A mother's love...

Motherhood is a funny kind of experience... And I don't mean funny in a 'haha' type of way, I mean it in a peculiar, unique, unlike any other kind of way. On one hand it can be so natural, so organic, like you were put on this earth to be here with these little people in your arms... and at the very same it, it's so alien, so unusual, so out of your comfort zone. It's been the only time in my life where deep down I knew exactly what I was meant to be doing, while simultaneously screaming out for someone to help me.

Becoming a mum myself was the first time in my adult life where I was desperate for it, jealous of others with it, longing for it... A relationship with my own mother.

I can't explain what it is. For the longest time, my mother has been estranged, or in the very least a distant part of my life. For lack of a better word, the relationship is complicated. It's always been strained, and over the years the emotional toll it took on me had to be considered, and eventually for the sake of my relationship with my own children, my relationship with her had to end. Yet, until I entered the realm of motherhood myself, I hadn't really been missing that figure in my life.

Each year, mothers day would come around, and I would often send my dad a message instead. Lets face it, in my late teens and early adulthood, he was the one helping me pick up the pieces after a break up with yet another boyfriend, counselling me through new relationships, through the time we were trying to get pregnant, and weren't! He's been the one there dealing with things that were probably well out of his depth, yet, never once making me feel like he was. On the flip side, when I did see my mother, I was plagued with anxiety. I would worry myself sick over my appearance, worry of the things that she could criticise. I hid aspects of Abbie's birth from her, for fear of judgement, because if it wasn't a text book, drug free birth, then there must be something wrong with me... 'You must've got that from your father's side' she would say.

The affects of this kind of relationship on me are abundantly clear, I think now, I've reached a point where I'm strong enough to move forward. I think i'm more able to face them, and give them a stiff middle-fingered salute that they deserve.

The funny thing is, I don't think I would have ever been capable of moving forward and letting go of the resentment that I had held onto for so many years, until I had children of my own. There are so many times that I have wondered how I will possibly manage to teach my children all of the things a mother should, when I didn't have that myself. What I realise now, is that sometimes the greatest lessons aren't necessarily about what you should be doing, but rather, they're about what you shouldn't be doing. In all of my years of longing, and confusion, I can now honestly say, that my mother has taught me some of my greatest life lessons. I know exactly the kind of mother I don't want to be...

I just have to figure out what kind of mother I do want to be, but that's not something anyone else can teach me. I know now that with the help of my girls, I'll eventually find my own way.