Us single mums do like to think we do a pretty good job. That we've got it all together. To me, it doesn't even seem "hard" most days. My team rocks! We have an awesome routine, and my children are endearing and make it easy. Considering the mother they spawned from (and how "fly by the seat of my pants" I am, I have surprisingly content, chilled out, easy going babies who run like clock-work...
The kids are, in fact, the easy part to "keep together". I manage parenting well. Very well if you ask my friends - well if you ask me (I'm rather introspective and critique myself, often!) We are lucky enough to have never experienced the following:
- major public meltdowns or tantrums
- insane poo explosions whilst outside the house
- any major injury or illness (Tyler's had gastro once, and has barely ever had a scratch on him)
- a mummy blow-out: where it all just gets too hard and you lose your shit... but with people watching!
Yesterday I had what I'd call a minor blowout. A curveball, if you will. The day started at 7am with me almost crying for a coffee - and pledging to my friend on the phone that without fail, I was caffeine-bound (for those of you who don't know, I don't drink coffee or tea, caffeine is like a last resort for me!) This was at 8am, and was spurred on my both the sub-4 hours of sleep I'd gotten the night before, the human-leeching my children were engaging in, and the business-glitch I was less than welcoming. But by the way the morning carried on - where one sub-optimal seemed to follow another and another - by the time I finally got my revered coffee, it was midday... and by then, I felt like death warmed up.
In true avalanche style, the rest of the day seemed to go down the shithole as well... Kids falling asleep in the car at opportune moments, resulting in me ever so patiently sitting in a car-park wasting away the time, daring not to wake them (if there's one thing you never do with clock-work children, it's wake them! A disturbance to their regimented slumber is like the end of the earth to a routine child) so the quick trip to the mechanic's became an exercise of military proportions - I found myself off guard. The children were overdue feeds. And nappy changes. God, even I hadn't eaten for the day! And to make matters worse, as courteous as it was of the auto-shop to offer me a courtesy car to get home in, my pint sized frame rendered me unable to see above the dash, the car itself was a bit fractious, and I felt incompetent and uncomfortable to drive it.
After floods of tears in a side-street trying to figure out what to do - with babies crying right along with you - you end up having to resort to the one thing that most single mothers like myself find the hardest thing to do. Ask for help...
Sounds so simple doesn't it? Ask for help. But to what others see as a strong, determined, capable mother - asking for help is like admitting defeat. Having others see you exposed and stripped back to the bare bones of coping under pressure feels humiliating. And worse, you see people looking at you with pity. Feeling sorry for you. Feeling bad for "your situation" as if it's an ailment.
But the funny thing is about asking for help - more often than not, when you ask for help, that's what you get. My needs were accommodated simply by asking. A place to change and feed the babies, a way to get home safely, and somewhere for me to dry my eyes, splash water on my face, and pick myself up again and get on with things.
This is one lesson I still need to learn, and a trait I still need to embrace. Being able to say "Can you please help me?" without feeling like it's a bad thing, or that it makes me any less of a mother. Or person. The pity that you think you sense may actually, infact, be admiration. That you did well enough to come that far as you did. No-one punishes you for asking for help, if anything sometimes they'll congratulate you for it, knowing it's not an easy thing to do...
If you're carrying too much more than you can handle on your own, choose to let some of it go by letting someone else in. You may feel weak, or vulnerable, but at the end of the day - it's a nicer feeling for everyone if permission is granted to depend on someone else. Plus the person doing the helping often gets as much from doing so as you do from receiving their help.
'Til next time, peace out :) x
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