Guest blog by Sabine Skarratt
Becoming a Mother changes your whole world and shakes you to your core.
Motherhood is the job you can’t walk away from, no matter how close to breaking point you think you are on any given day. We choose to show up again and again each day because we feel such a primal love for our children.
I have read that becoming a mother actually changes the make-up of our brains, which helps to explain why we feel so different. We learn how to survive on very little sleep, how to use our initiative, incredible time-management skills, multi-tasking, problem-solving and mastering the art of negotiation (which may involve a chocolate bribe or two!).
Motherhood teaches us extreme resilience and gives us a new found confidence - we are in charge of another human being! What an incredible responsibility.
I want to share my Motherhood story and how through my fair share of dark times, I am slowly becoming the person I was meant to be and my long buried creative streak was reignited.
I was a very creative child, I absolutely adored writing stories and reading books. My passion for writing and literature stayed with me until after I left college. Once I entered the ‘real’ world of work, writing seemed like a luxury. I tried to re-start it at a few points but never found the time or motivation.
After the birth of my son six years ago, I felt an overwhelming surge of creative energy return to me. I blogged and journalled as an outlet and it was an enormous help.
Looking back, I don’t think I was far from postnatal depression/ anxiety after an extremely traumatic birth experience with my first child. I went back to a highly-pressured charity marketing job four days a week with a long commute when my baby was just six months old.
It was hard, on one hand I enjoyed adult company, engaging my brain again and drinking my tea hot but it physically hurt my heart to spend such a long time away from my baby.
A year and a half on and after major burnout (I was also suffering from an overactive thyroid and planning my wedding), I decided to leave that job and take some time out to spend with my toddler.
We made some changes and cut back on our outgoings and my Husband received a promotion which made this possible. I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted, time I had never had during the13 years I’d worked in the corporate world before children.
The hardest thing is feeling so torn. Our generation were sold the story that we could ‘have it all’, and be anything we wanted to be and once we become Mothers we realise that something has to give. I don’t think there is a right or wrong – what feels right for one Mother won’t feel right for another. In our culture of 24-hour social media and comparison, it can be hard to find your own voice and desires amongst the noise.
We are expected to parent like we don’t have jobs and work like we don’t have children. With our helicopter parenting culture, we feel more responsible than ever for how our children are going to turn out!
We need to give ourselves a break Mammas. From talking to older, wiser women; I have concluded that they were under much less pressure than we are today. They had far fewer choices which took away the decision making, no social media so they couldn’t literally compare themselves to other mums across the entire globe like we do!
I have tried numerous things since having children. My son is now six and I also have a daughter who is almost three and I work 18 hours part-time for a family support charity as a Marketing & Comms Manager, which gives me the flexibility I need.
But I have so many plans! Sometimes I get overwhelmed, stuck in procrastination - not knowing where to start because there is so much I want to do. I am inspired by the hundreds of ‘Mumpreneurs’ I read about or hear on podcasts, who have started their own businesses since having children. They get their energy from this new found creative spark combined with the motivation to set their own schedules to suit the needs of their family.
I am in deep admiration for these women but often compare and berate myself for not being able to launch something so brilliant. What we often don’t see, is all the hard work and sacrifice that goes on behind the scenes which has led to their success.
So what is my advice? Start small. I recently listened to a brilliant Mel Robbins audiobook called ‘Take Control of your Life,’ and in the first client coaching session, she spoke of a concept of building blocks into your life. Like Lego blocks, start small and build piece by piece.
Do what you can with what you have now. Don’t get carried away with the end goal or the finished product, set yourselves small goals like submitting one guest blog post a month, learning how to edit a video, learning watercolour painting. Follow your curiosity – try new things however you can, build community and see where it takes you. Involve your children in your projects where you can and take up a hobby – be curious and give your creativity room to grow.
I strongly believe that we need something outside of our roles as mothers, whether that is as a hobby or whether it leads to an amazing new career. We often don’t have access to the same social life as we did before children, so discover something new that is accessible and in which you can lose yourself for a little while.
Motherhood is beautiful, overwhelming, tiring, all-consuming. It’s the balance between drinking it all in and realising that this is a short season of your life and it won’t always be this intense. In the future you will get that time to yourself that you are craving, once your children don’t need you so much.
What a better role model, than a Mother who follows her heart?
For more inspiration:
Books
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability
Inspiring podcast episodes
Inspiration
Beth Kempton is fantastic. She runs a website which is full of ideas, inspiration and online courses to help you find your passions. I have completed two online writing courses with Beth (one was free, the other very affordable) which I would highly recommend.
She is a Mother and an Entrepreneur who walks the talk!
About the Author
Sabine Skarratt is a Mother to two energetic little ones, a Wife and Charity Communications Manager for a Family Support Charity, Home-Start HOST, (Instagram) and lives in Manchester, UK.
In her *ahem* spare time she enjoys writing, rediscovering her creativity, reading (mostly chick-lit and contemporary novels), drinking tea, eating chocolate, being in nature and listening to an inspirational podcast!
She occasionally blogs over at: wordsbysabine.com and on Instagram.
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