Happy Mothers Day

My mother is pretty awesome.

It's really only since I have been a mother myself that I have gained an insight into exactly how awesome my own mother is.

I have always been thankful for everything she has given me, my ethics, my faith, my passion for the environment, my resilience, my self-confidence, and everything else that I am because of her.  

She would take us to local farm shops to buy us fresh organic vegetables.  She set up a wholefoods co-operative from her home so we could eat the best food she could get hold of.  My mum always put us first paying for dance lessons, gymnastics, instrument lessons, and all the clubs and groups you could imagine, driving us here there and everywhere for lessons, exams and shows because she wanted us to have as many experiences as possible.  She took us to church every week, nurturing our faith and helping us to become part of the family of Christ.  When I suffered terribly with eczema she explored every alternative therapy possible and paid for Chiropractor visits when I suffered from back pain. My mum always encouraged me to give things a try and always do my best.  She always encouraged me in school, helping me through my tears with late night maths homework, reading through my endless stories and marveling at my drawings and painting.  She can knit, sew, do macrame, cross stitch, she made all my dance costumes, she is basically the embodiment of a supermum.

My mum was the ultimate imperfectly natural mama,  She was always makeup free, never ashamed of her body hair, wasn't one for deodorant of perfume and thriftily bought almost all her clothes from charity shops, she also breastfed all of us and cooked virtually all our meals from scratch (including an array of puddings most nights if memory serves me correctly).  She grew her own veg on her allotment, baked her own bread and dreamed of living a self sufficient life, with bookshelves filled with gardening books, recipe books and John Seymour self sufficiency guides. She was a full time mum but if never occurred to me to think I couldn't be anything I ever wanted.

Even now my mum continues to inspire me, she hasn't stopped or slowed down like some parents her age, she still works, volunteers, makes, and continues to learn new skills and gain more knowledge in all aspects of life. 

It is only since becoming a mother myself I can look back in awe at my mum, a mum of four, who would take us all round the supermarket and not lose her shit.  I do all my shopping online because the thought of taking even three children round Sainsburys is just too much!  She never doubted her abilities, never sat weeping that she was doing it all wrong, there was no Facebook in the 80s and 90s to vent, rant or ask for advice. And yet we all four of us turned out pretty damn good even if I do say so myself. She absolutely did her best for us with the information that was available at the time. 

She gave me the confidence to do things differently than everyone else, she taught me to swim against the tide and to stand strong and tall in the face of criticism of your beliefs.  She taught me that it was ok to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing if you believed it was the right things to do.  It is because of this that I have chosen to parent the way I do, natural term breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing,  home educating, gentle parenting with non-punitive discipline.  It is because of her that I have perused a vegan lifestyle, trying to live the creative life and moving towards a more sustainable, self sufficient lifestyle.  She didn't necessarily do all off these things herself (though I strongly believe that she probably would have given the luxury of access to the information about gentle parenting etc that I have,) but it is because of her, and not, as many might assume, in spite of her that I have. 

So I want to say thank you mum, I am me because of you. 

Mamas, love your body (A letter to myself and other mothers)

There is little I find sadder on social media than reading a request for information on cosmetic surgery from mamas who want to "fix" their post-natal bodies. I am not talking about mums with serious issues as a result of pregnancy and childbirth that are causing pain or restricting movement, I am talking about normal cosmetic things that happen during pregnancy that society, the media, magazines, advertising, have deemed not normal, attractive or acceptable. Don't get me wrong I'm not judging, I get it, I really do, I have those feelings too, and this letter it to myself as much as it is to you a reminder of what is important, what is true and what is real.

Mama, I am talking to you now, crying out to you to show your body some love.  Look at the amazing things your body has done for you.  It has grown a new life and carried it for nine whole months, that amazing body of yours grew another human, a miracle! Thank your bodies for giving you your daughter or son, thank it for it's strength, it's resilience, it's ability to endure one of the most powerful forces on earth; bringing forth new life. Your body will never be the same as it was before your carried life, those rounded hips, your strong thighs, that ocean tummy, those milky breasts, but why should it be?  Different isn't bad, changed isn't wrong.   Why should we have to try to hide that we made a life?

