she, the broken winged
to your wings, I add my song
My lovely friends, before we begin, today’s work references some difficult and expansive aspects of motherhood, as well as mental health issues. If your heart feels fragile around such conversations, maybe today this is not for you. It’s my wish, however, that if you do find yourself struggling you’ll find kinship here and beyond that even, hope. And however you choose to proceed, the following is always true:
You are loved, you are loved, you are loved.
Thank you for being here.
This is not what I meant to write about this week- if ever or at all- but being in a relationship with creativity is like that, isn’t it? It’s not always us that gets to have first word.
Something came up, floated up, that was hovering, skin like, underneath the surface. A film of hot milk atop the coffee. An association, expectation, amputation, housed within a simple word:
Mother
Writing this now, reflecting back, it seems preposterous, outrageous, embarrassing even that I’m writing to you, sharing what it is I’m about to now. But the truth is not always easy, lived experiences often being stored in the edges of our skin in ways that are unknown and beyond that unexpected, frequently finding their way to light not gently or slowly, not even consciously, but by the process of combustion.
Words meeting fire meeting air.
Most recently, I signed up to a workshop that revolved around conversations of what it means to mother- if I am honest, a topic that, in that instant, didn’t interest me that much. I have other things I prefer to write, things that capture my attention and draw my mind to wonder. And amongst them, the word ‘mother’ does not, did not, feature all that much.
I am, however, someone who actively seeks out community, and when I find someone who moves my heart and mind, I care little what the subject matter is. I always find, I remind myself, something there regardless. A springboard, a train of thought. A way of seeing the world based on someone else’s experience. I always leave a circle, a creative gathering, different from how I was when I arrived.
But in this case, something intangible lay in wait of my arrival. An ancestral, maternal line. Wizened, youthful, creased, expectant. Perhaps they had considered me disrespectful, ungrateful, but I don’t think so- that seems a bit unkind. What I do know is they realized I had yet to own something that fully, wholly belonged to me. And right now seemed to be the time.
I am a mother in the most obvious way we like to socially define it. I have two young boys I have birthed who I love dearly, and who I hope, aim, try, to mother fiercely and tenderly. And yet mothering is never, has never been an identity, a word with which I lead.
But it’s one thing to not allow to lead, and quite another to deny.
When asked of my associations around the word of ‘mother’, I realized that what came out of the end of my pen was anything but light. I was shocked, surprised. I had not been aware that I harboured such thoughts, emotions, recognitions within me. And yet in sharing my story, or parts of it, out loud, it’s really no surprise.
Sharing the truth, my story of being mothered is complicated, for the simple reason that I feel it’s not completely mine alone to share. I struggle with privacy, with the desire to protect, and with loyalty. I struggle with love. From me towards my mother, and hers towards me.
But my experience being mothered, whilst interlaced, bathed even, with care and love, were housed within big, bigger, spaces, that made mothering, at times, impossible. Laced, woven together, sewn as one, with the ever present, consuming beast of mental illness.
The experiences of my youth, at that time, felt quite normal. Things I didn’t think all that much of, besides the wanting of everything to be ok, for all the people I loved to feel happy, to feel well. I got on with it, just thought myself an anxious child. This was just the way things are. It’s only in relatively recent years I can view the same experiences and see them for what they are- to recognize that the normality with which I’d understood them was wholly mis-prescribed.
In this, I know I’m not alone.
As an adult, I am an expert at dealing with panic, fear, hallucinations, a backyard professional with the workings of psychosis. In the face of big, seismic, ground altering instability, I am still and glassy water. My arms skilled at holding a humanity that finds itself momentarily fractured within a splintered and outspoken misreality. A skill I didn’t realize for the longest time came at a cost to me.
In my work life, I am the bread winner, establishing my name in an industry that is male led. To mention, talk about, bring about the idea of mother felt, absent of anyone saying or confirming this to me directly, to be a weakness. Something that I dealt with, was my reality, but that I could not, should not, let any hints of mothering get in the way of professionalism, lest ideas be formed that I was not reliable, or good enough, or proficient at my job. I had, I felt, to step outside the skin of mother to warrant, merit the same respect as those I shared spaces and platforms with.
