HOW DOES MOTHERHOOD CHANGE YOU?
My husband and I often talk about how we think people should become parents because of the way it forces you out of your self-centered and selfish ways, and into this place of keeping another human, other than yourself, alive (for purely selfish motivations of course! It’s easier when you know your friends are also suffering…) It is impossible to be unchanged in life but there is something unique and almost involuntary about the way parenthood changes you. Your physiology changes, things that you thought only your parents did or said suddenly come flying out of your own mouth-causing you to doubt the very fibers of your being.
It is this doubt that casts a tall shadow on a person’s artistry. The things that you could easily say yes to before, suddenly have a mire of consequences attached to them. Your sleep is interrupted, you need childcare, you feel too attached to leave… and that’s all if you have a healthy child. A parent whose child has special needs, an anaphylactic allergy, a learning disability goes through an entirely different set of circumstances, heightened well above what the average parent goes through. Suddenly, you start to wonder if you should be following your own path as well as being a parent. This feeling is even more real for the person who stays home to raise their child, choosing to forgo work outside the home. (And here, I can’t even begin to speak for the single parent.)
For whatever reason, when I was younger, I can remember myself saying (whether to another person or myself) that I could not see myself being both a parent and a musician. I knew (at the very surface) what being a musician was about, and I didn’t see how I could marry the two and be content, or raise a child that didn’t grow to feel great disdain for me. I didn’t understand the “I can have it all” mentality, despite considering myself a Feminist. As soon as I became pregnant, I chose something for myself because of the way I perceived what “being a musician” meant.
It wouldn’t be until 5 years later (after becoming a mother, and having a second child) that I would discover another way of looking at my artistry-the ontology of who I was, versus what I did, and how that affected the way I saw myself. For so long, I felt like a failure and oh so very OBSCURE (save that for another post.) I had to create a new way of being-one that accepted a new measure of success, one that allowed the flexibility of being a mother one minute and being on stage the next. Thanks to a few terrific coaching sessions with an ontological coach, I suddenly understood myself differently. It is humorous when I look back on it now because while I studied Heidegger in university and ascribed to his philosophies, I hadn’t allowed those philosophies to exist in my new, changed life. Simply because I hadn’t been doing what my peers were doing while on this new path called Motherhood, did not mean that I was no longer a musician.
If anything, becoming a mother gave me a much healthier perspective on being a musician ( and I am still patting myself on the back for calling myself such) and I am very certain that having THREE kids has forced me to fight for it tooth and nail.
How has it changed you? Any regrets? Any surprises?