We've all seen pictures of women in the media, air brushed to perfection, bodies of young women, un-worked, flawless.  We're bombarded by these pictures on almost a daily basis, but these images are not reality. Of course the women in these images exist and I am no way shaming them for the bodies they have, but they are only showing one kind of beautiful, and not only that but a beauty that has been refined beyond the point of reality.  What about the beauty of an empty nest?  That tummy of yours is exquisite mama. It stretched and grew to accommodate your baby, that skin you grab and fret over is a testament to your body's greatest achievement, and it is a beautiful thing.  Your baby no longer resides there but the echo of that second heart beat remains with you as a reminder of your strength and power. Those breasts that grew and fed your infants are a marvel my love! Of course they don't look like they did when you were a teen, nor do they resemble the huge round orbs that we're confronted with on billboards and magazine pages, shiny and rounded, pumped up and plastic and full of lies.  But those breasts on your body are yours, doing their job, wear them with pride for they are real, love them, for they are truth.

We are shamed, as mothers for not having our teenage bodies any more.  We are fed a steady stream of shame, cartoon pictures of mothers with breasts dragging on the floor, photos of mummy tummies with felt tip lines marking where hard earned skin will be cut away, Magazine pictures of celebrity mothers shamed for their post-natal bodies.  Mama, don't believe these pictures, don't let them draw you in, don't believe their lies.  Your body is perfect, exactly how it should be, it doesn't need to be fixed because it isn't broken.

What are we teaching our daughters, or nieces, our younger sisters, when we seek cosmetic surgery on bodies that have simply done their job? Do we want to send them the message that when they have children, that very process that brought them into the world, is something to be ashamed of, something to mend, hide, cover up, disguise, pretend never happened?  We should be celebrating our extra skin, our stretch marks.  Wouldn't it be amazing if we longed for these in the same way our childish minds longer for the beginning of breasts and our periods, as a mark of womanhood, of womanliness?  The only way we can change the world, change the way the world sees the bodies of mothers is to change the way we see ourselves.

I am calling out to you mama to be proud of your body, say positive words about it, honour your body by sending out words of love about your it into the world, tell the world that you're not going to be shamed for the scars and marks of your body's ultimate achievement.  Reject the lies you've been fed, let's change the future, for ourselves and our children.  Let us tell the world what is normal and what is true, and stop accepting the negative world view of a mother's body; because you my love are truth, you are normal, more than normal, you are consummate work of art, you are perfection.

Celebrating 5 years of motherhood

                   

 


Today we celebrated my son's fifth birthday.  He is such an intelligent little boy, so friendly, confident and chatty, he is creative, funny and full of energy, I am proud to be his mama, he inspires me and makes me want to be a better person.  As well as celebrating the birth of my beautiful boy, I also had a little glass of wine to celebrate my own anniversary of five years of motherhood. It's strange how we don't acknowledge our own achievements as mothers in this way isn't it?

 Having a baby is like a re-birth, we become a different person, a new person, we are born ourselves.  We become a mother.  And we will never not be a mother every again.  After having a child we can never ever go back to being the person we were before.  And I am not talking about stretch marks here, I am talking about our hearts and souls. We are permanently changed.  So I am marking this anniversary as well.

But what am I celebrating? I am celebrating that I survived!  Because being a mother is HARD!
I used to be a secondary school art teacher and I would say that for me, being a mother is like my most stressful day of teaching, only the children don't leave at 3.00, there are no half terms, it's ALL THE TIME!  And that, my friends, is hard.  But I survived, I am surviving.  And I am a richer person for it too.  I feel like now, at the age of 33 and 5 years a mother, I know my self better that I ever did the the preceding 28 years.  I know more about myself and I know myself more deeply than ever before.  I am able to pinpoint my feelings, desires, stresses more accurately that I have ever been able to before.  I am much more mindful of how I am feeling.   I am more inspired to be creative and have more ideas than ever before (and ironically less time than ever to birth them!) But it's so wonderful to learn about yourself and develop this relationship with ourselves, getting to know the person we were born to be.

I really want us mothers to acknowledge and honour all our achievements as parents, but also to acknowledge and honor our souls, our mother souls. We so often forget how amazing we are as mothers, how important what we do is, and how we need to care for ourselves and give ourselves time to rest and recover along this incredible journey.

Here's to you mamas, we don't always acknowledge how powerful we are as mothers or as women, lets start.

A recent commission I did with the title "It Takes a Village to Rise a Child"