Unheard

I spend a lot of times not being heard these days. Although that isn’t completely accurate- the incidents of my words spilling out to the vastness of space beyond my children’s attention, priorities and awareness are fleeting, of course. But hanging there, as they are, in space, divorced from me but unanchored in the sea of suspension that is the beyond my children’s hearing and acting; they become potent in a way that is not healthy. They begin to fester and rot and before I know it, as is the way with the silent and omnipresent microbial forces that coat everything in our world, infection sets deep.

And thus those unheard words return to me. They have become heavy in their failure to be witnessed. They come running back to me, tear stained, red eyed, snotty all over, and demand my intention. “They didn’t listen!” They wail. “They don’t care!”. (This, of course, the voice of my wounded, wailing inner self combines in cacophany with my actual children’s own wailings, which are also loud and demanding and more constant than I ever imagined they could be).

Those returned words, they deafen me. They stop me from being fully present to whatever is actually going on with the kids- what the moment is for them, what their needs are and the dynamic between their needs and my requests, the conflict that manifests in the not-hearing. I become consumed by that infection of rejection and frustration and child-like pouting (or mother-like mourning of a more fully heard life) and become a little less able to tune into them, into the moment, to be in divine mind and open heart.

Eventually, I find that those returned words also render me mute. I am silenced. The fear of creating a space for that infection to become more embedded urges me to hold onto my words in a place where they are innocent, naive and pure.

What does this look like? Passivitity. A mothering that is overly permissive, and not nourishing in the long term. Children that are fast developing an entitlement complex. A mother that draws more and more into herself. The walls I put up growing, incrementally stronger.

With every time I pick up the dirty clothes myself.

With every time I light a candle at lunchtime and then the children argue and fight over who gets to blow it out like they are writing each other out of my will.

With everytime I feel my head spin with the need to have a ten minute sit down but the children need to eat- NOW, to be separated before they tear each other apart- NOW, the baby needs her nappy changed- NOW. I am lost in a world of inflated immediate urgency. My unheard voice- and it’s resultant infection becomes even more systemic.

I have lost my agency as a mother. And as a human. I am in a constant state of collapse.

There is a lot to be said for the compassion and empathy of other mothers. I know they get it. I know they experience it, just as acutely. I can see it in their eyes, in the slightly glazed over look that reminds me just a little of someone who has experienced some kind of acute trauma. I can see it in the minisecond longer that it takes her to blink, finding the most strange respite in being able to create a curtain between herself and the world just a little longer. Sometimes I wish I had known my circle of mama-friends before we all had children. I am sure I see only some aspects of her- beautiful, graceful, infinitely valuable aspects of her yes- but I wonder who she was before the need to find respite in blinking, in the bodily release of a sigh or the most wondrous self nurturing of a full wee in a toilet with the door closed, and no one interrupting her.

And of course, the language of mother to mother is full of unspoken words too. In it’s place, a strange and sometimes hard to decipher dialect of interrupted phrasing and incomplete anecdotes. Often, the tears and the laughter say it all. To have a complete, fully present dialogue with another mother is medicine and it is magical and it is worth far more than it’s weight in gold. But those moments of golden nourishment are few and far between. They cannot be relied upon but instead stumbled upon, two mothers encountering each other in a dark forest, mud of their cheeks and blood on their scratched up hands, the grazes on their knees full of sharp pebbles. They touch their foreheads to each other and fall completely into the recognition of each other’s journey. They are still lost- but they are together.

My partner too- my everloving, mostly patient man- he too is not immune to this. His infection is less embedded but, as such, is often he that does the talking now. Again and again until the children hear him, until the message is lost amongst the dynamic. All day I converse with him in my head, curating the perfect words to convey the minuate of my day- of course, being all that I have, becomes inflated and distorted in perspective and importance. By the time he returns home from his work out in the big world outside that front door, though, my words are silenced, this time by fatigue. By the aching and demanding need for peace and stillness and space. The best we often get is lying on the bed and couch, looking at each other with strain and empathy and perhaps too, a little bit of resentment. And again, the words are not heard. They aren’t even uttered.

Silent as I am, unheard as I am, infected and ill and feverish as I am, I cannot let this lie. This infection can take too much from me, it already has. It steals away moments of unfettered joy in the spontaneous playfulness that is life in a family of young children. It binds my arms and stops me from pulling a child with hurt feelings into a warm and loving embrace and singing them songs of a world that is their to honour and nourish them. It instead provides them with an entitlement culture, an expectation of distorted priviledge and lack of gratitude. It teaches them nothing of boundaries- except perhaps, that they are the centre of the world and that stepping over people is how to get what you want.

And it keeps me small.

So I turn to writing. That unheard voice inside of me, in my writing, I can give it life. I can, for a little while, sit by it. I can listen with an open heart and full presence. And as it tantrums and petulantly accuses the whole world of being against it, I see it slowly, relax a little. To let out a deeper breath. To fall into quietude for a little while, and then, take another little breath and start talking about the things that really matter, the dynamics underneath, opening the awareness of conscious motherhood, the sweet, lilting and mournful song of the mother growing and opening her heart with every moment.

Writing is my solace, my medicine, my joy and my process. I hope reading this helps your unheard voices find a place to unwind a little too. I would love to hear your story.

Because we all need to be heard, just as much as to breathe and to drink and to find ourselves in the sunshine on a soft morning. Let me hear your words.