What Imposter Feelings Taught Me About Parenthood?
What children need may not be perfect parents but those who grow to accept themselves just as they are
When I look back, a large part of my life seems to have been propelled by an invisible force. At times, it was violent, like the outpourings of a waterfall. And at others, drifting like a limpid stream, weighed down by the sludge, gravel, and sand of life’s compulsions. Like many, I grew up with several role models. Some were even presented to me as great examples to live up to. There is something deeply problematic about that, you know? I see it now as the start of the imposter feelings, which eventually dug their talons and rooted themselves firmly within me. Knowing that I wasn’t good enough. Someone out there was always doing better. Sometimes what I chased were not even real people but a cluster of ideals thrust together, a vicious scarecrow of virtues calling out to me. When things worked, I was afraid that it was a mistake. I somehow didn’t deserve it. It was only a matter of time before somebody would find out.
To be or not to be
I never regarded myself as someone particularly maternal. Not one who craves life to circle into completion in a manner only families with children are perceived to enjoy. Not one with many qualities synonymous with the exalted status of motherhood. Tempestuous, ambitious, self-preserving and struggling with my own imposter feelings. I didn’t quite like kids, not all for sure and blasphemously not as much as I like my lone time with books, writing, day dreaming, snuggling with my cats or simply talking about our ordinary dreams with my partner. I don’t like them on five-hour plane rides when I am trying to sleep. Not when they throw up all over you on a day-trip you were really hoping to enjoy or at least be uneventfully peaceful. Not when they seem to have all the energy at the end of the day. Not when it’s acceptable for them to throw a tantrum whenever they are uncomfortable. Not when they can say and do exactly as they please. Not when, as they are jabbering and asking a hundred non-sensical questions, they seem to see right through you.
It seems somewhat ironic that parenthood happened to me somewhat passively. The gravel, sand, and sludge got the better of me.
We had been married six years when we seriously started considering getting pregnant. It was out of contention before. We had both been busy getting our PhDs, doing postdoctoral work, travelling when we could and generally figuring out who we were becoming and where life was headed. As we turned homeward, after ten years of doing all the shenanigans abroad, to set up our independent labs and research, the question of expanding our family roared in.
Kids. What about them? When were we planning our first? People don’t leave you alone. It is always something. Overbearing relatives never lost an opportunity to remind us of the closing window into our fecundities. We were inching to the mid-thirties and the biological clock was ticking. When me and my partner debated this, we decided that parenthood wasn’t something we craved. He was okay both ways. I knew he would be an exceptional Dad and I couldn’t ask for a better person to do this with. I wondered about motherhood like a vintage piece of jewelry—exquisite, expensive, maybe even outlandish, and very out of my reach. Something I might really, really, want many years down the line.
So we went for it.
Pregnancy happened quickly but it was not an easy time for me. I was struggling mentally with an across-continent move. Looking to find a footing in the incredibly competitive space of scientists. My brain felt like a dark, musty, and cluttered room, where thoughts and ideas floated in limbo; occasionally, one flew in like a brilliant spark. Sometimes streams of sunshine slithered in it with lazy happiness, conjuring the picture of a perfect baby who we’d love to bits and who would be understanding of and compliant to all our challenges. At other times, the windows were forced open by a gale, when I imagined the worst outcomes. Emotions wandered like dust in Brownian motion. They percolated through the floorboards till one day I landed with a thud and realised that my baby was here.
Acceptance
It seems like a coincidence that my daughter was born on a day of contrasts. At first, it was hot; summer’s last bout of sunshine poured across the sky, peeling away clouds of uncertainty to reveal brilliant sapphire blue skies. I watched it as I was induced into labor after more than 24 hours of wincing in pains that were clinically deemed to not be painful enough to mark the onset of the real thing. As the epidural kicked in and labor progressed, dark grey clouds gathered. I heard them pelting silently at the windows when she was finally coming out and I couldn’t push anymore. When they announced that it was a girl, it was if the sky celebrated for us. We wanted a healthy child but then deeply wanted a girl. Thunder echoed and it rained like it hadn’t in a long time. A bit of me imploded with relief for this healthy little one after all those hours of internal contortion. But when I held her for the first time, it wasn’t magic.
I just wanted a minute to process what had just happened. I wanted her Dad to be the first to hold her. I somehow felt he deserved it more. I, for one, wanted to pass out in dreamless sleep, or one where the storks would stop by to weave in motherly wisdom and patience into me.
Afterwards, I sat watching her as she slept, a tiny little bundle. I marvelled at the enormity of all of it. We now have her. Who would she be? A person after her own mind or a blank canvas for us to colour in. I didn’t feel the unimpeachable love of a mother.
I began questioning myself. Was I prepared? Was I good enough? Many doubts flew like arrows and fractured the seemingly perfect night of my life.
In the days after, we returned from the hospital and started on a long road. We began getting to know this tiny human we had made. I watched her as she cooed and rolled. I took her photos by the zillion and talked to her. I worked with her, trying to catch up on things in research here and there on my maternity leave. I missed exercising deeply till I was cleared for it and was uncomfortable that we started on formula milk too early. I imagined the worst happening at work in my absence. I was thinking about reports that were going to be due in a few months after my six-month leave ended. I was grateful for this time with her. But I also struggled with the umpteenth cycle of washing baby stuff, even though I had help with it. I quietly mourned how everything I knew to be normal had slipped away. We captured beautiful photos of her and even celebrated her turning six months old with some fanfare. We couldn’t get enough of her pretty dresses and getting her toys that she wasn’t going to play with for a bit. But I also wished I could just get away from it all.
Returning to work at the end of maternity period was the best thing that happened to me. I craved this new routine of leaving her in the care of our lovely nanny, going to the lab to start getting back on my feet as a scientist, and teaching. I judged myself for it. I missed her when I was away but dreaded coming back home to a life that still felt foreign.
I watched her face pucker into a smile with familiarity when she caught sight of me. I imagined she grinned harder when her Dad was home. I expected her to want to be with him more. Deep down, I was convinced she judged me for my deficiencies, for all the ways that I was less than a real mom.
When the pandemic came, it drove us all to the limits of our patience. There were no work days. It was a continuum of work and home. There are always different standards for a woman, I reasoned, even when I had the most supportive partner, who shouldered sometimes far more of the parenting responsibilities because he knew I struggled so much. I wondered if he thought less of me now.
I was saturated with conflict and anxiety. Something had to give. I started spending more time for myself outside work, exercising, running, reading, listening to podcasts and being okay with asking for time to do things that were a reprieve. I accepted my fallibility as a person and confronted my imposter feelings. I wondered if my daughter would accept me even if I wasn’t the mom her friends seem to have.
An imposter was now a part of my identity. It was going nowhere. Not with all the therapy, books and journaling in the world. But if there is even one thing I truly wanted my daughter to imbue, it was to accept herself, just as. Even if there were going to be days when she’d revert to the parts of herself she wasn’t proud of. To be able to be okay with herself, right then.
I realised that there was a colour in the sky that I had missed on the day she was born. The ripples of crimson. From the horizon, biting her lips in pain, blood oozed before the sheets of grey clouds swallowed it. I couldn’t be further from the social ideals of parenthood, but I have my own interpretation of it to work with and acceptance of my frailty. It is incredibly freeing for a child to have that in a parent, no?
Thank you for reading! If you found that this resonated with you or if you have had similar experiences, please share your thoughts in the comments. Please consider following and subscribing to my writing. Your love and support would mean a lot, as I find my feet as a fledgling writer. You can also find more of me on Linkedin.
