I’d talked about it for ages — the possibility of taking time off from being a mom. Every time my husband went on another business trip and spent what seemed like glorious time away from the old routine, I would comment how lucky he was, how grateful he should be, even if it was, as he constantly reminded me: work. I get that. I get how it can feel to work all the time and never take a break. And boy, did I need a break. Badly. That thing they say on an aeroplane about fitting your own oxygen mask before attending to children and other people … I wasn’t doing that at all. I was gasping for oxygen and no use to anyone.
The routine is what gets to me: the constant treadmill of wake up (too early), make breakfast, shower (if I’m lucky), dress (in yesterday’s clothes) and chase the boys round the house to wash, dress and slap sunscreen on them before (often forcibly) strapping them into their carseats to drive them (too late) to school, and in the blink of an eye, fetch them again.
And then it starts over again: rushing them to playdates and activities, getting the dinner on, bathing them, dressing them, reading them stories and tucking them into bed. But, oh, it doesn’t end there. There’s the cleaning up after dinner, tidying away toys, sorting laundry, packing school lunches and then falling in a heap on the bed, too tired to even talk to my husband, let alone connect on any real emotional level. It’s exhausting. You know that feeling right?
When I got to that point a few months back, I realised I had to take serious action.
I realised that I was in desperate need of a break from being a mother, from my everyday life in general. I was strung out. I hadn’t had a break from my children in over four years — not even one night away. (Actually, there was one — the night I spent in hospital giving birth to my youngest son, but that definitely didn’t count as genuine me-time).
Each time I mentioned this very far-off idea of taking a break from it all, my husband would encourage it: “Go,” he’d say. “I can take care of the kids. Have a weekend with the girls.”
I always found another excuse not to: We couldn’t afford it; I had too much to do; the boys needed me at home. So when I reached breaking point, I had to dig deep to uncover the real reason I’d not taken a break.
What I discovered was a whole lot of mother’s guilt — double doses of the stuff. It’s the voice in my head that tells me I have to do it all, make a sensible choice at every moment and be superhuman otherwise I’m not doing right by my children. It’s the thing that rears its head every time I even think about the possibility of not doing all those things and doing something for myself, no matter how small. It’s the thing that drove me to a place of total unmanageability four years into motherhood, the thing that made me judge myself for not being a good enough mother despite all my efforts. And the truth was that fighting that guilt was far more exhausting than the old routine.
When I dug even deeper, I uncovered the painful reality that I felt this way because I simply wasn’t taking care of my own needs. And that the excuses just masked the fear that if I had to do it — to actually take that break — I might discover that I’d forgotten who I really was when I stripped off that label: MOTHER.
It took over four years to set the wheels in motion finally. It happened over a cup of tea and a typically broken conversation with a friend as we kept one eye on the kids climbing on the jungle gym. “Honey, be careful, you’ll fall.” What was my child attempting to do? Bungy jump? “I need a break.” I sighed. And I planted a seed. “So do I,” she said. And that settled it.
A mom’s retreat was in the offing: time away from the family, time to have unbroken conversations and keep our eyes firmly focused on ourselves. And what had seemed impossible for four years, suddenly became possible and already I felt lighter. I hadn’t even stepped foot out of my house, but I knew I was going to breathe again soon. The oxygen mask was about to drop.
In the days leading up to the trip I barely spoke about it to my other friends. It was as if it wasn’t quite real, that perhaps it was just talk and we wouldn’t really get in that car and drive away to that big beach house with those bags in the boot full of bikinis, books and beers. It hardly seemed possible that we would actually do this thing: down tools as moms and take leave of our husbands and kids for four whole days and nights.
As it turned out, we did get in that car. And I had the most refreshing time away. I slept in late, had bubble baths in the middle of the day, lay on the beach reading my book and dare I say, didn’t really miss my kids, safe in the knowledge that were well looked after by their dad and that I’d see my family in a few days. It all felt so right.
Here’s the thing: Since becoming a mother, I had taken on a very warped belief, almost unconsciously.
I’d come to believe that I should prioritise my childrens’ needs above my own, that this was what good mothers did.
But I’d seen the results of that warped thinking with my own eyes and it wasn’t pretty. Having sacrificed my own happiness for the sake of my children I’d turned ratty and irritable, snapping at them, resenting them for my loss of self and then wallowing in bucketloads of guilt as a result.
I guess the misconception I had had through all of this, was that since my children’s lives had begun, my life, as I knew it, had ended. Over four years, I had given over my whole self to the role of mother, instead of making the role of mother just one part of me. I had stopped meeting my own needs because I had been so busy meeting those of my children.
A part of me had died when my first son was born and it didn’t deserve to go. I had to resurrect it.
What I had chosen to do that weekend, I discovered, was long overdue. I was unashamedly meeting my own needs and recharging myself for the job at hand. By trying to do it all and be the perfect mother over the past few years, thinking I was doing them a favour by always being there, I was actually doing my children a disservice.
So far all I’d taught my children was this: sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of others, anything else is selfish. And in learning that model, they were learning never to take the time to explore themselves, their lives and their choices. With this grounding how could they ever know how to meet their own needs later in life? I was perpetuating an unhealthy model of behaviour, the one I learnt growing up, the one that taught me to put other people’s needs above my own, but more tragically taught me that having my own needs, let alone meeting them was simply not important.
My time away brought my needs into sharp focus. And it gave me the time to meet them. Sleep — tick. Meals eaten mindfully and without the distraction of other’s needs — tick. Time spent with friends — tick. Undisturbed connection with myself — tick. So when I got back into the real world and the old routine, having fully recharged my batteries, I felt something I hadn’t felt for a long time: the absence of guilt and the certainty that I was being a good mother. I felt refreshed and happy, ready for each new challenge. And my kids were enjoying it too. There was a sense of flow in our home for weeks after.
I made a little promise to myself in the wake of all these learnings. I promised to practise what I’d learnt on a daily basis — to do something every day to recharge a little, to never let my battery go flat, and to remember that three hours a day with my kids feeling fully charged is better than 12 hours a day feeling unhappy and depleted. Because now I know that to prioritise my own happiness is to prioritise theirs.
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