As some of you may know, underneath my heart-of-stone, gin-swilling exterior, I have decidedly hippyish, earth-mother type tendencies. I hardly ever make Belle have a bath and I breastfed her until she was two and a half! I know, shocking isn’t it? An ongoing supply of free nutrition that helps protect against infection, obesity and can raise your IQ? Whatever will nature think up next.

"Musings on Motherhood"I’m currently reading ‘Musing on Motherhood – About Pregnancy, Birth and Breastfeeding: An Anthology of Art, Poetry and Prose’ – edited by Teika Bellamy – and it is absolutely fabulous. As it says on the tin, it’s a collection of writing and art from real mothers, talking about what it’s really like to be a mother – not just the practicalities of never being able to go to the toilet alone, but the emotions and feelings that swell up in you at the most unexpected of times and the amazing bond you form with your baby, even though they’re basically just a helpless ball of mess and screams.

Some of the poetry I had to sort of pretend to read, but that’s just because I’m a bit thick and don’t really understand poetry. Any mum though I’m sure could relate to this one by Marija Smits:

The Cold Cup of Tea

An already-cold cup of builder’s strength tea
Is sat by the sink, and saying to me:
‘I’m delicious, delightful, so drink me up do!’
But I’m knee-deep in nappies, and children, and poo;
So call me again when I’ve sorted this mess
And have time to relax, and unwind and de-stress…

*

Later, much later, when the kids are asleep,
In my nightie and slippers I quietly creep
To the kitchen, and there is that cold cup of tea,
Still delicious, still delightful, and still waiting for me…

….

What I love about Musings on Motherhood is that it gives you the opportunity to take a bit of time out from actually being a mother, and think about what it means – what is it that defines us as mothers, what are the shared experiences and emotions we all go through?

For me, it’s hard to pin down exactly what being a mother is all about. I became pregnant for the first time when I was 16, so hadn’t even really started to figure out what it meant to be a person, let alone a mother. My identity as a parent is so integral to who I am as an adult woman then, that I can’t even begin to separate out what it means. I have never been a grown-up and not been a mother, it is just who I am.

What does being a mother mean to you?

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“Hello Jo,

I’m a Canadian musician, living in Mexico, married to a Bristol man, mother of two and about to release my 5th independent album.”

Now that’s a cracking start to an email isn’t it? If someone sent that to you you’d definitely read on. I know I did.

The email was from Camille Miller, asking me to have a listen to a track from her new EP called ‘Tiniest of Hearts’, written while Camille was pregnant with her first child, Hannah. Now I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty hard to identify with most modern music. You’ll not often find me ‘in the club with a bottle of bub’ or anything like that, and I find it difficult to get my head round exactly why Rhianna would love the way somebody hurts her and lies to her. That’s not a thing is it? Come on girl, pull yourself together.

Pregnancy and parenthood though, that’s something I know about. Why are there not more songs about that? Sure, the day-to-day logistics of it might not be terribly glamorous, but actually becoming and being a parent is a very powerful, emotional thing.

Camille is going to be in the UK over Christmas and the New Year doing some shows, so why not have a listen to Tiniest of Hearts, and maybe check out her website for show dates, buy an album, or just leave some sort of lovely comment telling her how much you like the song.*

 
*Only if you do obviously. I’m not asking you to lie. If you don’t like it though, probably best just to keep quiet.

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Yesterday I was tagged in a meme by Yummy Mummy Really.

That sounds kind of painful, but it’s not some weird sexual practice or anything, it just means that now I have some questions to answer. I get tagged in memes about as often as I get the ball passed to me in netball, (I’m not very good), so it’s rather exciting.

The theme is motherhood, and as I only have a few more hours to wait for my annual cup of tea in bed, and what I can only assume are home-baked treats, as I was barred from the kitchen for several hours yesterday, the timing is just about perfect.

Here goes…

Describe motherhood in three words

Exhausting, amazing, exhausting.

Does your experience differ from your mother’s?  How?

Of course – she didn’t blog unashamedly about her kids did she? My mother didn’t have the luxury of childcare vouchers, or tax credits, or quite such a general acceptance of the idea that although it’s bloody hard work, it IS alright to work full-time and be a mother. We just have to remember to put some of our earnings aside for our kids’ therapy when they grow up.

What’s the hardest thing about being a mum?

For me it’s the relentlessness of it. There isn’t one thing that’s particularly horrendous, but it never stops. Yes you might get the odd day or even week off, but you’re still a parent, even if they aren’t in the same room.

There are always limits or boundaries, things you can’t do, places you can’t go. You can’t just decide to spontaneously go away for the weekend, or go on a drugs binge or anything, not that I would, but sometimes you feel it would be nice to have the option at least.

You have to try to stay in the moment, because if you think to yourself  ‘Oh, it’s OK, I can do that in 18 years’, you might go a bit nuts.

What’s the best thing?

