Mama, You're Not Broken: Unmasking the unspoken emotions of modern motherhood

By Anna Cusack

What is wrong with me?

Am I the only one who feels this way?

I can't keep this up... how are all the other mothers doing this?

Why did no one tell me it would be like this?

For too long, the first rule of motherhood has been not to speak a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enmore Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645091113

Anna Cusack

Anna Cusack is a Motherhood Revolutionist. As an author, podcaster, blogger and speaker, Anna reaches thousands of women every year with evidence-based information and inspirational, actionable content. Anna guides women through their transition to parenthood and early years of mothering. Her services include postbirth planning, in-home and online postbirth support, and mentoring for mothers and the professionals who work with them. You can find her on the "Motherhood Made Magic" podcast, at www.annacusack.com.au, and on her socials as @annacusackpostpartum.

Book preview

Mama, You’re Not Broken: Unmasking the Unspoken Emotions of Modern Motherhood

© Anna Cusack, 2021

www.annacusack.com.au

Disclaimer: Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information presented in this book, it must not be treated as a substitute for medical or psychological consultation. Always consult a qualified, supportive practitioner if you are concerned about your health and safety, or the health and safety of your children. Neither the author nor publisher can be held responsible for any claim arising from the use or misuse of suggestions made in this book, and are not liable for any person’s failure to access or implement individualised professional and/or medical advice.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. All permission requests are to be directed to the publisher using the address below.

ISBN: 9780645091113 (Ebook)

ISBN: 9780645091106 (Paperback)

Book cover design: Dennicka Watts

Book layout: Hammad Khalid

Printed on demand and distributed by IngramSpark

Published by Enmore Press

PO Box 522

Warners Bay NSW 2282

[e-mail]

Acknowledgement

of Country

I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I write this book, the Awabakal people, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. It always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land. I acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded, and that Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples everywhere remain strong in their connection to land, sea, sky and culture. May we come together to honour our mothers as you have done for millennia.

For my baby and her Bibi.

Contents

Acknowledgement of Country

Introduction

Chapter 1:

Guilt

Chapter 2:

Uncertainty

Chapter 3:

Invisibility

Chapter 4:

Fear

Chapter 5:

Loneliness

Chapter 6:

Overwhelm

Chapter 7:

Anger

Chapter 8:

Grief

Chapter 9:

Boredom

Chapter 10:

Contentment

Conclusion

Going Deeper

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction

Dear Mama,

If I’d have asked you what your version of motherhood would be like before your children arrived, what would you have come up with?

Coffee dates with Baby sleeping happily in your arms?

White onesies pinned carefully on the clothesline?

Heart-bursting love as you enjoyed music class together, or dipped your toes in the waves at the beach?

Sure, being a mum can include all those things. There is ecstasy so intense you feel you might faint, love so hard that your heart feels ready to burst out of your chest and moments so sweet you could melt.

The highs are dizzying, but what about the parts between them?

We know that preparing for birth, this dividing line in our lives, is important. As a woman’s baby leaves her body, the BC (Before Children) era ends, and she steps from the social position of Woman Who Is Pregnant to Mother.

It makes total sense to prepare mentally and physically for an event as profoundly life-changing as birth.

Perhaps you did birth education classes, or made plans with your midwife or obstetrician. You might have listened to guided recordings or put affirmations up around your house, à la every contraction brings my baby closer. You may have read books on the subject, written love letters to the baby you will soon meet, or binge-watched One Born Every Minute.

Between decorating the nursery and choosing a pram, did you to stop to think about what it would feel like to have a real-life baby in your care? One who is your responsibility for years, that you can’t take back to the store and return? One that still needs to be fed, changed and comforted even when you’re running on three hours of broken sleep and have diarrhoea?

As a doula, health clinician, colleague, relative, friend and mother, I have spent time in deep conversation with plenty of mums. I can tell you that if the how will I feel in between the highlights of mum-life? question didn’t really cross your mind, you’re in good company.

