Journey to a New Life

 In some of my previous blogs (Day 60 , Day 61) I wrote about how comparing yourself and your responsibilities to that of another, specifically the father of your child – can be a source of inner conflict within self.

Because being a mother is a very specific role, you cannot compare it to being a father – and even more so if you as the mother are the primary caretaker of the child while the father is primarily the breadwinner. You’re both looking after your child(ren), but in different ways. The mother through a one-on-one direct approach, the father through creating financial stability to ensure a proper environment for the children/family to live and grow up in.

Another point which I identified within this framework of ‘fairness’ and ‘comparison’ (well, they’re really one framework, comparison always precedes fairness) is that of ‘fear of missing out’.

Having children/a family can be a stressful situation. Especially if not so long ago it was just you and your partner, there were fewer responsibilities and fewer financial pressure. When a child enters reality, both these aspects grow exponentially. Suddenly you are overrun with things to do in relation to your child, and your spending pattern suddenly takes a surge. What I found here is that in essence your ‘survival mode’ knob gets switched up a bit higher, and both mother and father are more tensed.

Then, when there is a moment during the day where both parents can relax / take some time off from one’s responsibilities and ‘switch out’ from survival mode; both parents will tend to want to ‘hold on’ to that time/moment. If then your child suddenly needs attention, obviously one of the parents needs to attend to the child and step away from one’s relax/fun time. And here something interesting happens, where neither of the parents want to go and stand as the point of support for the child, because both parents believe/perceive that they are entitled to their own ‘time off’ and that it is ‘the other’ who should go and stand as the point. This is even more so, if you are still holding on to comparisons between yourself and your partner, where you’ve still been comparing your responsibilities to that of your partner and believe that you got the short end of the stick and that within you ‘suffering more’, your partner should now go and you should be allowed to stay in your ‘off time’. Within this fairness point playing out, there is also a fear that if one goes and tend to the child, that there is a chance your partner was more rested/more up to it than you are and so ‘more suitable’ to go tend to the child than you are, where you fear that your partner is now enjoying himself ‘unduly’ – time that *you* could have been spending enjoying yourself in some time off. So with this added dimension, where you fear you are being taken advantage of – you will resist tending to your child not because you’re not physically up for it, but because you don’t want your partner to ‘cash in’ on your actions; where there’s now this whole mental competition game playing out between the two parties involved, where each one will be reluctant to do what needs to be done because each one is suspicious of one another and fear missing out.

This then opens the door for strange behaviour such as insisting that ‘both go’ so that ‘both miss out’, believing that this creates a more ‘equal scenario’, whilst this only satisfies one’s fairness construct. Or the opposite where one insist on making plans where both can have ‘off time’, not because you necessarily want to spend time together, but because you don’t want to experience yourself as ‘missing out’.

To be continued…

This is a continuation to: Day 60: Being a Mother is not like Being a Father | Parenting & Fairness
In my previous blog I explained how I initially would become quite reactive towards my partner, within comparing my situation with his – where I would stay at home and take care of the baby while he would spend most of the day and evening at work, leaving little space and time for him to help out with the baby.

This reactive state and inner-conflict I would experience was very unpleasant, and not something I wanted to keep up with. So I gave myself a moment to look at my experience, the reactions that I was having and the nature of my thoughts.

One point which I’ve gotten pretty used to in my process, is that whenever I have experiences, reactions and thoughts which keep moving away from myself towards another – where my focus and fixation is on another person being ‘the problem’, being ‘at issue’ – I know that I am dealing with a very serious case of denial lol.

So here what I did for myself, was to first remove my partner from the whole equation. Who would I be and how would I experience myself if my partner was not here at all – so I would have nothing to compare to, no-one to point fingers at. I realised, that I would still be unhappy and would find something or someone else to complain about. I also realised that, within removing the element of ‘hope’, where I would ‘hope’ my partner to help out / help out more – I saw that I would move myself to run things more efficient, and that if I put my will behind it – I would make the situation work for myself = because I would have to.

So this gave me my first clue. That I could be doing things differently, that there was room for change, for improvement coming from my side only - but that I had created a relationship of dependency to/towards my partner within the ‘hope’ that he would help out to make things easier for me – instead of me stepping things up for myself, and pushing beyond some of my own limitations to come to a satisfactory outcome.