An interstitial warped reality that I chewed and swallowed whole.
But the simple asking, what do you think of when you think of the word ‘mother’? was a pin to my balloon. A sinking down within the peat and the mud, below the reeds. I let the sediment fill my ears, scratch my eyes, consume all the spaces in my mouth. I let it all wash over me.
I, this part of me, this good girl, the one with swallowed voices and pleasing things to say, the one who cuts her stories in half in order to be accepted, be ok, the one who has not allowed herself to own the story of the mother, I took her hand and led her to the corner of the forest. I washed off her makeup, took off her clothes. I rubbed her in salt and dirt until the skin cells that housed her felt raw. And at that point, I pushed her in.
I pushed her deep into the forest.
Not to lose what was soft, but to find what was fierce.
I wanted her to hunt, gather, scavenge. To feel a hunger beyond what food could feed. To find all the nouns and consonants, within fur lined spaces and feathered wings. To catch the whispers of all the women that she was, travelling through spaces, just like leaves. And then, once all six had been collected- m, o, t, h, e, r- to throw them in the sky, an orange flare.
I wanted her to no longer care about all the things her caring had been wasted on.
And to find a new association with the word mother that rested there.
I wrote the following poem for myself, for the women-mothers I have shared spaces with, for the mothers mothering in circumstances now both unbearable and unthinkable, and for my own mother, in acknowledgement of the ferocity of the demons she has faced, and her consistent, persistent attempts however fearful, to wrestle them with dignity and with love.
My mother, she is brave.
A quote from Virginia Woolf, on the writing of To The Lighthouse:
‘I suppose I did for myself what psychoanalysts do for their patients. I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it, I explained it to myself and then laid it to rest.’
She, the broken winged
She, the broken winged
who before she even gets to the words she wants to start with, apologises, I’m sorry for my child, come here sweetheart, sit here, hush, mummy’s speaking now, I’m sorry, carry on, we can have this conversation later, as though she alone is in control, a position not made up but one she’s held to, as if she is responsible for, able to wield, the fierce, untamed action of those yet to learn the way their voices, the movement of their bodies, their wildling desires are not suitable, not to be presented to the world. Not now. Not here. Not in this way. Perhaps another time.
She, the broken winged
birthing both part of her and at once completely separate, finds her senses leave her, kept in rooms whose walls whisper that saneness must be separateness, with those who loved the person she once was and struggle to reconcile the person she is now, afraid that insanity might still be contagious, as she indeed also worries to herself, say to each other, in hushed voices, I thought our mental health care had evolved to something better than this, staying for as long as perhaps is needed but grateful, beyond grateful, telling themselves stories as they leave the building and step into the air, convincing themselves this is a life meant for another, protected by the hope it is not a place that’s meant for them, not a place that’s meant for any, and most especially not for me.
She, the broken winged
forced to mother in circumstances that don’t respect the threshold, forced to hold the broken bodies of their babies, the veil supporting the destruction cloaked in calls for protection and defense of what is right. Who cannot see, refuse to see, is unable to see, the fact that their baby, their body, is indeed no longer with them, the heartbreak might explode, will explode, will detonate a grenade within her chest, within her cells, within her womb, the placeholder of creation instead now finding itself a fury, a sadness, a wildness, a power that when lit and now unleashed holds colours and sounds and hungers beyond that which you and I have ever seen, of the likes that will split open all the worlds, her world, my world, your world, the world beneath our feet, a shattering, fragmenting, splintering of humanity matched only by the madness that created its unfurling to begin.
She, the broken winged
who is now mother in a way she never wanted, perhaps was forced to, who babies began with conversations of I don’t want this, or please don’t, I just said no, or there is no option in your state for things to be different, or you should be grateful, you don’t have choices, or your body is no longer your body, but belongs now to another or Please respect the most basic of what is outlined here as human rights.
