospital.
You are loved….You are enough.
Fix your own oxygen mask first. There needs to be enough Mum left for you, if you’re going to deduct all the myriad ways in which you serve everybody else.
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The F-MoB 
The Perfect Mother
Posted in Feminism, Parenthood, Social commentary on October 31, 2018| Leave a Comment »
I was the perfect mother. It was a Monday, and despite a restless night I treated my sons with impeccable respect and inexhaustible patience; I acknowledged and met their every need for comfort, connection and care. No emotion was too big for me to help them face, no childish desire of theirs was too small for me to acknowledge, there was no compromise I was unwilling to help them reach. I watched them unfurling like flowers, blossoming under this perfect parenting, becoming happier, more cooperative, more patient themselves – faster than I ever could have imagined possible. Finally, there was enough love to go around, enough Mum for everybody.
By Tuesday my body had already started shrinking as I prioritised my burning need to mother perfectly over feeding myself. Soon, I realised to my satisfaction, I would be the perfectly shaped woman as well as the perfect mother. This could only be good news. I stopped sleeping almost entirely, waking with the slightest night-time noise to spring out of bed and check on my brood, three beautiful boys, blissfully asleep and completely unaware of all the dangers lurking in the dark that their watchful mother was ready to defend them from.
Fuelled by half or three quarters of an hour of sleep, I got the kids ready for school on the Wednesday. Uniforms donned, shoes located and breakfasts made, sibling spats mediated and resolved to everybody’s satisfaction; none of it could touch me. Why would it? I’m the perfect mother. Look at me, coping with it all with ease and grace. I don’t even resent it any more.
By Thursday evening I was being forcibly sedated in a psychiatric ward; I hadn’t slept and had barely eaten for five days. It took two men to restrain me so an injection could be administered that would make me rest. As I was being pinned down on the mattress of a hospital bed by men twice my size, I floated gently out of my body and started doing yoga, stretching out my hamstrings in a downward-facing dog, whilst singing a Gaelic lullaby to the newborn baby who had for some reason been given into my care.
That’s it. That’s how long it can take for a woman – a strong, smart and articulate woman like me – to break under the strain of being the perfect mother. About five days, give or take.
Because to be a perfect mother under the expectations of the society we live in, basically demands that you surrender any and all needs of your own, and give yourself over entirely to the service of others, however demanding they may be and whatever limitations of your own may exist. For me, those limitations included a hefty dose of repressed trauma, the precise nature of which is unclear at this time, although apparently clearly recognisable as same by the doctors who sectioned me. Then a perfectionist streak a mile wide. That was all it took to drive me over the edge into what my doctor called “une bouffée de folie” or a “puff of madness”.
Perfectionist as I am, I only spent about a week in hospital. The first third I spent drugged-up and sleeping, waking up every so often confused and vulnerable to receive visitors, and to send terrified text messages to family and friends – “I need to know what the fuck is going on – are you safe??”
By the Friday, I’d come to believe that I was taking part in a huge social experiment to find out if there was any such thing as the perfect mother. Hidden cameras were secreted around the ward, and I walked round and around the U-shaped living area, making gentle eye contact with every patient, and giving them a soft smile if I thought that wouldn’t seem too threatening to them. There was a pregnant woman there, wrapped in a hijab and robes; clearly afraid of giving birth, needing to be mothered and protected from Islamophobia. I was there for her; I skirted around her personal space, giving her an encouraging smile from time to time, and letting her know without saying a word, that I was there to keep her safe. I spent hours pacing the floor, holding the space for everybody in that ward. Nobody, whether staff or patient, was allowed to feel that I wasn’t ready to spring to their service at the slightest indication I might be needed.
Eventually (although stupidly fast according to the expectations of everybody involved, not least my doctor) I improved enough to understand where I was. The woman striding around on her mobile phone wasn’t actually Nicola Sturgeon in disguise, she was Suzanne, another patient with a heart of gold, pathologically unable to express anything but her truth. Living your truth on the outside of a psychiatric ward is life goals for many; but as a patient it leads only to more question marks over your sanity. I liked Suzanne a lot.
As I rested and improved, I started to notice just how fine the lines are between sane and insane; between healthy “normal” people and those who need the state to intervene to keep them, or others, safe. I had been sectioned and described in notes as “clearly psychotic” and yet I had only been staying awake in an effort to keep everybody in and around my family safe. Surely this was just the job of a good mother?
Writing this is part therapy for me, part warning for anybody who feels like reading it. I realised last night as a dear friend gave me some reflexology and a safe space to speak, that presenting myself as sane enough, fast enough to get out of that hospital, simply launched me straight back into the pattern I’ve been following for as long as I can remember – sacrificing my own health, mental and physical to create a display of coping, to reassure everybody around me that I don’t need help.
Because when you’re a perfectionist with low self-esteem, when somebody offers you help, you don’t see the love and care behind the offer, all you hear is the perceived insult “you’re not good enough.”
We need to have a serious think about the expectations we place on ourselves as mothers. The pressure to “have it all” is insidious and fucking terrifying – if we don’t have endless reserves of patience and compassion to lavish on our children, pert breasts and arses clad in expensive active-wear, gleaming show-homes and fulfilling careers, we’re given to believe we’re somehow failing. And no matter how good a game we talk about the number of fucks we give (behold the barren field in which mine ought to grow) I doubt there’s even one of us who can, hand on heart, swear to never having suffered impostor syndrome and anxiety in case the world should discover just how very, very far from perfect we really are.
If anybody is reading this and it rings a bell, let me leave you with the words a few wonderful women engraved on a beautiful silver bracelet for me, to celebrate me getting out of hospital.
You are loved….You are enough.
Fix your own oxygen mask first. There needs to be enough Mum left for you, if you’re going to deduct all the myriad ways in which you serve everybody else.
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