This week’s offering from our Dispatches from New Motherhood anthology is LIFE IS HERE by Danielle Duggan, a tender and powerfully-expressed reflection on her role as a mum, and that of others before her.
Danielle says, ‘I wanted to write about how parenting feels both mundane and profound, sometimes all at the same time. I found becoming a mum a huge adjustment and I couldn't quite believe that so many people must have felt like this including my mum and grandmas and women before them. ‘
Of her process, Danielle says, ‘I wrote whenever I got a few minutes to myself which wasn't often. Even without a pen or paper I found myself thinking about a line when I was making tea or rewording a sentence in my head while trying to get my boys down for bed.’
And of Mothership, Danielle says, ‘I remember reading about the classes when my second son was just a few days old and immediately emailing to try to get a place. The classes were such a highlight of my maternity leave, that time every two weeks was time just for me.’
Enjoy Danielle’s beautiful piece here.
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Life is Here
Danielle Duggan
You passed away the day before we found out he was a boy. As I watched him wriggling around on the screen I thought of all the amazing things he was going to experience and of the moments we had thought you would share with him and his brother. I was happy that you had known he existed at all.
When he was born I thought of you again. Holding him against me, looking into his dark eyes, just as you had held my mum in your arms as an exhausted new mother years ago, I felt the invisible thread through generations of women. You all felt this responsibility for a tiny creature you had created – did it envelop and consume you the way it does me? Some mornings I find myself staring into nothingness. Too many questions, too many decisions to make, and I feel broken – struggling to find the energy to stand up. I imagine that you felt this way once, and my mum too. I hope that this is normal, that I’m not doing it wrong.
There are moments when I feel my day should be filmed and shared with teenagers as a means of contraception. When the baby will not be put down for one second and I attempt to prepare dinner with only one functioning hand. When his older brother lies beetroot faced and wailing on the floor because he wanted the yellow plate. When their dad sleeps peacefully through the hungry insistent cries and I feel a frustration I’ve never known before. I wish I had asked more about your own experiences of motherhood and the highlights and challenges of raising a child.
At times I feel that motherhood has reduced me to a mere feeding machine, with a constant dull ache behind my eyes, and a restless anxiety in my stomach. But I also feel emboldened by being a mother. I feel braver and stronger than I ever knew I could be. I feel grateful for each day and the new experiences it will bring, both good and bad, because I am getting to share it with my boys. They are mine and I am theirs. Life is not ahead of us, or behind us, but here. It is happening in the sleepy midnight feeds, the sticky handprints, the gummy smiles, the dirty nappies, the baked-bean-smeared faces – all the things that make up every day. My sons have made me a mother, and while it may be terrifying, relentless and exhausting at times, life is more exciting and full of possibility than ever before. I hope you found it all worth it too.
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Life is Here by Danielle Duggan 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.