Then, I also imagined the opposite – where I would place myself in the ‘ideal situation’ which I had been whining and complaining about inside myself, as the ideal I was hoping for / expecting. And again I realised = I would still be unhappy. It may not be about practical helping out points that would make life with a baby more manageable / less intensive – but would emerge under a different picture, a different play-out – but I could sense inside myself that the dissatisfaction would still remain.

In a way this makes sense, because when looking at the worst-case-scenario: I am forced to move myself, I am forced to step it up – to level my living to what I know I can potentially live and be.

Within the worst-case-scenario my dependency and so postponement of me fully taking charge of myself and my life was revealed and it was clear that the only way to have things be different, is if I do things / live things differently – there was no space to seek for someone else to fix things for me.
In the best-case-scenario – I ‘get what I want’ as having an easier life and my point of weakness is covered/compensated for with someone else standing as a point of support for me that ‘I can count on’, and that I am actually holding back, postponing and not living to my full potential is being obscured / not as easy to see and identify, because I am now ‘contained’ and ‘in my comfort zone’ where I do not get wrought up and where nothing’s prodding me, nothing’s stimulating to question my experience/my situation and so I settle for this limited version of myself and compromised living.

Yet, this experience of comfort would only last for so long, and some new outlet, some new point that one could be unhappy about would soon emerge – until that one gets satisfied, and then a new point of dissatisfaction would pop up – where the ‘problem’ jumps from being one point to another – and another. And because the ‘problem’ keeps being out there, keeps being something else, one will remain convinced that the problem is real, that each problem is a ‘different problem on its own’ – while they are merely different outlets for the same problem, a problem which resides within self that that self does not want to look at / tackle.

So – after looking at all of these dimensions, all of these points inside myself I decided to take on that which I was postponing, that which I was resisting inside myself. To be okay with the challenging situation that I was finding myself in and to find ways to make it work, within and without myself.

I communicated with my partner, to make sure that we are on the same page – that we help each other out according to our own ability, which we realise is variable. We realised that we can’t always know 100% if we are helping out as much as we can, if we couldn’t really do more and that we would never be able to know 100% if the other is helping out as much as they could – and that this would not matter. What mattered was that each of us individually was doing the best we can. Then, comparison falls away because you are your own reference point to judge whether or not something could improve. What another can or can’t do becomes irrelevant – even if it so happens that they are ‘doing less than’ what they actually could be doing, you can never know for sure; and this would be their own process point to walk and one can only stand as example. Within this, you then also ensure that you direct your own self-movement, and that your movement is not dependent on what another is or isn’t doing.

So we decided that we each work with our own self-honesty, assess our own individual situations and take into consideration the other – and accordingly make a decision to help out or not help out. So that, we first and foremost respond to our own individual needs of our respective lives, and know that the other is okay walking/responding to their own individual situation, so that we are not dependent on one another. This doesn’t mean that we don’t assist and support one another and that we live ‘completely separate lives’ – but that this assistance and support comes and goes. It is welcomed, it is appreciated but when it is no longer there, it is also not an issue. So that we each are stable within our own realities, and when we can through assistance and support: enhance each other’s’ lives.

I also realised that ‘being a mother’ is a very specific role; and even in terms of your relationship with your child, it will be different than the relationship between the child and the father. It does not have ‘more’ or ‘less’ value – it is just different by design/through the circumstances each one finds oneself in and having to partake in different responsibilities. And unless we find a way to swap bodies – we will always have ‘incomplete information’ about another’s circumstances; which is why it’s a bad idea to make decisions / base your own movement on your interpretation of another person’s reality.

As I was looking at my previous blog about ‘being a mother’ and ‘redefining mother’ – I remember a point I faced here, which also links back into the Fairness point I have been walking in some of my other blogs.

And the point which opened up/that I am looking at is how being a mother is a very specific point, a very specific role. And in the beginning when I just started out walking this role – I had a lot of reactions towards my husband/father of the baby.

This was because I was comparing my role and what I was doing compared to what he was doing. The first 2-3 weeks he was at home and would help out but soon after that he was gone working for prolonged times and I would not see much of him. At times that he was home, I would react if he wasn’t helping out or resting because he was tired of work – and so by implication not being available to help with the baby.

I created a lot of inner conflict and friction about how much he would or would not help out and how he was living his life vs how I was living my life. My life was very restricted to moving from my bed to Cesar’s cot to the rocking chair where I would feed him – with occasional trips to the bathroom. His life on the other hand hadn’t changed much and when the nights were too rough he’d sleep somewhere else so he could still be functional the next day for work.