She, the broken winged
who is loved, or in different stories not, sits alone from earlier, through the day, and through the night until it’s later still. Is greeted at the door, sometime after the rest of the world has eaten dinner, perhaps even is sleeping, with how was your day, replying, oh yes, it’s was fine thanks, feels removed and even blank, feels secretly as though she might be drowning, who adventures into malls that leave her feeling vacant, buys clothes as a reminder of an outline of a body that’s still solid, still exists, goes to checkups, to appointments, how are they feeding, this all seems very normal, see you again in a month or three, the whole time thinking maybe she should mention she’s not quite ok, wonders if her face betrays the secrets of unseen, but wanders out the door, words unsaid, ready but really, truly, not ready at all to face another day.
She, the broken winged
who in bed sleeping with her babe is so tired, beyond tired, perhaps a tiredness that a human’s never known, thinks she’s woken so her baby can start feeding, but startles, finds herself in panic, cannot tell if now she has just woken or perhaps she’s never been, hand reaching, searching, grabbing, a pocket of life existing between what she thinks might be herself and what is touchable, what’s real. Her baby, who is expected to be breast side is missing, cannot be felt, cannot be seen, she scrabbles wildly, ferociously, a human being akin, or perhaps really is now, a real life human animal, under the covers, slightly further down, just to the side now, she sees her gently sleeping baby once again, her exhaustion consuming her back into the tiredness that makes her question all the was, all that’s even been.
She, the broken winged
who mothers without ever birthing children, who mothers in ways completely separate to anything to do with a human child, who mothers in amidst constant scrutiny, perhaps never ending questions, seeking validation, affirmation, who mothers with a child no longer at her side.
She, the broken winged
who with one baby in one arm and laptop in another, mothers with work and children, mostly side by side, those who mother without mothers, who mothers within overwhelming, seething loss, with illness, with abuse, of both the seen and unseen kind.
She, the broken winged.
She, the broken winged.
She, the broken winged.
You are mother.
You are mother.
You are mother.
She, the broken winged,
to your wings, I send my song.
Thank you for taking the time to read, I so appreciate you being here. If you feel moved to do so, feel free to like, share and / or comment. It’s always wonderful to hear from you.
xx Jane
Oh yes. If ever I had doubts that thoughts could travel to others, be heard and felt, be reflected or absorbed, be answered across oceans and time….I feel doubtless after reading your words.
I find myself in a place I never thought possible right now, mothering my own mother, in the form of loving emails back and forth across the Tasman sea, mothering her in a way I never felt mothered by her. But feeling healed by the act, as I recognise her ‘broken wingedness’…as I turn towards her instead of shying away, maybe the bravest thing I have ever done, as I give to her all I have denied her in my own defence, in my childish holding onto past hurts and victimhood. The wonder is of how small a distance there was between what I felt was not possible, and the possibility itself. How all I needed to do, to gain the gifts I wished for from her, was to give them to her myself. Space to believe whatever she believes, to be herself, acceptance of her as she is, not as I wish her to be, contact that is non-judgemental and controlling, dusted off memories of moments of love and care, instead of held hurts, armoured expectations and fear. I wanted her to see me, to know me…I needed to see her, to know her, to ask for her story and hear it without being braced for it to conflict with my own ‘truth’.
I am grateful I have lived long enough to feel this. I am grateful for your writings Jane, they tell me ‘keep going, you are on the path, see?’ ❤️
I am felt here. I am heard. I am seen. I am mourning the course of myself and my mother and the mothers who have mothered me unspoken -- the ghosts of my mothers going back. I don't know where to start quoting because I am so intimately seen. So much of what you have written is important to the spirit of the things that matter -- the things that truly matter in an intimate, bone-deep way -- but this is the source. You have tapped the source. I adore you. Thank you for your bravery. And thank you for your spirit that finds the words for the things.