MamaMoontime: New Motherhood. (or New Fatherhood): The need ...

Burn, baby, burn.

Creativity Fire Starters.

I remember the weeks after I gave birth to Ned. ?This time of love and constant companionship and joy, being brought delicious hot meals by friends and members of my school community. ?It was nourishment with a capital N.?

But weeks later, it was a different story.?

Like many of you, I worked up until two weeks before Ned's birth. The final two weeks I spent happily at home, madly typing to finish a book project I was working on. Busy, busy, busy. ?At that time, my 'friendship quota' (as if there can be such a thing) was full, as I was too busy to even phone or text my lifelong friends, and weekends were already chockablock full of group catch ups, family visits, jobs around the house and food shopping.?

But when Ned arrived, my commitments to work and writing went on hold and my days became long and lonely. ?I also was one of many women who had confused 'colleague/work buddy' with 'true friend', and realised that my enjoyable daily banter with my colleagues at work did not mean we were close buddies outside of the classroom. ?(Not to say these people weren't fabulous. They were a huge part of my "daily life" when we were thrown together in this unusual and creative workplace, but when I reflected upon this strange feeling of friendship loss, I realised I had never hung out with the majority of them outside work, save for work parties anyway.) Most of my other friends were also busy at work. ?But I was at home. Alone.

Without my 'work' to sustain me, or give me my identity any longer, I was a little lost.?

But it started me thinking. I'm lucky enough to have creative practice to hold me afloat, and I was still feeling lost. ?What about the millions of other women out there without a rope to hold? ?How were they doing? ?(I ponder that this loss and forced change of identity may be the root cause of post natal depression for many women.)?

I believe it is all about transforming ourselves, so we are no longer reliant upon outer labels such as teacher, doctor, lawyer, garbage collector, graphic designer or policeman, but instead find or create an inner identity that BELONGS to us as creative individuals... ?

If someone believes that they are a teacher, and they lose their teaching job or contract, or illness or childbirth forces them from the job they love, how does one keep hold of their identity in the world around? ?If someone is a lawyer but has a crappy case which makes them want to give the law up, or if someone is a film director and produces a dud flick, or if a doctor loses a patient and with it, his or her confidence to practice, where does that leave our identity? ?If a woman steps away from her career or job (even for a short time), to choose motherhood, where does it leave her?

Even if we do go back to our career or job, we need to understand that LIFE after a big event, for instance having a baby, can NEVER be the same as it was. ?Even if you decide to go back to your old job, even if you loved PR/ Marketing/ Teaching/ Law/?Policing/ Selling with every bit of your being, you now have to split your time and energy between your work and your family. ?It is as it is. Motherhood (and Fatherhood) can also change the way we view what we did in our life pre-children and many of us return to work with our rose-coloured glasses perched on our noses only to find that what we did does no longer fit with our new view of the world. ?Sometimes, this can be a shock too.

What this means for us as people is that we need to prepare for change, even if we don't quite know what, where, how or even if this change will come.?Preparation for this big inner shift, this paradigm change from 'individual' to 'mother' is, for most of us, enough of a leap. ?If we have to somehow overcome or deal with the loss or change of our former identity (for example, as defined by what we did in daily life to earn a crust), for some of us, it is too much. ?We need to take tiny bites of the big life pie.

I thought that creating an inner identity, something that sustains us and holds us steady through upheaval was as simple as finding the answer to this one question, "Who am I"?

But oftentimes, when we ask that question to a new acquaintance, out come the old familiar labels. ??"I'm Amber, I'm a writer" or "I'm John, I'm a doctor". ?In her talk last week, Dr Lakshimi spoke of this idea that we feel personal pain when we have to ask the question, ?"Who am I?" ?Why? Because we often don't know. ?Labels work for us because they give us a temporary, worldly identity that we can cling to. ?We need to make a new label, one that aligns with our inner identity?at this time.? We might become 'The Greene Family Masterchef', 'Blogger Amber', 'Singing sensation Suzi', 'Library Loiterer Lauren' or 'Yogi Ben'. A bit of humour might even be called for, don't you think? ?

But Dr Lakshimi suggested that the truth of this question is really much bigger than we previously thought. ?When we ask, "Who am I?", we should really be asking:

1. Who am I NOW?
2. Who am I GOING to be?
3. Who did I PROMISE to be?

We might ask this set of questions to ourself once a year, or once every five years? ?Who knows? ?The only thing we can rely upon is that life is ever changing, forever morphing. ?Change is the only constant we can rely upon so be prepared to ask the questions and forgo the shock. ?When we become part of the change wave, and don't resist it, we flow into life and somehow miss being tumbled and crashed by the random breaker.

I think the biggest part of the question is number 3. ?Who did I promise to be? ?WHO DID I PROMISE TO BE? ?This time around, what is your true purpose?

Some of us do not know yet. ?But there are clues to help us find out. ?Simply ask yourself,

• What is it that truly makes your heart sing? ?
• What would you do, if money/time/life circumstance were not a factor? ?
• What is that secret dream? ?
• What kinds of people would I love to be my friends? ?

If we have to change, and go with the flow, then surely we might try to at least jump into the current that will take us closer to where we'd like to go. ?We can then see new motherhood (and new fatherhood) as an opportunity. ?To go out and make those friends, to join that course, to provide a space for community building, to overcome our fears and set new goals. ?New parenthood can be an opportunity to align our inner selves with our outer experience of life.

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to be introducing you to a whole range of women (and hopefully a few men) who have seen new motherhood/ fatherhood as an opportunity to switch gears, change direction and align themselves with their inner needs and soul joy. All of them have found their niche. ?Some of them might be able to help you find your own niche (if you haven't already). ?And others will remind us that life, when we are able to overcome our resistance to change, can deliver so much more than we ever could have expected if we are just brave enough to take that leap.

I look forward to hearing how you've tracked a new course. ?

Source: http://www.mamamoontime.com/2012/03/new-motherhood-or-new-fatherhood-need.html

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