Motherhood and Authenticity

This story was submitted anonymously to the How We Show Up collection as part of the July SEEQ sessions.

From the age of 8, many of my evenings and weekends were spent in a leotard and tights. I was a serious student of ballet, which provided me hours upon hours of practice – practice perfecting, practice performing, practice denying the voice that says, “I’m tired” or “I don’t feel like smiling.” Ballet also provided many opportunities for feedback, or rather criticism. “She’s doing it right, you’re doing it wrong, maybe you should lose weight.” This early conditioning meant that even as an adult, I expend far too much energy worrying about what others think. Even as I’m writing this, I’m critiquing and wondering about how it will be perceived. I blame ballet for one of my most memorable “faking it” moments. My daughter, my first born, was about 3 months old. I had just returned to work from maternity leave, and I was adjusting to my new role as a working mom. My mother was watching my daughter and offered to meet me for lunch along with a tribe of new mothers I met while taking prenatal yoga. These other women were badass and strong, many advocating for natural birth, attachment parenting and public breastfeeding. Philosophies I supported and strived to emulate, though I didn’t necessarily adopt in the extreme or judge others for shirking. During the meal, in a busy, crowded restaurant, my daughter started crying. I assumed she must be hungry, so I prepared to nurse her. For a few moments, I evaluated my options (1) get up and go to the bathroom to nurse in private – an act I was sure would ostracize me from the group we were with, (2) feed her at the table with a makeshift cover, since I had left mine at home, or (3) whip out a boob and feed my daughter – which would make me, and likely some of the other diners uncomfortable, but would be embraced by the mother collective. Ultimately, I decided to ignore the nervous voice in my head and breastfeed openly to be seen as a “good mother.” I remember feeling flushed and embarrassed but proceeding anyway to try to feed my daughter. Well, she either wasn’t hungry (which meant I was a mother who didn’t understand her child’s needs) or she sensed my tension and wanted no part of it. She cried louder and squirmed, which left my breast fully exposed and turned heads in the restaurant. I was certain those not in our group were thinking, “there’s a half naked woman…and an annoying crying child, both of which are disrupting my meal. Good God, can’t she take care of her child?!?” After a ridiculously long and stressful 3 minutes, we gave up, and tried to gracefully finish the meal. I still look back at that lunch and feel embarrassed and ashamed that I didn’t listen to my gut, my mind, or my heart. Over time, I’ve worked to unwind my perfectionism and my obsession with what others think. It’s my new practice. It feels more authentic and aligned, and to me, that’s what makes a good mother.