All I Really Want for Mother's Day

I’m a broke-ass-queer-grad-student-single-parent-mama-of-two-barbarians (yes, that’s my official title), and I’m here to report that I don't like Mother's Day. Not even one little bit. Not because I don't think mothers should be valued, but because I think a day in which Hallmark cards and crumbs in the bed on the clean sheets that said mother will then have to choose between laundering and/or sleeping on, and the wilty and weirdly dyed carnations are just not what I think most moms want or need. They are most assuredly not what *I* need.

If we really wanted to show that maternal labour is work that is valuable, that the raising of small humans into bigger humans is work that is valued, we would need more than a day. We would need a whole fucking revolution.

In the meantime, the massive explosion of mommy blogs and memoirs and the mommy-posts that everyone complains about on facebook (yes, I do recognize that some of these are annoying) are about something bigger than a glorification of mothering (although certainly motherhood is glorified. Just not in ways that are actually useful to mothers. Someday I’ll finish a dissertation about that. You know, maybe). This massive surge of mother-writing seems to also be about the fact the work of mothering is largely unseen and hugely undervalued.

When I post (or 'overshare') about my struggles as a parent, it is precisely because there is this massive amount of work that I do – all of which feels like hard and consuming physical and emotional labour - that is totally unseen, perhaps particularly so because I do it alone in the literal as well as the figurative sense. This is the reason that I get teary every time someone says to me: "I don't know how you do it."  Because, 1. Most days I don't really know either (see my official title if this seems odd to you), and 2. It is a small recognition of that labour that no one can see. The labour that keeps me up at night in a way that my academic labour doesn't (although it does too). The labour that is never finished, never enough, and always working from a place of deficit (sometimes many). All of this labour – this work that takes up an enormous part of my time, my emotions, my money, and my freedom – is invisible. And because I so often feel unseen, I also feel compelled to make myself visible or heard. I imagine that other folks who do this sort of mother-work feel the need to be visible, and valued, also.

So, if you really want to know what I want on Mother's Day, try this:

I want a witness.  I want someone to tell me that they don't know how I do it but that you’re really glad I do. Tell me they think I’m beautiful, or amazing, or all kinds of fucking strong. (All three is good, too.) Tell me that the work I do, that stuff that keeps me up at night wracked in worry and guilt and exhaustion is important and necessary and valuable labour. 

Tell me that you *see me*.  Tell me you see me in all the great, big mess of it.  Tell me you see me with my hair sticking up, kicking a toy into the air in the pent-up frustration of constant noise and chaos.  Tell me you see me putting on band-aids and driving to the emergency room and driving myself mad.  Tell me you see me trying to hold my anger and failing.  Tell me you see me losing my shit, being puked on, cried on, screamed at, bear-hugged, pillow bonked. Soothing nightmares and anxieties. Being flanked in a bed that should be big enough for two extra small bodies but never is. Being late for school-run. Again.  Getting that look about being *that* mom. Again. Tell me you see me when no one else does. That minute after I’ve read yet another article on special needs or broken homes. When I’m sure I’ve lost all the little pieces of myself.  When they’re begging me to play and I just need to write. When I’m sure I can’t deal with one. more. sleepless. night.  When I feel so lonely I cry, when the laundry is piled over my head, or when I’m wracked with fear that I’m not doing this well enough for them. Just be a witness.

You can’t, of course. But for Mother’s Day, that’s really all I want.

Though, if you're up for it, a whole fucking revolution wouldn't hurt either.

I'm Raising My Hand Because I Have Something to Say...

**With deepest thanks to Alissa, who reminded me that writing is a form of survival.  

Quite some time ago (in what feels like a galaxy far, far away) I was a stay-at-home queer mama, married to a woman and full-time mothering two young gay-bies.  I came to blogging for the same reason most mommy-bloggers do - I was overwhelmed with my life, with the loneliness of at-home mothering in general, and being a queer, feminist, over-educated at-home mama in specific.  I put off pursuing my PhD after completing my M.A. in Gender Studies to have babies with my then-partner, a starting up and then up and coming lawyer.  Like many, I had romanticized notions of what life at home with kids might mean for me, and like many, I was shattered when I realized that I was drowning in my own home.