This book unpacks the answers to that question, answers that if you have children already, you’ll likely be familiar with: guilt, fear, anger, grief, loneliness, uncertainty, overwhelm, boredom, feeling invisible and, if you’re lucky, contentment.

I have called these the unspoken emotions of modern motherhood for two reasons.

The first is although an almost universal experience, these feelings and emotions may not be something you feel able to talk about openly.

They’re not things you’d fancy chatting about with other mums at the park, or discussing with your cousin’s wife’s sister at a family reunion.

You might feel weird about raising these feelings (and the things that trigger them) with your partner, in case they thought you wanted out.

And it’s likely you’d feel pretty uncomfortable posting about this stuff to your socials alongside the photos of your family picnic, because who out there chooses to make it look like they’re not coping?

The second is that these aren’t feelings that are automatically part and parcel of being a mother; they exist as a product of the set of circumstances and systems we find ourselves in as women raising kids in the modern western world.

These feelings are bigger than us pacing the hallway in the middle of the night with a crying baby, googling how long without sleep can you go before you die?

Motherhood, like all areas of life, has changed a lot in the past few centuries, and even the last couple of decades. I’m no expert historian, but I can guarantee you don’t need a degree in archaeology or a love for Antiques Roadshow to understand the pressures modern mothers are under.

There’s the preconception get healthy fertility-boosting plan, a list of 20 million things to avoid while pregnant, a tidal wave of people wanting to offer their birth horror stories and a maternity system that leaves women stone cold after they discharge from the birth suite. Did I mention how important it is to avoid stress while you incubate a delicate, impressionable baby?

Most modern mothers want to breastfeed, but getting support to make it happen is hit and miss. The mantra food is for fun until they’re one is pretty tricky to live up to when lactation support is heinously underfunded and paid maternity leave is inadequate, and in some countries, absent altogether. Did I mention how breast is best?

Then there is making sure our kids are stimulated, but not overstimulated, active but not hyperactive, securely attached but not spoiled. Mothers need to ensure we are there for our kids 24/7 but don’t lose ourselves in the process, or become dependent on others in any way, because that would be bad role modeling too.

Enter: the apocalypse. Inequality everywhere you look. Coronavirus. Financial ruin. Climate change.

‘Your kids need you to be strong, so chin up.’

‘We’re all in the same boat, so don’t whinge too much.’

‘Be grateful, don’t you know how lucky you are?’

‘Other people would kill for the life you have.’

If these lines were meant to help us see the silver lining to our exhaustion and emotional overload, I can tell you they only made me feel worse.

Suffering alone isn’t fun, so I went searching for answers. Turns out I wasn’t the only mum who was feeling the emotional squeeze of holding it together.

Initially I took comfort in learning that it wasn’t just me, but seeing other people struggling along with me could only be comforting for so long.

This book is my attempt to do something about the unrecognised, unseen and unspoken emotional elements of motherhood that are not yet out in the public arena.

To help women feel not only less alone in their struggle, but also less crazy.

To know that they’re not inherently faulty for feeling the way they do, but normal, exceptionally resilient human beings.

To help us harness the power that is bubbling within mothers as a collective to make the big-picture changes that will improve our lot, and give it our best shot to positively affect the world in which our children will raise theirs.

The aim of this book is to show you how it came to be that so many modern mothers are feeling so damn lousy, and how we can reclaim our status as brilliant women, rather than broken ones.

As you turn these pages, you will be unmasking the unspoken emotions mothers face day in, day out, and the modern day, pressure-cooker context of culturally constructed motherhood we feel them within.

In naming these emotions and exposing their origins we can reject the idea that we’re individually not good enough as mothers.

Despite some of these unspoken emotions being flags for maternal mental ill-health, it is my belief that in many instances, women are not sick at all, but responding appropriately to the complete dearth of care and respect our society has for mothers.

By recognising that women and mothers have been pushed and prodded and boxed into ways of thinking, acting and being over many generations, we can avoid unconsciously passing even more intergenerational shit-ness to our kids.

