This week’s offering from Dispatches from New Motherhood is a powerful and moving piece of self-reflection. In CHOOSE TODAY, H.P. writes of the pressures placed on mental health, and takes us directly into her daughter’s world – and her own.
‘I wrote my piece as a promise to my daughter to try to keep going even through the hard times and to remember how important her world is and to not let my problems overtake it – and as a message/ a reminder to myself of the mum that I want to be,’ says H.P. ‘It was written with the intention of reading it on the days when I am struggling. I knew that if it was in print it would be more effective than a journal entry and that I could read it back and be reminded of that first year of Motherhood and the strong Mum I could envisage myself being.’
H.P. lets us in on her process, saying that she realised she had to ‘let a lot of stuff out’ to enable her to focus on what she wanted to write. ‘As a lone parent I didn't get much time to write outside of the class, my piece was written during nap times and late at night while my 14 month old daughter was asleep. I wrote many drafts, I slept very little, I started again on new pieces and then edited those drafts countless times. I wrote thousands of words, I cried a lot, and I felt the most connected with myself than I had in a long time.’
CHOOSE TODAY is a briliantly honest and empowering piece of writing about the emotional challenges of motherhood, and the importance of engaging with the ‘now’.
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CHOOSE TODAY
H.P.
There are moments, mornings, whole days where I feel consumed with worry and fear.
There are moments, mornings, whole days where I feel consumed with affection and gratitude.
Both states lead to the same outcome: I care for you, I love you, and I stay. I don't run. Until you, I had always been able to run.
You challenge my inner critic, my indecisiveness, all my bad habits. No other person in my life would get away with it. And for these hours no other job would be worth the pay.
You're my tiny snotty resident mindfulness guru. When my thoughts get dark there you are looking up at me, roaring like a dinosaur; there you are saying 'up' for a cuddle; there you are waking from a nap and immediately launching into a sleepy series of all the animal noises you can do – which I have to get on film because that shit could go viral.
There you are. And, suddenly, I'm here too.
Your world is bananas, muddy puddles, Iggle Piggle and the animal street art we wave at around Bristol. You want me to build towers with you, to laugh with you, to put my phone down, to look at you, to stop reading about Brexit or Megxit. To play 70s pop music, to swap the normal light bulb for the dizzy disco red, green and blue spinning one and dance around the room like a monkey. To pick you up and take you into the garden and show you the trains going past the garden fence. You want me to acknowledge your Choo Choos. You want convincing surprised expressions every time you reveal yourself from under a blanket that's barely covering you. To let you poke around my mouth with my toothbrush even if I'm tired, even if the bathroom tiles are cold and my legs are bare, even if it's 9.30pm and you should be in bed and I've had a day of feeling hopeless and lost. Even then.
This is your world, those are your priorities, my worries and fears are not. And that's exactly as it should be.
You need me to be a carer, a friend, a teacher, a performer, a provider. You need me to fight for a life lived with honesty and authenticity. To find my voice, so that I can be there for you when you're finding yours.
I still think about the days when I had the freedom to live selfishly, and the opportunity to escape and detach.
Before you, I could tell myself, 'I'll try and be something tomorrow, I'll do something important and meaningful tomorrow.' I rarely did.
To know that, today, I could always run, used to be my safety, my security, and my restraint.
I didn't know courage and strength until I fell pregnant with you. And in choosing you, I had to finally, after years of 'tomorrows', choose today.
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Choose Today by H.P. appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.