Fast forward a few years.  Six or seven, if you'd like to get technical.  In that time, I broke down.  My marriage broke down.  I got divorced.  Got terrified.  Got broke.  Got ballsy. Started my PhD. Became a single parent.   

(Note here, custody is shared equally with my ex. Note here also, for those that might be thinking "But Tasha, you are only a half-time parent!" Know that I am thinking in response, "there is no such thing as a *half-time-mother* and that whether or not my children are in residence with me, I am a full-time mother. Period.  And fullstop.").  

Let me say this now, in case I forget to later: jumping out of my life as a full-time parent and into my life as a newly-single, newly (differently) terrified, broke, single-mama, older-than-most-students-around-me grad student is absolutely to inhabit a position of privilege.  It is a privilege to be in the academy and I know this, acutely, everyday. Because I had already been educated to a certain degree and knew how to speak the language of applications and grant proposals, and because I had access to help for these processes.  Because I got lucky enough to secure funding, first from the school and then from the government for my studies.  Because I very much have racial privilege in an institution that values and upholds white privilege.  In all of these ways, I have had assistance that many do not.  

I write now, though, because I find myself often alone and lonely; drowning in a different sort of house. 

I write because I feel the need to reach out across borders that feel impenetrable, to find those in similar situations, to share stories and strategies for survival.  

I write because I don't know what else to do to push against the constantly lurking feeling of unintelligibility.

I often feel as though I inhabit a sort of no-mama's-land within these walls, though just like the walls that enclosed my children and I years ago, they are also walls that I love a great deal.   But I am different.  Though I know a few grad students who are also parents (a feat to be sure), not one of them parents alone. Though I know of many students who live on the same grants or scholarships that I do, none of them supports children or has need to rent a three bedroom apartment with that grant money.  And grants, of course, do not take into consideration the life circumstances of those whose scholarship they aim to support.  I am in a vastly different life phase than my graduate cohort, most of whom are in their twenties when I am swiftly nearing my forties.   They are all lovely people, kind and welcoming.  But I don't feel like I fit.  I am the same age as many of the faculty in my department(s).  They are also lovely people, kind and welcoming.  But I don't feel like I fit there, either.

I am often anxious, exhausted, crunched for time.  Solo-parenting is a whirlwind and writing after my kids are finally asleep for the night is mostly impossible.  When my kids are with my ex, I try to make up for it - work into the nights doing course prep and dissertation research, only to build a fresh state of exhaustion for when the kids return.  I am sick often.  Probably too often.  The words self-care make me laugh on a good day and cry on a bad one.  I do try to find time for myself in amongst the chaos, but mostly, these words feel like words for people with time, and with money.

I watch my cohort take part in invaluable networking opportunities, send in papers for publication, jet across the globe (literally ACROSS THE GLOBE - holy shit, I can't figure out how people do this!), and it fills me with a feeling of near hopelessness as I miss out on networking opportunities due to childcare,  and can't afford to go to expensive conferences, most of which seem hopelessly out of my financial reach, even if I did have childcare support.  I want to take part in working groups and reading groups and writing groups.  I know that they might temper the feeling of isolation - but I don't know how to reach into my energy reserves to get there, or find the time.   To top all of this off, I'm not even sure, on most days, what I am working towards.  I won't be able to enter the job market outside of this city where children's other parent lives.  So the few jobs that might come out on the horizon for me (in a time of extreme job scarcity) are not likely to be within my reach.  

Nevertheless, I am doing this thing.  Because I want it badly.  Because it is the only trajectory that feels true to myself.  Because even though I am exhausted and sick and isolated far too often - I love this work and know it's important work and politically necessary.  I also love the work of raising my kids.  This too feels important and politically necessary.  But these parts of my life and my work often feel vastly incompatible. 

So this is me, raising my hand.  Trying to make sense of this journey, and write my way into some kind of intelligibility.