By becoming aware of and gradually dealing with our own inner stuff, we can take miniscule and major steps to explode the outer-world shackles that keep us feeling faulty, inferior, and altogether not enough.

This might sound a little woo-woo, overly optimistic or even ridiculous. Surely, if we just work a little harder on getting the balance right these feelings will be gone forever and our family will achieve magazine cover levels of white-linen-shirted happiness, right?

I wish I could tell you otherwise, but it doesn’t work like that.

It also might sound straight-up scary to consider that how we feel is impacted by more than what we personally do, almost like giving in to a life sentence of accepting that our lives will be hard, exhausting or dissatisfying.

Thankfully, I can assure you that waking up to what is really going on around us will, in the long run, lighten our burden rather than loading us up further.

Mothering (the actual practice of raising our children) can be beautiful, but it also brings up a whole lot of stuff that would be far easier (and more pleasant) to ignore. Often, we don’t know it’s there at all, until we hear our mother’s words come out of our mouths, or catch sight of ourselves in the mirror and wonder who is this woman who just yelled at her kids/kicked the cat/cries in the shower where no one can see?

We might seek to avoid it for a while, but unfortunately, we can’t outrun our own shadow, or unlock the cage that society has trapped us in until we realise we have the key in our very own pockets.

In this book, I will often, but not always, speak in the language that is relevant to my experience of family, with myself as biological mother, my husband as biological father, and our daughter. It is my hope that your family and identity take whatever form feels right and true for you, and that you can see parallels with your own experience as I tell my story and those of the vast array of people and caregiving configurations around me. All parents, and indeed all people, are welcome here.

Mama, if I’ve learned anything from my experience of motherhood so far, it is that I am not broken, and neither are you. I am excited to have you join me on this journey of learning, and unlearning, what it is to live fully as mothers.

If you’re reading this while you’re pregnant, please don’t put it back on the shelf for later. This book is full of the gold nuggets that will make your days feel brighter and your nights a whole lot less heavy. You are one of the lucky ones who know from the start that all feelings are welcome (which is fortunate, because there are plenty of them) and serve a purpose other than just steamrolling you. It is an honour to walk this path to parenthood with you.

Sometimes mothering is a delight.

Sometimes it feels like we’re drowning.

Sometimes it feels like both at once.

Let’s dive in.

Chapter 1:

Guilt

How do you measure up? I can tell you that

I fall painfully short.

If there’s one emotion that is common to every modern mother, it would have to be guilt.

Guilt is so common that you might think it’s just a biologically ingrained part of being a parent, but it is largely a modern curse.

I’ve even spoken to a woman who felt guilty about not feeling guilty enough, and was worried this meant she wasn’t caring or loving enough!

Thankfully, this is not the case, but we’ll get to that later.

Let’s cut to the chase and name parent guilt for what it is: mum guilt.

Recently I asked every mother I knew if they got mum guilt. The responses were a resounding yes. When I asked my husband if he ever got dad guilt, he tilted his head to the side and said what’s that? His response had already answered my question.

You know, like if you went to the park and forgot to take a hat and sunscreen and she got sunburnt, would you think that meant you were a bad dad?, I asked.

After what felt like an outrageously long pause, the answer came back I’d be annoyed at myself for a minute or two, but then I’d just make a mental note that I had to remember to pack them next time. What would be the point of getting worked up about something that I can’t fix? Touché, husband. Touché.

How different is this response to the self-talk of the mum I’d met that day, who had indeed forgotten her son’s hat and sunscreen for their trip to the park. I’m useless at this packing business, she said, I always forget something or other. I swear there is something wrong with my brain since having a baby. Come on Honey, let’s play in the shade, you’re already getting pink. I can’t have you getting sunburnt, then I’d feel like an even worse mum than I am already.

A sample size of one isn’t a very insightful study, so I asked ten of my mum friends in heterosexual relationships to run it by their partners and get back to me. After completing their mission, my Mama Detectives reported male