The best thing is seeing them laugh at something, or do well at something, or be really proud of something they have achieved, and knowing that I’ve had a little something to do with that. It makes me feel a bit smug in a way I really like. I like it when they are thoughtful too, and do something kind for me, or each other, or other people. That makes me a bit squidgy inside.

My daughters also both have a fantastic sense of humour. They’re so sharp – too sharp sometimes – but I love that they make me laugh. It’s always nice having a bit of company around the house too. And someone to take the recycling out on a Thursday night.

How has it changed you?

To be honest, I don’t think it has changed me. I was only 16 when I was pregnant first time around and so I’ve never been a grown-up and not been a mother too. I don’t know what I’d be like if I didn’t have children.

What do you hope for your children?

All I want is for them to be happy and content. I hope that they appreciate just how wide their horizons really are, and that they make the most of all the opportunities they are given. I hope they recognise their own unique abilities and skills and aren’t afraid to push themselves.

What do you fear for them?

That they will end up in jobs or relationships that don’t challenge them, and that they get no satisfaction from. I fear them getting bored with life.

What makes it all worthwhile?

The child benefit.

The next bit is the tricky bit, where I have to pick five people to tag, so they can carry on the fun. Nothing bad will happen if they don’t of course, it’s not like one of those weird chain letters where if you break it your dog dies, but still, if you fancy it, do have a go.

I’m tagging Emma at Me, The Man & The Baby, Kat at 3 Bedroom Bungalow, Claire at Being a Mummy, Luschka at Diary of a First Child and Heather at Young and Younger.

Happy Mother’s Day ladies!

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I am proud to call myself a feminist. I support the Fawcett Society, I co-edit Women’s Views on News, I try to be a positive female role model for my daughters… basically I do my bit.

But…

Sometimes I find it a tiny bit depressing.

It’s not that I don’t care about equality – I absolutely do. The fact that women earn less than men isn’t right. Underrepresentation of women in politics and business bothers me. Sometimes though, feeling passionate about an injustice means you focus on the negative, on the things you feel are wrong and that you want to put right, and this sometimes makes me sad, because I become so tied up in all the things that aren’t fair, that I forget all the good things.

So today, when I read in The Daily Mail that men are losing out to women in many areas of life, I ignored my first instinct, namely to rubbish everything the Mail says, and thought instead about how lucky I am. This doesn’t mean I think there isn’t anything left to fight for, just that I’m not in a battling mood today.

The Daily Mail are reporting on the findings of the ‘How Fair is Britain?’ report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and highlight the fact that women are less likely to lose their jobs in a recession, more likely to eat well and look after their health, less likely to be victims of violent crimes, and so on. Well that’s all well and good, but you can read that anywhere can’t you? So, instead I’ve decided to come up with my own list of reasons why it’s great to be a woman:

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This week, I have five copies of the new Uma Thurman film – ‘Motherhood’ – to give away. The film is a day in a life of a New York mother, writer, blogger and all round juggler of life. At the same time as planning a birthday party and constantly trying to prevent her car from being towed away, Thurman is trying to write 500 words about what being a mother means to her. So to win a copy of the film, just tell me what motherhood means to you. Winners will be picked at random by an apathetic fourteen year old. (See below for some blurb about the film).

So I’m going to start the ball rolling with my random and in-no-particular-order thoughts on motherhood. If you have read any of my other posts you will have an idea of the kind of issues that I struggle with on a day to day basis. I manage a seven year age gap between two feisty daughters, hide crumbs behind the sofa and every day lose the battle to get my teenager to wear a coat.

But that’s the daily grind stuff, the practical side of being a parent. What about Motherhood? Is that the same thing? ‘Motherhood’ as a concept, in capital letters, must be something more than that – a feeling, an ethos, a way of living. It’s hard for me, having given birth at 17, to separate the ideas of parenthood and adulthood. I have never been a grown up without children. I don’t know what it feels like to have independence without responsibility, so I can’t make a distinction – to me, being a mother is just something that has always been, and something that always will be.

Maybe if I had had children later, I would have had time to get to know a different me first, and would be able to say now with conviction that yes, motherhood for me means X, Y and Z, but I just can’t say for sure what that X, Y and Z might be.

Perhaps that’s normal though. Perhaps that IS the definition of motherhood, that it creeps into every aspect of who you are, grows as you grow, soaks into your very core. Once you have children, it is impossible to detach yourself from what that means. You can’t cut your life into neat chunks and define each slice individually and separately from the others.

So what does motherhood mean to me? I don’t know. And that’s not me just chickening out of an answer, I really don’t know. Motherhood IS me, I can’t remember a time Before Children, I don’t know how my life would be different.

And now I have to go and pick up Belle from a birthday party, hang out some washing and think about packed lunches for tomorrow. We can talk in broad terms, think about concepts, but basically that’s what motherhood is all about…

Win one of five Motherhood DVDs – out on DVD 8th March

Shot entirely on location in New York’s West Village, this bittersweet comedy distils the dilemmas of the maternal state (marriage, work, self, and not necessarily in that order) into the trials and tribulations of one pivotal day. MOTHERHOOD forms a genre of one – no other movie has dedicated itself in quite this way to probing exactly what it takes to be a mother, with both wry humour and an acute sense of authenticity.