So there the thoughts started creeping in about ‘how it’s not fair that I am stuck here and can’t go anywhere/do anything’ and ‘he can just go sleep somewhere else, I don’t have that luxury’ and ‘he can go rest when he is tired, and I have to be on constant stand by for the baby no matter how tired I am’, ‘I am sure his work/job is not as intensive as what I am doing with the baby – it’s not fair that he wants to rest and doesn’t help me’ and so on and so on…

This made me be in a snidely mood whenever my husband was around where I was constantly, chronically comparing my situation with his – and we’d easily fall into stupid little arguments/reactions because of this, as my entire attitude was becoming hostile towards him within following the thoughts and energies.

Taking care of a new-born being strenuous on my body, I quickly had enough of the added strain I was creating for myself within myself and in my body within participating in this mind-job so I had a sit down with myself to see what is going on and what I was missing that left me playing out this mind pattern.

To be continued

I was asked a question by someone as to how come some parents can be blatantly selfish in their behavior towards their child(ren). Where, to observers, this type of behavior is unacceptable – but where the parents themselves will act out their selfishness within a sense of entitlement and thus in essence not seeing what they're doing or seeing "what's wrong" with their behavior.

So I had a look inside myself as to where and how I could see such a pattern would emerge and develop, in terms of what I have experienced myself and walked through myself with Cesar so far.

And what I saw, was that it really goes all the way back to the beginning. And what becomes clear from the beginning is that: parenting is not easy.

All your life, your life has been about you. What you want to do, what you want to do with your life, your friends, your family, your job, your hobbies. Then – a baby is on its way.
You think you can conceptualize and ‘imagine’ what it would be like to have a baby – but the truth is = you don’t. Even when you read others’ stories, written in detail about birth, babies, parenting – in the end they’re just words and you don’t really grasp the reality of it – until you’re in it.

I suppose in a way, pregnancy does prepare you a little bit for what is to come. All these things start happening to your body, you get put into the backseat and your whole body becomes about ‘the baby’ – where to a certain extent, ‘your body is not your own’. But you know, you can still do a lot of things and pretty much live your life ‘as usual’.

Then, the baby comes – and everything changes. Every minute, every second, every breath you take is in service of your baby. Your baby is completely helpless and completely dependent on you. You are quite frankly put: its slave (unless family/friends are there to help out big time or you’ve hired someone to assist). It’s feeding, changing, clothing and feeding again round the clock. You sleep, when the baby sleeps (or at least you try). You are sleep deprived, your body hurts, you look like a mess (and very possibly smell like one too) and it seems to go on for what seems like forever. That’s how the first 3 months are registered in my brain.

So, especially in the first few months, being a mother, being a parent does a big number on you.
I mean, I am pretty lucky in terms of the environment and support that I have available with Cesar. I’d say that I pretty much live in the ‘optimum environment’ to bring up a child. And so – even with physically everything being in place, it’s still hard, it’s still an immense job.
I have no idea how I would cope if my situation would have been any different and I have the greatest respect for all women out there who are doing their best to raise their child(ren) when their environment is not one that promotes peace of mind.

So you have your baby, you’re busy all the time, you’re trying to do your best and sometimes that seems to even be not enough. Your old life is GONE. Byebye seeing friends, family, work, hobbies – it’s just you and your baby now (at least initially). Having a baby probably looked and sounded like a fun thing, blissful and all joy – but ends up being quite the opposite as you’re drained tending to your baby’s every need. If you’d imagine how you would want a relationship to be between two beings – this is not how you’d want things to be, as it’s in essence a ‘master-slave’ relationship. Now, I don’t mean to blame or shame the baby for being demanding or needy. And I don’t mean to create any type of moral issue within describing and comparing a baby-mother relationship to one of a master-slave relationship. It’s simply that by design – they are the same. It’s not good, it’s not bad – it’s just what it is.

This point, if you look at the design of babies and their 100% dependency relationship towards the mother is what one could call ‘unfair’. Meaning, you have two beings, and the one is living every moment of its life in function of the other.

I’m pretty sure that if you had a relationship with another adult in this line you’d pretty much break ties as soon as possible, because it’s no way to live.

And it’s this dynamic – being ‘unfair’ by design – which is your introduction to your relationship with your child - which forms the baseline, the nice fertile soil, from which many mind patterns and resonant designs can emerge from… if you let it.


To be continued