Spinning
From my office in a high tower on Bay Street, the heart of Toronto’s business world, I rarely got the idea among the millions of daily transactions and human interactions going on around me, that mothering is important.
There is an energy about the place, a heart beat you can feel, which seems to defy any grounding in humanity. It’s a frenetic world with people constantly moving, dealing, and deciding with little acknowledgement of the human side of those who make their living there. I loved being there, wrapped up in my organization because my role was to make sure that we were a people place. Mine was part of the human face of our business.
I remember the day, shortly after I found out that I was pregnant, that the spiral began. Most people would tell me that it was early term nausea but I knew that it was more than that. The world looked somehow different to me and there was a voice inside me telling me to pay attention. My intuition is deftly skilled at alerting me to things I need to know, so when I open that channel to my left brain I can usually learn something before it becomes a problem for me. I responded to the voice with my usual problem solving skills and went down to the bookstore to see what would catch my eye.
Browsing the bookstore, I scan countless inviting titles which seem to fill the many gaps in my empty expectant mother tool box. Where do I begin? At this emotionally charged stage of pregnancy, I am so focused on getting the best, most current information available I don’t stop to ponder whether this perspective from another person, so perfectly edited between glossy covers, fits. I flip through the chapters, drinking down the advice as if it were the elixir of life. Yet a voice in me begins chastising: Hang on a minute here — have I closed my critical mind? Behind each volume of information are the beliefs and biases of the author. Doesn’t that one feel like a worst case scenario handbook, and this one sound hell bent on natural everything? How do these perspectives match my beliefs and needs? What do I think a perfect pregnancy looks like…and how will the advice I follow affect the kind of mother I become? Pharmaceutical Momma or TLC & Chicken Soup Nurturer?
I back away from the shelf empty handed, looking now only for a picture book. I feel trapped between ignorance and falling prey to the powerful culture of advice I see I am wading through. Everyone writes with a point of view which may inform me, scare me, teach me or make me feel somehow different than my new sisters. This train of thought feels very unnerving. The more I learn, the less I know. I am now waiting anxiously for my first pre-natal appointment at week 12.
A simple, promise filled trip to the bookstore to orient myself to this new land screeches to a halt. There is so much — too much — information. I have to control my appetite for buying books until I can figure out how to sort through the sea of advice. I begin to roll this conundrum around in my mind in the same way I begin all puzzles — letting it germinate and trusting that one day, the clouds will part and I will know what to do next. In the mean time, I have learned that I just have to hang out with the sense that I’m not sure where I’m headed next.
What I did not know was that I was stepping outside of myself and the corporate results orientation which had served me so well. This was where the becoming part of mothering hit my consciousness.