Eliza Welch (Thurman) is a former fiction writer-turned-mom-blogger with her own site, “The Bjorn Identity.” Putting her deeper creative ambitions on hold to raise her two children, Eliza lives and works in two rent-stabilized apartments in a walk-up tenement building smack in the middle of an otherwise upscale Greenwich Village. Eliza’s good-natured but absent-minded husband (Edwards) seems tuned out to his wife’s conflicts, not to mention basic domestic reality, while her best friend Sheila (Minnie Driver) understands this – and Eliza — all too well.

MOTHERHOOD is a hymn to the joys and sorrows of raising children, and the necessity of not losing yourself in the process. Log onto www.motherhoodmovie.com for more competitions to be won and details about the film.

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There are some women who seem able to remain effortlessly poised at all times. Others are more like Bridget Jones, stumbling from one mishap to another. Most women though can probably remember a time when they’ve found themselves cringing with embarrassment, wanting the ground to swallow them up.

If you can remember such a moment – a glass of red wine sloshing onto your friend’s new cream carpet maybe – then you can begin to imagine the mortifying shame that must have been felt by the clumsy art student who this week stumbled and fell into an £80million Picasso, tearing a six inch hole in the canvas.

The Metropolitan Museum in New York, where the accident occurred, have kindly declined to name the student and have offered reassurances that the painting can be restored in time for the Picasso exhibition in April. It still makes you cringe though to imagine that gut wrenching, slow motion split-second where she knows she is falling, but is powerless to help herself.

I had a rather embarrassing moment this week when, driving myself and a friend to a meeting, I misjudged a corner and crashed into a verge. My first thought as I struggled to avoid a telegraph pole, was not for my safety, or that of the car, but for passenger and my ego. Fortunately no one was hurt, but all I could think was how embarrassing to make such an awful mistake and to crash your friend into a hedge.

My friend Lucy has had more than her fair share of embarrassing moments, including a late night tumble that resulted in a trip to the dentist. “I’d been at a party full of important people,” she confessed, “and was very nervous, so I had drunk quite a lot. I was late leaving and could see my bus disappearing round the corner. I ran for it, attempting to leap onto the back, but I missed, and smashed my face into the pavement. I could hear people saying “Oooh!” but I got up and felt fine. When I woke up the next day and looked in a mirror though I realised that I’d knocked out both my front teeth…”

Unfortunately, unless you can maintain a permanent air of Judi Dench like grace, these types of mishaps are unavoidable. It could be that as women we are distracted by our multi-tasking brains, but more likely it is a combination of hormones and high heels, conspiring to turn us into Bridget style stumbling fools. Note to self: the next time you’re feeling clumsy, steer well clear of galleries.

Photo credit: Andrea

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In preparation for my first writing workshop this week over at Sleep is for the Weak, I am writing on the theme of false assumptions – those funny things that people think about you that seem to come from nowhere.

This is an interesting topic for me, as I’m pretty sure people are quite often not sure what to make of me. For a start, I’ve been told I look younger than I am – 32 this April – and the perception of youth can often effect the way people interact with you. A couple of years ago for example, a salesman came to the door, trying to flog gas and electricity. I answered, and he asked me if my mum or dad was home…

Age gives a woman a certain gravitas and I do often worry about not being taken seriously. Sometimes when I meet people for the first time I want to come right out and explain – “I may look young and have the voice of a child, but really I am a proper grown up who knows how to do stuff. Honest.”

Add to this the fact that I was pregnant at 16, when I looked about 12, and I’m fairly sure I must have attracted some curious glances in my time. Not that I have ever really been aware of it. I’m just me inside, and I forget sometimes that other people can see my face when they are talking to me.

Another occasion I remember well was when I got my GCSE results. I was particularly geeky at school, a straight A student and prize winner, and everyone I went to school with knew it. (I made sure of that – hence not having many friends at school…). My boyfriend at the time however went to a different school and when his friends – whom I had known for some months – found out my results they were stunned to say the least. “Blimey,” they said, “we’d thought you were pretty stupid!” Charming.

A couple of times in the last week people have made reference to me being terribly organised and orderly, an assumption which I challenged, not least because it made me feel terribly dull. Who wants to be thought of as ‘the woman whose files are arranged nicely’?

It’s true that I am fussy about some things – I do like my books to sit flush which the edge of the shelf, and have been known to arrange them in colour order – but I don’t think this makes me hugely organised. In fact, a quick glance around my study or bedroom would show quite the opposite. Piles of magazines, newspapers, unread letters and mountains of clean and dirty washing, merging together in one giant heap – hardly the hallmark of a neat freak.

And then of course there are the friends who see me scoffing sweets and quaffing wine like the grape is about to become extinct and assume I am some kind gluttonous lush with no self control. Oh hang on a minute…

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