When Life Throws Curveballs - Embrace the Twists and Turns of Parenthood with Confidence

Image by Jason Parker from Pixabay

As I write this, it’s Mother’s Day in New Zealand and yet my children and I are the furthest apart geographically we have ever been, on separate holidays. My kids are having a ball with their dad, and I’m having the first proper relaxing holiday I’ve had in many years.

Split living wasn’t something I ever envisaged, although it has its pros and cons like everything. In fact, I was just reflecting how I really didn’t envisage much at all and how many of my expectations about parenthood were really unconscious.

I always wanted to be a parent, and to do the best job I could, but beyond the “meeting someone, falling in love and having a family together” cliché, I hadn’t really put in huge amounts of thought to the specific role each parent would play in our children’s lives.

Despite growing up in an era where girls and boys were treated equally in many ways in the schooling system (we all did cooking classes and woodworking classes together, for example), there was the subtle yet powerful silent message that women stayed at home to look after the house and children, because – well – that is what the model was in the vast majority of households in 1970’s and 1980’s West of Scotland.

I grew up in a large extended family and many of my cousins were ten to fifteen years ahead of me, it felt that most years our family would attend at least one wedding and/or christening. Whether to have children was never really a question in my mind as I held each of my adorable little first cousins’ once removed.That unique fresh baby smell, the fragility and innocence and joy wrapped up in a bundle that needed so much attention was a beacon to move towards from a time before conscious memories or deliberation ever kicked in.

As I tussled with which direction to move in my career, wrangling at every turn as nothing felt like quite the right fit, there came a point among many questions, exercises and books that I drew out a map of my life. It was a long and winding road and I had been asked to make in moments and stages. I started at the end when I’d be a grandmother.

That one exercise demonstrates to me that my having children was never a question. The “meeting someone, falling in love and having a family” part seemed more problematic. Now I know why, which is a whole other story which I summed up recently in Devote Your Attention to Ways You Impact Others and How You’re Truly Treated, we are not always attracted to compatible or healthy relationships.

As I found myself on my third “live together” relationship, I again noticed how I was shouldering the vast majority of responsibilities in regard to running the house. With both of us working full time, I questioned why I was doing that but, suffice to say, didn’t do anything much about it.

Therefore, despite all that had been said beforehand in the rosy glow of shared dreams of having a family, I also found myself shouldering the vast majority of the responsibilities in regard to bringing up my children. This is no surprise really and I remember when a colleague was basking in her rosy glow, and was making her partner pre cooked meals for the days she was going away on a business trip, telling her that she was making herself a metaphorical bed she’d probably come to regret lying in once they had children.

The reality of having a baby is enormous. For a start, there is the sheer miracle of creation to start with. My children were pregnancies five and six, so when I finally sustained a pregnancy, that miracle felt very real as I watched a tiny human grow inside me.

Then there is the birthing process which – despite women having navigated since time immemorial – is nothing short of remarkable. For anyone who hasn’t actually seen a baby being born in their presence, it is worth a look at a photo of a wooden dilation chart showing a baby’s head (tip use those words as a prompt to search for one), and then look at an image of a human female’s pelvic bone to get a solid sense of the challenge.

All that was just to get to the starting line. Everyone told me how healthy breastfeeding is; no one told me that – at the outset – it would take up to ten hours of my day. Far less the wondrous world of “guess what baby is unhappy about”, which is the process of intimately getting to know whether our child is crying because it needs its nappy changed, needs fed, needs to sleep, is unwell or just needs comforted after its own rather traumatic ordeal of being born.

To imagine birth, think of being nestled comfortably in a relatively quiet and dark space then, all of a sudden feeling yourself thrust from that down through a narrow tube contracting and squeezing, with a diameter just fractionally wider than your head. It's a remarkable feat of flexibility and compression, not to mention quite a traumatic experience that unconsciously lives on in our bodies.

As our children grow and we become more attuned to their nature and needs, we notice patterns. When my teen daughter cries that I can’t possibly know how her body will respond to days of over exposure to social and screen time, together with a lack of sleep, I sigh inwardly. Years and years of being present, observing, noticing, experiencing, that is how mothers know.

And for all that we know, we have to gradually let go and let our children be present, observe, notice and experience their own body, their own thoughts and their own feelings. Along the way they too will be no doubt be attracted to incompatible or unhealthy situations and relationships in a bid to get to know themselves. Because it’s in the contrasts of life that we grow.

Not since infancy do we go through such rapid growth as in adolescence. As a mum navigating this time in my children’s lives, one of the hardest challenges isn’t letting go. In truth, letting go of the cumbersome impossibility of managing someone else’s life constantly is a relief. The hard part is not that, it’s that – in order not to expose our children to responsibilities they are not yet ready for – it has to be a gradual letting go.

Let me give another analogy to get a sense of this. If I’m driving and become aware I need to pee, but there’s no toilet for miles, I hold on. Then I see a road sign for the next rest break, I am counting down towards it. Then I run to the loo, barely able to hold on, and there’s a queue. Suddenly I’m wishing I’d prepared myself for this better, had somehow been able to let go gradually.

Letting go gradually is a unique mix of developmental stage and maturity, circumstances, and our own awareness of all these things and what they mean. And gradual isn’t like the steady running of a tap, it happens more in bursts or fits and starts.

Add in the mix that I’m not the only parent, like all children, ours are the manifestation of two sets of genetic material and life’s longing for itself. While I've always been deeply involved in managing our children's lives and have developed a certain approach based on my experiences and insights, his involvement now comes with its own unique style and preferences. This is another learning process which can also be challenging to navigate, especially given his preference for parallel parenting rather than co-parenting.

As I sit here on Mother’s Day, relishing my first day of a truly relaxing holiday, I can't help but reflect on the evolving phases of motherhood. Much like navigating through a series of twists and turns on a winding road, I find myself in a different phase now.

My ultimate goal remains: to nurture authentic, self-respecting humans who can thrive independently by the time they reach adulthood. However, now more than ever, the parenting journey feels like adjusting the flow of water from a tap. While the tap is still firmly on, I'm being challenged to find the right balance and flow to suit our current circumstances while keeping an eye on the long-term goal.

Perhaps as a parent you, too, have navigated twists and turns in your journey, discovering unexpected challenges and joys along the way. If you are not yet a parent, perhaps this will inspire you to do what I didn’t – and may have made my life a little easier – to get to know yourself, your needs, your expectations and your boundaries before becoming a parent. Either way, take a moment to consider how our experiences have shaped our understanding of parenthood and growth. Like the flow of water from a tap, may you find the right balance and rhythm to navigate the ever-changing currents of life.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why Did I Not Know This About Parenthood?, Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, When Detours Define Your Destiny and Struggles Forge Your Strengths and Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve?. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.